Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago

Long before the advent of agriculture, hunter-gatherers began putting down roots in the Middle East, building more permanent homes and altering the ecological balance in ways that allowed the common house mouse to flourish, new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates.

"The research provides the first evidence that, as early as 15,000 years ago, humans were living in one place long enough to impact local animal communities—resulting in the dominant presence of house mice," said Fiona Marshall, study co-author and a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. "It's clear that the permanent occupation of these settlements had far-reaching consequences for local ecologies, animal domestication and human societies."

Marshall, a noted expert on animal domestication, considers the research exciting because it shows that settled hunter-gatherers rather than farmers were the first people to transform environmental relations with small mammals. By providing stable access to human shelter and food, hunter-gatherers led house mice down the path to commensalism, an early phase of domestication in which a species learns how to benefit from human interaction.

The findings have broad implications for the processes that led to animal domestication.

Temporary Maasai homesteads, such as this one from southern Kenya, have relatively little long-term environmental impact
Temporary Maasai homesteads, such as this one from southern Kenya, have relatively little long-term environmental impact © Lior Weissbrod

Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago

  • doi: 10.1073/pnas.1619137114

Lior Weissbroda,1,2, Fiona B. Marshallb, François R. Vallac, Hamoudi Khalailyd, Guy Bar-Oza, Jean-Christophe Auffraye, Jean-Denis Vignef, and Thomas Cucchif,g,1,21

Significance

Decreases in hunter-gatherer mobility during the Late Pleistocene altered relationships with animal communities and led to domestication. Little is known, however, about how selection operated in settlements of varying duration. This study of mice in modern African mobile settlements and ancient Levantine sites demonstrates competitive advantages for commensal mice when human mobility is low and niche partitioning with noncommensal wild mice when mobility increases. Changing mice molar shapes in a 200,000-y-long sequence from the Levant reveal that mice first colonized settlements of relatively settled hunter-gatherers 15,000 y ago. The first long-term hunter-gatherer settlements transformed ecological interactions and food webs, allowing commensal house mice to outcompete wild mice and establish durable populations that expanded with human societies.

Abstract

Reductions in hunter-gatherer mobility during the Late Pleistocene influenced settlement ecologies, altered human relations with animal communities, and played a pivotal role in domestication. The influence of variability in human mobility on selection dynamics and ecological interactions in human settlements has not been extensively explored, however. This study of mice in modern African villages and changing mice molar shapes in a 200,000-y-long sequence from the Levant demonstrates competitive advantages for commensal mice in long-term settlements. Mice from African pastoral households provide a referential model for habitat partitioning among mice taxa in settlements of varying durations. The data reveal the earliest known commensal niche for house mice in long-term forager settlements 15,000 y ago. Competitive dynamics and the presence and abundance of mice continued to fluctuate with human mobility through the terminal Pleistocene. At the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha, house mice displaced less commensal wild mice during periods of heavy occupational pressure but were outcompeted when mobility increased. Changing food webs and ecological dynamics in long-term settlements allowed house mice to establish durable commensal populations that expanded with human societies. This study demonstrates the changing magnitude of cultural niche construction with varying human mobility and the extent of environmental influence before the advent of farming.

  • 1.

    a Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel;

    b Anthropology Department, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130;

    c Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité, CNRS-UMR 7041, Université de Paris Nanterre, 92023 Nanterre, France;

    d Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem 91004, Israel;

    e Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution, Université de Montpellier, CNRS-UMR 5554, Montpellier, France;

    f Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CNRS-UMR 7209, Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique: Sociétés, Pratiques et Environnements, 75005 Paris, France;

    g Archaeology Department, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, United Kingdom

    Edited by Bruce D. Smith, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and approved February 21, 2017 (received for review November 19, 2016)