Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig Read Online Free PDF Page A

piglike creatures. Only two families—pigs ( Suidae ) and peccaries ( Tayassuidae )—survive today. Their evolutionary lines split more than 35 million years ago in Asia. The Suidae line stayed in the Old World, evolving into the wild boar of Eurasia (ancestor of the domestic pig), the warthog of Africa, the babirusa or “pig deer” of Indonesia, and a dozen or so other species. Members of the Tayassuidae line live only in the Americas. The peccary’s head is a bit shorter than the pig’s, its tusks point down rather than up, and it runs faster. Otherwise pigs and peccaries are remarkably alike. Thick body, small eyes, probing snout, multipurpose teeth—all are adapted to omnivorous life in the bush.
    Pigs are often described as the most “primitive” of the artiodactyls. In a sense, they are: they have the full range of teeth and the simple guts of early mammals. In this sense, however, people too are primitive. Sometimes the simplest tools are the best. An ecological niche, at root, is just a source of energy, a place in the world where a plant or animal can find enough food to sustain itself. Pigs and people, both expert at evaluating new foods, quickly colonized every remotely viable niche.
    Some 31 million years after the pig’s Suidae ancestors split off from their Tayassuidae cousins, the family divided again, forming a new species.The Eurasian wild boar—classified as Sus scrofa , Latin for “breeding sow”—first evolved in Southeast Asia 4 million years ago and then radiated throughout the continent. Today the natural range of the Eurasian wild boar stretches from northeastern Europe to Southeast Asia, from 13,000-foot mountains to swamps to near desert. Pigs, like people, are everywhere, and for many of the same reasons: they have clever brains, omnivorous appetites, and general-purpose teeth and guts.
    The Eurasian wild boar did very well in the wild, but it thrived as never before when, about 10,000 years ago, certain members of the species took one further evolutionary step: they gave up their independent ways, moved into town, and domesticated themselves. Pigs and people threw in their lots together, and that proved a wise evolutionary strategy for both species.

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    Out of the Wild
    I n 1989 archeologists discovered a tiny ancient village in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains and began digging with haste: the Turkish government was building a dam on the nearby Batman River, a tributary of the Tigris, and the area would soon be inundated. The site, known as Hallan Cemi, dated to about 11,000 years ago. Most of the buildings the archaeologists excavated were tiny round huts of wattle and daub, just six feet in diameter, though there was one larger ceremonial building with a cattle skull mounted on the wall. Among the debris were beautifully carved sandstone bowls, decorated grinding stones, and obsidian tools.
    The villagers of Hallan Cemi had formed a complex society with a rich cultural life, but they were hunter-gatherers, not farmers. They ate wild lentils, bitter vetch, almonds, plums, andpistachios. They hunted sheep, goats, deer, and pigs. The first three were unquestionably wild animals. The site’s pig bones, however, told a more complicated story.
    Nearly half the pigs eaten at Hallan Cemi were killed at less than a year old, a profile very different from the broad age range found in hunted animals. The bones also were overwhelmingly male, suggesting that the villagers had spared females to serve as breeding stock. During the time that Hallan Cemi was occupied, moreover, deer bones became less common while pig bones increased in number. Both deer and wild pigs are forest-dwelling creatures, so if the pig bones at Hallan Cemi came from wild animals, their numbers should have declined along with those of the deer.The fact that they did not makes it likely that the destruction of forests killed off the deer, while pigs found a new habitat, living alongside humans in the village.
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