“Animal disease challenges” fifteen years later: The hypothesis in light of new data

摘要: Abstract Zooarchaeological evidence reflects cattle's central role among pastoral livestock for millennia in the once-green Sahara. However, zooarchaeological attest to two chronologically separated, but similar delays entry of cattle into eastern and southern sub- Saharan Africa, where domestic caprines precede as earliest several hundred years. In an earlier paper, I proposed that this delay introduction was due disease challenges presented bovines by novel grave epizootiological threats indigenous wild animals sub-Saharan savannas, preferred habitats cattle. Herds African buffalo wildebeest, latter absent from Sahara-Sahel, are reservoirs East Coast Fever (ECF) wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), respectively. Both pose serious veterinary bovine husbandry today could have stalled spread pastoralism until their etiologies were understood control measures developed herders. The disease-challenge hypothesis be falsified discovering considerable remains south Lake Turkana between 4000 3000 BP. This paper reviews light last 15 years' research on early Africa.