Normandy
Normandy is one of the 18 regions of France referring to the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy is divided into five administrative departments: Calvados, Manche and Seine-Maritime, it covers 30,627 square kilometres, comprising 5% of the territory of metropolitan France. Its population of 3.37 million accounts for around 5% of the population of France. The inhabitants of Normandy are known as Normans, the region is the historic homeland of the Norman language; the historical region of Normandy comprised the present-day region of Normandy, as well as small areas now part of the departments of Mayenne and Sarthe. The Channel Islands are historically part of Normandy. Normandy's name comes from the settlement of the territory by Danish and Norwegian Vikings from the 9th century, confirmed by treaty in the 10th century between King Charles III of France and the Viking jarl Rollo. For a century and a half following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Normandy and England were linked by Norman and Frankish rulers.
Archaeological finds, such as cave paintings, prove that humans were present in the region in prehistoric times. Celts invaded Normandy in successive waves from the 4th to the 3rd century BC; when Julius Caesar invaded Gaul, there were nine different Celtic tribes living in Normandy. The Romanisation of Normandy was achieved by the usual methods: Roman roads and a policy of urbanisation. Classicists have knowledge of many Gallo-Roman villas in Normandy. In the late 3rd century, barbarian raids devastated Normandy. Coastal settlements were raided by Saxon pirates. Christianity began to enter the area during this period. In 406, Germanic tribes began invading from the east; as early as 487, the area between the River Somme and the River Loire came under the control of the Frankish lord Clovis. Vikings started to raid the Seine valley during the middle of the 9th century; as early as 841, a Viking fleet appeared at the mouth of the Seine, the principal route by which they entered the kingdom. After attacking and destroying monasteries, including one at Jumièges, they took advantage of the power vacuum created by the disintegration of Charlemagne's empire to take northern France.
The fiefdom of Normandy was created for Rollo. Rollo had besieged Paris but in 911 entered vassalage to the king of the West Franks, Charles the Simple, through the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. In exchange for his homage and fealty, Rollo gained the territory which he and his Viking allies had conquered; the name "Normandy" reflects Rollo's Viking origins. To this day, in Norwegian language the word nordmann denotes a Norwegian person; the descendants of Rollo and his followers adopted the local Gallo-Romance language and intermarried with the area's native Gallo-Roman inhabitants. They became the Normans – a Norman-speaking mixture of Norsemen and indigenous Franks and Romans. Rollo's descendant William became king of England in 1066 after defeating Harold Godwinson, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, at the Battle of Hastings, while retaining the fiefdom of Normandy for himself and his descendants. Besides the conquest of England and the subsequent subjugation of Wales and Ireland, the Normans expanded into other areas.
Norman families, such as that of Tancred of Hauteville, Rainulf Drengot and Guimond de Moulins played important parts in the conquest of southern Italy and the Crusades. The Drengot lineage, de Hauteville's sons William Iron Arm and Humphrey, Robert Guiscard and Roger the Great Count progressively claimed territories in southern Italy until founding the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130, they carved out a place for themselves and their descendants in the Crusader states of Asia Minor and the Holy Land. The 14th-century explorer Jean de Béthencourt established a kingdom in the Canary Islands in 1404, he received the title King of the Canary Islands from Pope Innocent VII but recognized Henry III of Castile as his overlord, who had provided him aid during the conquest. In 1204, during the reign of John Lackland, mainland Normandy was taken from England by France under King Philip II. Insular Normandy remained however under English control. In 1259, Henry III of England recognized the legality of French possession of mainland Normandy under the Treaty of Paris.
His successors, however fought to regain control of their ancient fiefdom. The Charte aux Normands granted by Louis X of France in 1315 – like the analogous Magna Carta granted in England in the aftermath of 1204 – guaranteed the liberties and privileges of the province of Normandy. French Normandy was occupied by English forces during the Hundred Years' War in 1345–1360 and again in 1415–1450. Normandy lost three-quarters of its population during the war. Afterward prosperity returned to Normandy until the Wars of Religion; when many Norman towns joined the Protestant Reformation, battles ensued throughout the province. In the Channel Islands, a period of Calvinism following the Reformation was suppressed when Anglicanism was imposed following the English Civil War. Samuel de Champlain founded Acadia. Four years
Gironde
Gironde is a department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of southwest France. It is named after a major waterway; the Bordeaux wine region is in the Gironde. Gironde is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790, it was created from parts of the former provinces of Gascony. From 1793 to 1795, the department's name was changed to Bec-d'Ambès to avoid the association with the revolutionary party, the Girondists. Gironde is part of the current region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and is surrounded by the departments of Landes, Lot-et-Garonne and Charente-Maritime and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. With an area of 10,000 km², Gironde is the largest department in metropolitan France. If overseas departments are included, Gironde's land area is dwarfed by the 83,846 km² of French Guiana. Gironde is well known for the Côte d'Argent beach, Europe's longest, attracting many surfers to Lacanau each year, it is the birthplace of Jacques-Yves Cousteau who studied the sea and all forms of life in water.
