Synanthropy is the term used to describe the process of wild species that have adapted to living in the vicinity of humans and find benefits from it, but are in no way domesticated. In my suburb we have a large number of cottontail rabbits and quite a few squirrels. Additionally, we see raccoons once in a while. This means that we also have foxes and even the periodic coyote sighting. Our daughter's family lives outside of town in a suburban enclave next to a large golf course and they have deer in their yard almost daily. These are all examples of present day synanthropy.
So we can expect that certain animals, birds, and insects, lived in synanthropy with our Paleolithic ancestors, so what? What can that possibly have to do with rock art?
Marshall wrote in New Scientist Online that there are “animals such as urban foxes that live alongside us, and benefit from doing so, are called synanthropes. They aren’t domesticated like dogs or cows. But they are adapted to a human-centric life. Some urban foxes have skull shapes that differ from country-dwellers and more closely match domesticated dogs. Other examples include rats, dandelions and trash pandas – sorry, I mean raccoons.” (Marshall 2023)
The
prevailing view up until now has been that synanthropy could not have developed
between animals and hunter gatherers because the humans did not leave enough
trash (bones, food remains, etc.) to attract animals.
“It’s generally thought that synanthropy began with the agricultural revolution, around 10,000 years ago. That’s when people started settling down in the same place instead of moving around, and crucially when they started storing large quantities of food and accumulating rubbish. The main explanation for the existence of domestic cats is that wild cats started living near human settlements to prey on the mice that were eating our grain. However, it now looks like that’s wrong.” (Marshall 2023)
“Very little research has explored the idea of synanthropic animals before the rise of agriculture, so what follows is tentative. It’s based largely on the work of Chris Baumann at the University of Helsinki in Finland, who has been studying palaeo-synanthropies for the last few years. In April he published a review in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, summarizing everything that’s known.” (Marshall 2023) These early assumptions were that people would need to be settled, and producing food surpluses to attract the animal pests and predators.
“How widespread were these palaeo-synanthropies? The short answer is we don’t know. The European evidence is limited to the east and to the last 42,000 years, where studies have been done. Baumann suspects palaeo-synanthropies were both older and more widespread, but he needs direct evidence.” (Marshall 2023) And, I would add this caveat to Marshall's statement "we don't know." I believe we can rightfully say that we do know that paleo-synanthropies had to have existed. We just do not have the data to quantify it.
These early assumptions were that people would need to be settled, and producing food surpluses to attract the animal pests and predators.This, however, does not take in other factors that might also lead to synthropic relationships between humans and animals. Baumann (2023) expanded that understanding somewhat.
Chris Baumann (2023) explained his theory of human impact on the landscape as providing a niche for human-animal synanthropy. “Key features of this new niche are anthropogenic food waste from mobile hunter-gatherers as a stable food base for small opportunistic scavengers and a human-near environment safe from large predators. By linking the niche to human behavior rather than to a specific location or structure, this niche was accessible for a long time, even in the Late Pleistocene. Like modern synanthropic animals, members of the paleo-synanthropic niche experienced an increase in population density and a decrease in home range. This, in turn, made it easier for humans to capture these animals and use them as resources for meat, fur, or feathers, as seen in the zooarchaeological record of many European Late Pleistocene sites.” (Baumann 2023)
Baumann’s summary focuses on this phenomenon developing as a relationship between hominins and small predators. “Paleo-synanthropic behavior is an adaptation to the micro-environment created by Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies. The resulting niche allowed small to medium-sized opportunistic generalist carnivores or omnivores to gain access to a long-term food resource, i.e., anthropogenic food waste. In addition, this niche provided security against large carnivores, which was ensured by their displacement by humans. As a result, the inhabitants of this new niche experienced population growth and a reduced home range. The paleo-synanthropic niche is not linked to specific geographic regions but is tied to human behavior and is therefore regionally flexible. This enabled paleo-synanthropes to exploit their niche for a long time. The high population density of these animals and their proximity to humans also allowed humans to use them as a resource for meat, fur, or feathers.” (Baumann 2023) Baumann points to human food waste as the mechanism that led to Paleo-synanthropy, focusing on small animals such as foxes and ravens – but I would like to suggest another possibility that could lead to the same relationship with larger animals such as horses, aurochs, deer, etc.
All assumptions about the Paleolithic Europeans who left us the magnificent cave paintings tell us they lived somewhere in the vicinity of those caves, and according to some dating studies they lived there for long periods of time, at least many generations. Or, perhaps they roamed a larger area in smaller groups, but reassembling on special occasions at the caves for ceremonial purposes.
They also had fire as a vital tool for heat, light, and even possibly processing some materials such as stone for their tools. This use of fire would require a considerable amount of fuel, eventually leading to the thinning of the forest for firewood around their area of residence, to say nothing of the possibility of accidental fire escaping into the forest. Thinning the forest would, of course, lead to more scrub and grassland in that area, and various grazers and browsers would benefit from the increased food supply. This suggests the possibility that the cave images of deer, horses, and aurochs, were inspired by an increased presence of those animals caused by the increase of grass and shrubbery for grazing and browsing, in synanthropy with their human neighbors. And, increased numbers of animals would also provide increased food for the humans. This would lead to a situation which we can refer to as Paleo-synanthropy, but based upon a different cause and effect than imagined by Baumann.
“Synanthropy may go back several tens of thousands of years. What’s more, other hominins like Neanderthals might have had their own synanthropic companions.” (Marshall 2023)
Many of the assumptions about the Paleolithic Cave Art in Europe center on the relationships of the human population with the animals around them. Given the cohabitation of the humans and animals in the same landscapes it seems reasonable that a synanthropic relationship could have existed between them. This would provide such a relationship. Fire not only provided light for the cave artists, and charcoal for a pigment, fire may have been an important factor in the presence of these animals portrayed in the caves. And, although Baumann chose not to speculate on this, might not synanthropy have been the earliest step toward animal domestication?
NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.
REFERENCES:
Baumann, Chris, 2023, The paleo-synanthropic niche: a first attempt to define animal adaptation to a human-made micro-environment in the Late Pleistocene, 20 April 2023, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2023) 15:63. Accessed online 17 May 2023.
Marshall, Michael, 2023, Our Human Story: Animal Companions, New Scientist,
newscientist.com. Accessed online 9 May 2023.
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