Page 11 - Masseti _ Zava_2002

1989; Ciani and Masseti, 1991; Helmer, 1992). Current evidence suggests that
domestic caprines originated in the Near East (Clutton Brock, 1981; Davis, 1993),
and that the ancestors of the domestic goat can be identified in the Bezoar goat
(Clutton-Brock, 1981, 1989; Davis, 1987). It is possible that, since early Neolithic
times, some of the goats that were imported as tamed an d/ or serni-domestic livestock
onto the Mediterranean islands escaped from their guardians' contro l, giving origin
to the "wild" population, the descendants ofwhich have persisted up to today. Back
in the wild, they maintained the morphological patterns of their Near-Eastern
ancestors. In fact, as observed by Ryder (1983), recognition of the origins of
domestication is complicateci by the fact that the first domestic animals were no
different from their wild counterparts. Recent morphologic and genetic analyses of
the Cretan wild goat, for example, indicate that i t had very likely experienced some
cultura! contro! in prehistorical times before i t colonised the mountains of Crete
(Logan et al., 1994; Masseti, 1998). The Bezoar goat is completely absent from the
originai Quaternary faunistic scenario of Southern Europe (Schultze-Westrum,
1963; Azzaroli, 1983). Along the Mediterranean shores, the substantial evidence
for wild caprines is referable to ibexes (C ibex ibex L., 1758, C ibex nubiana
F. Couvier, 1825, and C pyrenaicaSchinz, 1838), Barbarysheep (Ammotraguslervia
Pallas, 1777), and chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra L., 1758, and R. pyrenaica
Bonaparte, 1845), ali species which were never domesticated anywhere in Europe,
North Mrica, or the Near East in the early Holocene. The laclc of fossil evidence
for wild goats from the western Mediterranean region reveals that C aegagrus
definitely had a Near-Eastern continental anthropochorous origin (Masseti and
Vianello, 1991; Masseti, 1993, 1997, 1998). It is therefore certain that domestic
goats were first introduced in Europe from western Asia, where their earliest remains
have been found in archaeological sites dating to around the 9th-8th millennium
BC (Masseti, 1997, 1998).
According to Gussone (1832), Calcara (1846, 1851), and Sommier (1908),
wild goats were introduced on the Pelagian islands either by the English or the
Maltese, around the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century. On
Lampedusa, these were confined to the western ridge of the island. Effectively,
up to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, the island was divided
imo two parts by a dry sto ne wall protecting the cultivated eastern areas from the
wild game (Smith, 1824). As already noted, Gussone (1832) observed that no
more than 200 of these animals roamed the remote cliffs of the island, but shortly
afterwards Calcara ( 1846, 18 51) reported 'ho w they had bee n drastically reduced
to less than one hundred. Later, by the time Sommier (1908) landed on
Lampedusa, there remained no trace of their former occurrence. In his report o n
the Pelagian islands, drawn up in 1847 but published in 1849, Bernardo
Sanvisente, first governar ofLampedusa for the King ofNaples, between 1843
and 1848, recorded that he had given the order for the eradication of ali the wild

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