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Ewe and lamb in the Syrian landscape, illustrating the long tradition of sheep herding in the region.
Image Credit:
Ed Brambley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sheep and Goats May Have Helped Shape the World’s First Cities
A new archaeological study of Hamoukar in northeastern Syria proposes an unusual way of thinking about the origins of cities: early urbanism may have been shaped not only by humans, but also by the behaviour and social organization of the large sheep and goat herds that lived alongside them.
The research focuses on social zooarchaeology, an approach that looks beyond animals simply as sources of meat, milk, wool or labour. Instead, it considers how relationships between humans and animals may have influenced the organization of communities and the spaces they inhabited.
The case study is Hamoukar, one of the earliest large settlements of northern Mesopotamia. Located in northeastern Syria, the site provides evidence for an unusual, dispersed form of early urbanism during the Late Chalcolithic 1–2 periods, roughly 4500–3900 BCE. Its Southern Extension covered around 300 hectares—an extraordinary size at a time when most settlements in northern Mesopotamia were considerably smaller.
Hamoukar was also closely connected to long-distance exchange. Around 97 percent of its chipped-stone assemblage from this period was made of obsidian, most of it originating near Lake Van in present-day Türkiye, approximately 240 kilometres away.
Previous interpretations have suggested that parts of Hamoukar were occupied seasonally by mobile pastoralists involved in obsidian trade. Temporary structures, possible animal pens and the dispersed character of settlement have all contributed to this interpretation.
The animal remains add another dimension. Analysis of 6,584 bones and bone fragments from Hamoukar’s Southern Extension revealed that sheep and goats overwhelmingly dominated the identified mammal assemblage. They accounted for about 82.7 percent of the principal identified taxa during Late Chalcolithic 1 and 84.9 percent during Late Chalcolithic 2—higher proportions than at most contemporary sites in the region.
Sheep outnumbered goats by roughly two to one. Dogs were also present. Because hunted animals were comparatively rare, the study suggests that some dogs may have worked alongside people in managing sheep and goat herds rather than primarily serving as hunting companions.
The age profiles of the animals are particularly revealing. Around half of the sheep and goats survived beyond approximately 2.5–3 years of age. This differs from a strategy focused primarily on maximizing meat production, in which young males would usually be slaughtered earlier.
The evidence also indicates that herds included sexually mature males and females, creating social groups that differed from the organization of many wild flocks. This is central to the study’s wider argument.
Sheep and goats are highly social animals capable of adapting to changing group compositions. Their ability to form and maintain large herds, incorporate new individuals and interact with humans and dogs would have made large-scale pastoralism possible.
Managing such herds required people to observe animal behaviour, respond to changing group dynamics and coordinate movement through settlements and surrounding landscapes. The study proposes that these repeated experiences may have contributed to the social skills and organizational practices involved in managing increasingly large human communities.
This perspective also changes how Hamoukar’s apparently “empty” spaces might be interpreted.
Archaeologists have described Hamoukar and neighbouring sites such as Tell Brak as examples of low-density or “patchy” urbanism because buildings and archaeological remains were scattered across large areas. But those spaces may not have been empty at all. They could have been occupied by sheep, goats and other animals moving through and living within the settlement.
From this perspective, some of the earliest cities may have been densely populated multispecies communities, even if their architectural remains appear dispersed today.
The connection between herding and cities also survived in later Mesopotamian culture. Cuneiform traditions frequently used pastoral imagery to describe urban communities and rulers. Uruk, one of Mesopotamia’s most famous early cities, was even known by an epithet meaning “Uruk-the-Sheepfold.”
The study does not claim to have proven that sheep and goats caused urbanization. Its proposed relationship between herd sociality and city life is explicitly presented as a preliminary interpretive model.
Instead, it argues that animals should be considered active participants in the development of early settlements rather than simply economic resources. At Hamoukar, unusually large herds, mobile pastoralism and human-animal interaction may all have contributed to creating a new kind of community.
The findings therefore invite a broader view of the first cities: places built not only through relationships among humans, but also through the daily interactions of people, sheep, goats and dogs that shared and shaped the same urban landscape.
Published on: 24-08-2026
Edited by: Abdulmnam Samakie
Source: Cambridge Archaeological Journal
