Pig and human history timeline
prior to 4000 BC
- 65-37 million years ago
- Paleocene / Eocene Epochs: Primitive hoofed ancestral forms of pigs make their fist appearance, as well as those of horses, rhinoceroses, and camels. Dinosaurs have disappeared and mammalian life is beginning to dominate the earth. Chiefly marsupials, insectivores, lemuroids, ancestral mammal forms. As the seas withdraw, Europe emerges. Volcanism forms the Rocky Mountains in North America as well as and other ranges. Erosion fills basins, laying bauxite deposits in Western North Americ. Greenland and North America split.
- 37-23 million years ago
- Oligocene Epoch: Modern forms of pigs — principally the Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa) — begin to appear, as well as those of horses, true carnivores, rhinoceroses and elephants. Archaic mammals are disappearing. Modern cats and dogs are evolving. Modern grasses appear. Also, African and European tectonic plates collide causing Alpine Mountain ranges. Arabia and African continents split at the Red Sea rift. California collides with mid-Pacific ridge.
- 95,000 to 90,000 BC
- The first true humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) appear in the fossil record.
- 35,000 to 20,000 BC
- Boars, as well as other sacred animals are painted in realistic fashion by humans on rock faces and cave interiors through out Ice Age Europe as exemplified by those still preserved on the walls of caves at Altamira, Spain and Lascaux, France. These realistic animal paintings, with religious associations, depict animal figures, drawn with amazing accuracy, often in a realistic color schemes.
- c. 13,600 BC
- Noah gathers two pigs, as well as two of many other animals, as a Great Flood inundates much of the world. The flood is a sudden 130-foot rise in sea levels, the result of runoff from a rapid melting of the glacial ice sheet covering much of the northern continents. This date is approximate and somewhat conjectural.
- c. 11,000 to 9000 BC
- Pigs are first domesticated in central Asia, southern Turkey and Iran along with goats, sheep and a variety of grains. Pigs, other animals, plants and agricultural techniques spread into Europe as a package, carried as part of the culture of people migrating West.
- c. 7000 BC
- Modern evidence found in excavations at Argissa-Magulain in Thessaly suggest the Greeks have domesticated pigs and dogs, as well as barley, millet and lentils. And domesticated pigs were certainly present at sites such as Hallam Çemi, Çayönü Tepesi, and Neval Çori in eastern Turkey as well.
- c. 5500–4500 BC
- The first domesticated pigs appear in Europe. These are a result of successful breeding of Near Eastern domesticated pigs with the European wild boar. The initial spread of agriculture into Europe from Asia, as represented by the Linear Pottery culture [abbreviated as ‘LBK’ from German: Linearbandkeramik] brought these Asian domesticated pigs into Europe as well as agricultural methods of raising various wheats, barley, peas and lentils.
- c. 4000 BC
- The Emperor of China gives pork “royal status” when he decrees that the Chinese people must raise and breed hogs.
