Hunters to Herders at Aşıklı Höyük

Archaeologists in Turkey dug into the oldest layers of a mound known as Aşıklı Höyük -- Ankle Bone Hill -- to learn about the origin of villages in Cappadocia. Those layers span about 9,000 to 8,200 BCE.

The research team, led by archaeologist Mihriban Özbaşaran at Istanbul University, discovered the people of the oldest levels of the site originally ate a broad diet of meat from creatures that populated the plains and meadows along the Melendiz River. This included diverse small animals, such as hares, fish, turtles, hedgehogs and partridges, as well as larger prey such as deer, boars, horse, goats, sheep, extinct wild oxen known as aurochs, and the onager, also known as the Asian wild ass.

However, by 8200 B.C., the meat in the diet shifted overwhelmingly to sheep and goats. These animals once made up less than half of all skeletal remains at the site, but gradually increased to 85 to 90 percent of these bones, with sheep bones outnumbering goat remains by a factor of three or more. Young male sheep and goats were selectively killed, probably for their meat, leaving females and some males to breed more livestock. Moreover, analysis of dung in the mound revealed that plant-eating animals were held captive inside the settlement, probably in between buildings. Altogether, these findings suggest the people in this area shifted from hunting to herding in just a few centuries.

Time scale seems right to me. After all, herding goats and sheep must have been an intentional act, not something that crept up on people by accident, so the shift from hunting to herding in any single place ought to happened over decades rather than millennia.