Domestication

All domesticated pigs originated from the wild boar (Sus scrofa) (Epstein 1984). Within that one wild species, more than 20 subspecies are known in different parts of its natural range, which has extended from the British Isles and Morocco in the West to Japan and New Guinea in the East. But where in this vast stretch of territory the first domestication occurred is still uncertain, although the earliest archaeological records (c. 7000-5000 B. C.) have been concentrated in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean.

Pig

Indeed, the recovery of bones of domesticated pigs has been done at Jericho (Palestine), Jarmo (Iraq), Catal Huyuk (Turkey), and Argissa-Margula (Greece), as well as other sites. But bones older than any of those from these sites were uncovered in 1994 at Hallan Cemi in southeastern Turkey. There, in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, the pig was apparently kept as early as 8000 B. C., making it the oldest known domesticated creature besides the dog. Moreover, pig keeping at this site was found to predate the cultivation of wheat or barley. Both findings contradict the long-held twin assertions that sheep and goats were the world’s earliest domesticated herd animals and that crop growing preceded the raising of herd animals.

An alternative view places the beginning of swine domestication in Southeast Asia. Carl O. Sauer (1952) suggested that the pig under human control diffused from there northward to China. However, Seung Og Kim (1994) has suggested that political elites in northern China established their authority by controlling intensive pig production as early as 4300 B. C. Certainly, archaeology and cultural hubris have combined to convince many Chinese that it was their ancestors who first domesticated the pig. The Chinese ideograph for “home” consists of a character for “swine” beneath another character for “roof” (Simoons 1991).

Certain innate traits of the wild boar make it plausible that multiple domestications have occurred at different times and places in the Old World. This inquisitive, opportunistic artiodactyl may, in part, have domesticated itself by choosing to freely come into association with humans. Garbage at settlement sites provided a regular food supply, and human presence offered protection from large carnivores. Reproduction in captivity could have been initiated when captured wild piglets were tamed. Human control would have been easily accomplished, for it has been observed that the striped piglets of the wild boar behave just like the unstriped piglets of the domesticated species. The next step, unconscious selection, began the long process of evolving regional distinctions in the animal’s conformation. However, the emergence of distinctive breeds, as we know them today, dates mostly from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when artificial selection was implemented on a large scale.

Religion probably lay behind the transformation of the pig from a semidomesticated status to one of greater mutual dependency with humans. In ancient Egypt, followers of Seth sacrificed pigs to that god. On the Iberian Peninsula, the granite sculptures called verracos, carved by Celts between the sixth century B. C. and the first century A. D., suggest that pigs might have had a religious role. In ancient Greek and Roman times, pigs were sacrificed to deities. In China, the Manchus believed that a sacrificial pig drove away bad spirits and assured good fortune. In all these groups, the incentive of supplying live animals for cul-tic purposes could easily have resulted in breeding pigs toward greater dependency on humans.

Advantages of the Pig

From a contemporary utilitarian perspective, the pig is one of the glories of animal domestication. It is prolific. After a gestation period of only 4 months, a sow gives birth to an average of 10 piglets, though litter size may, on occasion, be as large as 30. Growth is rapid. In a 6-month period, piglets of 1.2 kilograms can potentially increase in weight by 5,000 percent. This growth translates into a higher return for energy invested than for other domesticated animals. Another advantage is the omnivory of pigs, which permits a wide range of food options; items that are plentiful and cheap can dominate the intake. For example, surplus crops, such as sweet potatoes in New Guinea, coconuts in Polynesia, maize in the midwestern United States, and barley in Denmark, are frequently enhanced in value because they can be fed to swine. A major disadvantage of pigs is their low ability to digest fibrous plant matter, so that, unlike ruminants, they cannot do well on cellulose alone.

The Range Pig

For most of their domesticated history, swine were kept in one of two ways: free-ranging in forests or sedentary in settlements. In neither case did they compete with humans for food, although pigs have the capacity to eat and thrive on the same nutrients. For the range pig, both plant and animal matter, on and beneath the forest floor, was sought. In Western Europe, where domesticated swine have been known since before 4000 B. C., they ate acorns, chestnuts, beechnuts, hazelnuts, and wild fruits such as berries, apples, pears, and hawthorns. Their powerful mobile snouts and sharp teeth were able to dig mushrooms, tubers, roots, worms, and grubs from the ground. Eggs, snakes, young birds, mice, rabbits, and even fawns were consumed as opportunity arose.

