The secondary exploitation of animals in the Old World

Abstract This paper considers the range of evidence for the secondary uses and products of animals: traction, transport, wool and milk. It suggests that early farming populations used livestock mainly for meat, and that other applications were explored as agriculturalists adapted to new conditions, especially in the semi‐arid zone. Innovations in different parts of the Near East were exchanged and disseminated as part of the process leading to urbanisation. Their dispersal affected both the steppe belt, which saw a marked increase in population, and also temperate Europe, where agriculture was revolutionised by more extensive methods of farming and landscape clearance.