Domesticated Pig

Domestication in the Neolithic

Domesticated pigs were among the three main domesticated animals (with chickens and dogs) carried by the seaborne Neolithic migrations of the Austronesian peoples to Island Southeast Asia and Oceania, around 4000 years ago. Most free-living and domesticated pigs from the Philippines to Hawaiʻi are descended from domesticated pigs (Sus scrofa) introduced by Austronesians from southeastern China and Taiwan via the Philippines. Other species of pigs (Sus celebensis, Sus barbatus, Sus cebifrons, and Sus verrucosus), also spread much earlier from Mainland Southeast Asia to Island Southeast Asia west of the Wallace Line, via natural means or earlier (non-Austronesian) hunter-gatherer groups. Many of these endemic pigs later hybridized with the S. scrofa carried by Austronesians. Early archaeological specimens of pigs in Near and Remote Oceania exhibit no genetic admixture with local wild populations, maintaining a distinct, introduced mitochondrial lineage (the "Pacific Clade") that remained genetically isolated during the initial settlement period. There is evidence that humans have moved pigs around the Asia-Pacific for at least 50,000 years.