The paleo-synanthropic niche: a first attempt to define animal’s adaptation to a human-made micro-environment in the Late Pleistocene

Abstract

Synanthropic behavior, i.e., the behavior of wild animals that benefit from a shared ecology with humans, has existed long before the sedentarization of Homo sapiens during the Neolithic, around 10,000 years ago. This study describes and discusses the concept of an older animal-human relationship: paleo-synanthropic behavior and the associated paleo-synanthropic niche. 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. As a disadvantage, diseases such as zoonoses may have spread more easily.