It was believed that mice and humans started to live together when the latter learned to farm. Fossil evidence, however, suggests that the rodents may be living with humans far longer before the dawn of agriculture.
Mice Have Been Living With Humans 3,000 Years Before Advent Of Agriculture
Researchers found that the relationship humans have with mice actually started as soon as our species began to stay put and build houses.
In the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers reported that the rodents may have been living with humans for 15,000 years, which means that our ties with the animal could be more ancient than previously thought.
For the research, Thomas Cucchi of National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France, and colleagues examined the rise of the house mouse in the Levant, which now comprises parts of Lebanon, Israel, and Syria in the Middle East. Researchers earlier found archeological sites here that were left by the Natufians, an ancient society of hunter-gatherers, which flourished between 12,500 to 9,500 BCE.
The House Mouse And The Short-Tailed Mouse
House mouse fossils that were discovered in the archeological sites revealed that the Mus musculus domesticus, or the house mouse species, first lived with humans 3,000 years before the advent of agriculture.
Fossil teeth unearthed at these sites also revealed that the house mice had intertwined relationship with a closely related mouse species called Mus macedonicus, or the short-tailed mouse, which is known to be more wild and less tolerant of humans
Researchers found that as the hunter-gatherers began to become more sedentary due to favorable climate, there was an increase in the amount of house molars in and around the settlements. The researchers said that the rodents were probably attracted to small caches containing wild grains that the humans stored for food without having to constantly move from place to place.
While there was boon in house mice species during prolonged human habitation, researchers noticed that the molars of the short-tailed mice disappeared.
Once the region became cold and dry again, though, the Natufians returned to their original way of life, staying only in one place, provided that the resources that were available in the area could support them. At this time, researchers found that the more independent short-tailed mice again rose in number.
"Changing mice molar shapes in a 200,000-y-long sequence from the Levant reveal that mice first colonized settlements of relatively settled hunter-gatherers 15,000 y ago," the researchers wrote in their study. "The first long-term hunter-gatherer settlements transformed ecological interactions and food webs, allowing commensal house mice to outcompete wild mice and establish durable populations that expanded with human societies."
Jeremy Searle of Cornell University, who is not part of the research, said that the study offered a fascinating insight into the pre-agriculture relationship of humans and house mice before agriculture.
"The important thing is a settled existence with storage of seeds," Searle said. "It doesn't have to be cultivated grain; it can be wild foodstuffs collected by hunter-gatherers."
