[Science] Ancient urine reveals early prehistory of domestic sheep and goats – AI

Flock of sheep near Kizilkaya, TurkeyJordan T. Abell By Michael MarshallEarly farmers living in Turkey increased their reliance on domestic sheep and goats over a period of 1000 years. The shift in practices has been revealed by the animals’ urine, which is preserved in the soil as distinctive salts. “For the first time, we can get a quantitative estimate of the number of organisms it would take to produce these salts,” says geochemist Jordan Abell of Columbia University in New York. This offers an idea of the herd sizes at the time, he says. Abell and his colleagues …