Researchers at Durham and Aberdeen universities have discovered that European hunter-gatherers obtained domesticated pigs from neighboring farmers as early as 4600 BC.

The researchers revealed that there was interplay between the hunter-gatherers and farming peoples and a “sharing” of animals and knowledge. The interplay between the two communities ultimately resulted in the hunter-gatherers adding farming and breeding of livestock into their society.

The research offers a new look at the movements of pre-historic humans and the exchange of technologies and knowledge.

The expansion of plants and animals throughout Europe between 6000 and 4000 BC included an intricate interaction between indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers. The level of the interplay and the magnitude to which hunter-gatherers acquired knowledge from nearby farmers is still contested within the scientific community.

According to the researchers, previous evidence regarding the possession of domesticated animals by hunter-gatherers has been inconclusive.

“Mesolithic hunter-gatherers definitely had dogs, but they did not practice agriculture and did not have pigs, sheep, goats, or cows, all of which were introduced to Europe with incoming farmers about 6000 BC,” said lead author Ben Krause-Kyora, from Christian-Albrechts University. “Having people who practiced a very different survival strategy nearby must have been odd, and we know now that the hunter-gathers possessed some of the farmers’ domesticated pigs.”

At this point it is not clear whether the hunter-gatherers obtained the domesticated pigs via trade or exchange, or by hunting and snaring escaped animals. According to the researchers, the domesticated pigs had colored and spotted coats that would have seemed exotic to the hunter-gatherers and may have drawn them to the animals.

“Humans love novelty, and though hunter-gatherers exploited wild boar, it would have been hard not to be fascinated by the strange-looking spotted pigs owned by farmers living nearby,” said co-author Greger Larson, from the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. “It should come as no surprise that the hunter-gatherers acquired some eventually, but this study shows that they did very soon after the domestic pigs arrived in northern Europe.”

The study’s findings are described in greater detail in the journal Nature Communications.