The use of pannage (pasturing in a forest) to feed pigs was recorded from antiquity in Europe and still has not totally disappeared. An abundant iconography suggests the role that swine played in the development of European rural society. The pig is always pictured as an animal with a long flat neck, straight back, narrow snout, small erect ears, and long legs. Nimble and resourceful, it thrived on mast (nuts from the forest floor). In the early Middle Ages, mast rights were a greater source of income from the forest than the sale of wood. But pannage required peasants to enclose their fields with wooden palisades or hedges to prevent pigs from entering and destroying their crops. As concern for forest resources grew, the pannage season was fixed by seigneurial decree. The main feeding period came in the autumn, when nuts, a highly concentrated source of nutrition, fell in large numbers. In many places, it became traditional to begin mast feeding on the feast of Saint Michael (September 29) and to conclude it on the last day of November (Laurans 1976).

Mast feeding has now disappeared from Europe except in a few places. Its best-known survival is in Spain, where the oak woodland still seasonally supports black and red Iberian swine (Parsons 1962). Although by 1990 these rustic mast-feeding breeds made up only 4 percent of the Spanish pig population, the cured pork products derived from them have been prized as especially delectable. Thus, cured hams (jamon thertco) from these swine are very expensive; most famous are those from Jabugo, a meat-packing village in the Sierra Morena north of Huelva.

On his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought the first pigs to the New World (1493). From an original stock of eight, they multiplied on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, and many later became feral. Rounded up as needed, pigs were put on board ships bound for Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and all the islands in between. Francisco Pizarro, who had worked with swine in his youth in Extremadura, brought live pigs to the Andean highlands from Panama in 1531. The long-legged, nimble suid was well suited to move along with the expedition parties as a mobile fresh meat supply. Tropical America afforded no acorns or chestnuts, but an abundance of wild fruit, especially from palms, provided nourishment for the pigs. In semiarid zones, seed pods of leguminous trees were the common food of foraging swine.

The first pigs in what is now the United States arrived from Cuba with Hernando de Soto’s expedition (1539-42) through the Southeast. Later introductions came from the British Isles, most notably to John Smith’s settlement of Jamestown in 1607.A few years later, they had multiplied to several hundred head. In Virginia, and elsewhere in eastern North. America, pigs fit well into the forested countryside as foragers. Abundant oak and chestnut mast in the Appalachians offered a good return in meat for almost no investment in feed or care. In late autumn, the semiferal animals were rounded up and slaughtered, and their fatty flesh was made into salt pork, which along with Indian corn was a staple of the early. American diet. In the early nineteenth century, these Appalachian pigs were commercialized. The leading national and world position of Cincinnati, Ohio (often jokingly called “Porkopolis”), as a soap manufacturing center owes its origin to pigs brought there on barges for slaughter; their flesh was salted and their fat rendered into soap.

This type of hardy porker and wily beast of folk legend still survives in the Ozarks and elsewhere in the southern United States. In fact, these “razorbacks” could be descendants of those that accompanied the de Soto expedition. The explorer gave gifts of live pigs to the Indians, and when he died in 1542 near what is now Fort Smith, Arkansas, 700 pigs were counted among his property. In addition, Ossabow Island, off the coast of Georgia, still harbors a breed of swine considered to be direct descendants of those brought by the Spaniards.

In addition to the Caribbean Islands, other uninhabited islands around the world became homes of the pig. In many cases, the animals were introduced by explorers and mariners and left to reproduce on their own. Sailors on passing ships often rounded up and slaughtered some of these feral pigs to replenish shipboard larders. Nonetheless, pigs on islands often multiplied to the point where they destroyed native fauna and flora.

In Melanesia, semidomesticated pigs still forage in the forest and are slaughtered primarily for ritual purposes (Baldwin 1983). R. A. Rappaport (1967) has explained the impressive pig feasts among the Tsem-baga people of New Guinea as a societal mechanism that fulfills the need to control the size, composition, and rate of growth of the pig population. Without the periodic slaughtering of large numbers, the pigs would seriously damage gardens and crops. Rappa-port’s effort to understand pigs and ritual as part of a homeostatic balance became one of the landmark works of the developing subfield of cultural ecology. Whether such a pig complex makes economic sense has been debated because, in this case, the animal is not a regular source of human food. But aside from their meat, pigs must be appreciated in manifold ways: as a hedge against uncertainty (e. g., crop failure); as a negotiable store of surplus; as a source of fertilizer; and as disposers of garbage and other wastes.