4. Farming, surplus, and the animals humans tamed

Farming, surplus, and the animals humans tamed

For almost all of human history people took the food that was already there. Then they started producing it. Farming let them grow more food than they needed, and that extra food changed everything that came after it: permanent settlements, tamed animals, money, and the first cities. This page follows that change in order, from the first tamed wolf to the first written account.

• 14,000 BCE — The dog. Wolves that fed on scraps near human camps become tamer over many generations. The dog is the first tamed animal, thousands of years before farming. Humans kept dogs for hunting and guarding, not for food. This date is one of the least certain on the page. Genetic studies place the split from wolves at 19,000 years ago or earlier. The oldest firm archaeological proof is about 15,000 years old, and it consists of dogs buried next to their owners.
• 12,000 BCE — Long-distance trade. Hunter-gatherer groups already exchange goods across hundreds of kilometres: obsidian, shells, flint, and ochre. Trade is older than farming, older than cities, and older than money. Everything that follows depends on this habit of exchange.
• 10,000 BCE — Farming begins. Humans start growing crops instead of only hunting and gathering. They produce more food than they need, and that extra food lets them stay in one place. This change makes everything that follows possible, and it starts a long series of animals being tamed.
• 3,500 BCE — The first money. Once people have extra goods to trade, they need a way to record value between strangers, because memory only works inside a small group. Useful goods become the standard payment: grain, and above all cattle. Money starts as a way to record debts that nobody can remember on their own. The English words capital and pecuniary both come from the Latin word for cattle. Money, writing, and a class of traders arrive together, and simple exchange becomes commerce.
• 3,500 BCE — The first civilization. In Sumer, the extra food supports people who do not farm: priests, rulers, soldiers, and scribes. Cities, writing, and governments appear. The first written records are not laws or poetry. They are accounts recording who owes what, which means money and writing came from the same need. Written history starts here.

The animals humans tamed

Farming started a long series of animals being tamed. Each one gave humans something they could not get on their own: food they could store, power they could not supply with their own muscles, or transport across land they could not cross on foot.

• 14,000 BCE — The dog. Tamed from wolves for hunting and guarding, thousands of years before farming. The full entry is in the timeline above.
• 9,000 BCE — Sheep and goats. Tamed in the Middle East for meat, milk, wool, and hide. They turn grass that humans cannot eat into food that humans can eat.
• 8,500 BCE — Pigs. Tamed from wild boar in the Middle East and China for meat. Pigs need no grazing land and live on food scraps, which suits them to village life.
• 8,500 BCE — Cattle. Tamed from the wild aurochs for meat, milk, and pulling power. Cattle pull the plough and the cart, and early societies count them, trade them, and tax them as a form of wealth.
• 7,500 BCE — The cat. A cat was buried beside a human on Cyprus at about this date, which was long treated as the start of cat taming. Genetic work published in 2025 changed that picture. Modern house cats descend from the North African wildcat, not from the wildcats of the Middle East, and they did not reach Europe until about 2,000 years ago. The cats living in Europe before that date were European wildcats. The place and date of cat taming are now open questions, and Egypt is the leading candidate.
• 5,000 BCE — Llama and alpaca. Tamed high in the Andes. They are the only large animals in the Americas that can carry loads and produce wool. No American animal could pull a plough or carry a rider, which is why civilizations there had no wheeled transport and no cavalry.
• 4,000 BCE — The donkey. Tamed in Egypt and the Horn of Africa. It is the first dependable animal for carrying loads over long distances. Donkey caravans moved the goods that built the first cities.
• 4,000 BCE — Water buffalo. Tamed in South and Southeast Asia for ploughing flooded rice fields and for milk. It supports rice farming across Asia, and rice farming supports the densest populations on Earth.
• 3,000 BCE — Bactrian camel. Tamed in Central Asia to carry loads across cold high desert. It made the overland routes possible that later became the Silk Road.
• 2,200 BCE — The horse. Bred in the Volga-Don grasslands of western Eurasia. This breed spread across the whole continent and replaced every local horse. It multiplied how fast and how far humans could travel, and it changed war, trade, and the movement of peoples from then on. The date is disputed. Critics argue that taming happened slowly and in several regions, that horses were herded, milked, and ridden centuries earlier, and that 2,200 BCE marks the spread of one successful breed rather than the first taming.
• 1,500 BCE — The chicken. Tamed from the wild red junglefowl in Southeast Asia. People first kept it for cockfighting and religious use, and only later for eggs and meat. It is now the most numerous bird on Earth.
• 1,000 BCE — Dromedary camel. Tamed in Arabia to cross desert on very little water. It opened the incense trade and the caravan routes of the Arabian deserts.

Related: the six cradles of civilization, how surplus divided society into levels.

The animals humans tamed