Boessneck J
Tierarztl Prax. 1985;13(4):479-97.
The domestication of the dog took place in the late Glacial. Its earliest record comes from Oberkassel near Bonn and its age is some 14000 years B.C. On the other side the domestication of the farm animals began about 10000 years ago, during the so-called Neolithic Revolution, when man's way of life changed basicly from the hunter-and gatherer-culture to agriculture and animal husbandry. This change took place in the valleys and on the slopes of the mountains surrounding the basin of the Euphrat and Tigris rivers which is called the Fertile Crescent. Sheep and goat were succeeded by pig and cattle. Immediately after the transition to domestication with protection by human being taking the place of natural selection the livestock animals and the dog underwent a decrease in size. This reduction in size is one of the most important criteria for distinguishing prehistoric domestic livestock from their wild forms. In high developed cultures domestication resulted in a hardly imaginable morphological and physiological extension of variability, in a richness of forms not to be guessed by the whole potential of the corresponding ancestors. But all these rich appearing forms were due to intraspecific procedures. They don't create new species. By the way of the increasing influence of man and its domestic animals on the environment the procedure of domestication is more and more shifted in the foreground and increasingly intervenes with the interests of wild life.
狗的驯化发生在末次冰期晚期。其最早的记录来自波恩附近的奥伯卡塞尔，距今约公元前14000年。另一方面，家畜的驯化大约始于10000年前，即所谓的新石器时代革命期间，当时人类的生活方式从狩猎和采集文化基本转变为农业和畜牧业。这种转变发生在幼发拉底河和底格里斯河流域周围的山谷和山坡上，这片区域被称为新月沃地。绵羊和山羊之后是猪和牛。在向驯化过渡、人类保护取代自然选择之后，家畜和狗的体型立即变小。体型缩小是区分史前家养牲畜与其野生形态的最重要标准之一。在高度发达的文化中，驯化导致了形态和生理变异性几乎难以想象的扩展，出现了丰富的形态，这是相应祖先的全部潜力都无法推测出来的。但所有这些丰富多样的形态都是种内过程导致的。它们不会创造新物种。随着人类及其家畜对环境的影响日益增加，驯化过程越来越处于突出地位，并越来越多地干预野生动物的利益。
