The early history of domestication of animals

The more recent Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans during the last Ice Age, the social hunting of large mammals such as mammoths or bison would have more closely paralleled that of wolf packs, and indeed the first partnership between wolf and humans may have begun from their joint hunting skills at least 30,000 years ago.

Domestication begins with ownership. In order to be domesticated animals have to be incorporated into the special structure of a human community and become of ownership inheritance, purchase and exchange. 

Animal domestication has not only provided a ready supply of food, clothing and companionship but, in many respects, has changed the way people live and view the world.

This was the basis of the so-called Neolithic revolution when the fundamental change in human societies occurred and groups of hunter-gatherers became farmers and stockbreeders.

The human species has evolved what appears to be a unique capacity for wanting to tame, nurture and love with almost all species of vertebrae animals.

The goat came into human lives in the pre-agriculture stage of development, during the Middle Stone Age, between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago at the end of the last glacial period.

The only other pre-agriculture domestic animal was the dog, the reindeer and the sheep. But the goat probably came first, judging from the bones that have been found and their demonstrable age.

Pigs were domesticated separately in Europe and Asia about 9000 years ago.

Domestication of llama and alpaca took place in South America about 6000 years ago at the same time that people of the Sredni Stog culture in the Ukraine began domesticating horses for meat and transportation.
The early history of domestication of animals