The Great Dune of Pyla in Arcachon Bay near Bordeaux is the tallest sand dune in Europe. The President of the General Council is Jean-Luc Gleyze of the Socialist Party. Cantons of the Gironde department Communes of the Gironde department Arrondissements of the Gironde department Bordeaux wine regions General Council website Prefecture website Gironde at Curlie Tourism Office website
Latin America
Latin America is a group of countries and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere where Romance languages such as Spanish and French are predominantly spoken. The term "Latin America" was first used in an 1856 conference with the title "Initiative of the America. Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics", by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao; the term was used by Napoleon III's French government in the 1860s as Amérique latine to consider French-speaking territories in the Americas, along with the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed, including the Spanish-speaking portions of the United States Today, areas of Canada and the United States where Spanish and French are predominant are not included in definitions of Latin America. Latin America consists of 13 dependencies and 20 countries which cover an area that stretches from the northern border of Mexico to the southern tip of South America, including the Caribbean, it has an area of 19,197,000 km2 13% of the Earth's land surface area.
As of 2016, its population was estimated at more than 639 million and in 2014, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of US$5,573,397 million and a GDP PPP of 7,531,585 million USD. The idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "Latin race", that it could, ally itself with "Latin Europe" overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe", "Anglo-Saxon America" and "Slavic Europe". Further investigations of the concept of Latin America are by Michel Gobat in the American Historical Review, the studies of Leslie Bethell, the monograph by Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. Historian John Leddy Phelan (located the origins of “Latin America” in the French occupation of Mexico, his argument is that French imperialists used the concept of "Latin" America as a way to counter British imperialism, as well as to challenge the German threat to France.
The idea of a "Latin race" was taken up by Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather to France. French ruler Napoleon III had a strong interest in extending French commercial and political power in the region he and his business promoter Felix Belly called “Latin America” to emphasize the shared Latin background of France with the former colonies of Spain and Portugal; this led to Napoleon's failed attempt to take military control of Mexico in the 1860s. However, though Phelan thesis is still mentioned in the U. S. academy, two Latin American historians, the Uruguayan Arturo Ardao and the Chilean Miguel Rojas Mix proved decades ago that the term "Latin America" was used earlier than Phelan claimed, the first use of the term was opposite to support imperialist projects in the Americas. Ardao wrote about this subject in his book Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América latina, Miguel Rojas Mix in his article "Bilbao y el hallazgo de América latina: Unión continental, socialista y libertaria".
As Michel Gobat reminds in his article "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism and Race", "Arturo Ardao, Miguel Rojas Mix, Aims McGuinness have revealed the term'Latin America' had been used in 1856 by Central and South Americans protesting U. S. expansion into the Southern Hemisphere". Edward Shawcross summarizes Ardao's and Rojas Mix's findings in the following way: "Ardao identified the term in a poem by a Colombian diplomat and intellectual resident in France, José María Torres Caicedo, published on 15 February 1857 in a French based Spanish-language newspaper, while Rojas Mix located it in a speech delivered in France by the radical liberal Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in June 1856". So, regarding when the words "Latin" and "America" were combined for the first time in a printed work, the term "Latin America" was first used in 1856 in a conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in Paris; the conference had the title "Initiative of the America.
Idea for a Federal Congress of Republics." The following year the Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo used the term in his poem "The Two Americas". Two events related with the U. S. played a central role in both works. The first event happened less than a decade before the publication of Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo works: the Mexican–American War, after which Mexico lost a third of its territory; the second event, the Walker affair, happened the same year both works were written: the decision by U. S. president Franklin Pierce to recognize the regime established in Nicaragua by American William Walker and his band of filibusters who ruled Nicaragua for nearly a year and attempted to reinstate slavery there, where it had been abolished for three decades In both Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works, the Mexican-American War and Walker's expedition to Nicaragua are explicitly mentioned as examples of dangers for the region. For Bilbao, "Latin America" w
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a region of The Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, north of South America. Situated on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 700 islands, islets and cays; these islands form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean islands, consisting of the Greater Antilles on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east, are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which includes the Lucayan Archipelago; the Lucayans and, less Bermuda, are sometimes considered Caribbean despite the fact that none of these islands border the Caribbean Sea. In a wider sense, the mainland countries and territories of Belize, the Caribbean region of Colombia, the Yucatán Peninsula, Margarita Island, the Guyanas, are included due to their political and cultural ties with the region.
Geopolitically, the Caribbean islands are regarded as a subregion of North America and are organized into 30 territories including sovereign states, overseas departments, dependencies. From December 15, 1954, to October 10, 2010, there was a country known as the Netherlands Antilles composed of five states, all of which were Dutch dependencies. From January 3, 1958, to May 31, 1962, there was a short-lived political union called the West Indies Federation composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were British dependencies; the West Indies cricket team continues to represent many of those nations. The region takes its name from that of the Caribs, an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas; the two most prevalent pronunciations of "Caribbean" outside the Caribbean are, with the primary stress on the third syllable, with the stress on the second. Most authorities of the last century preferred the stress on the third syllable.
This is the older of the two pronunciations, but the stressed-second-syllable variant has been established for over 75 years. It has been suggested that speakers of British English prefer while North American speakers more use, but major American dictionaries and other sources list the stress on the third syllable as more common in American English too. According to the American version of Oxford Online Dictionaries, the stress on the second syllable is becoming more common in UK English and is considered "by some" to be more up to date and more "correct"; the Oxford Online Dictionaries claim that the stress on the second syllable is the most common pronunciation in the Caribbean itself, but according to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, the most common pronunciation in Caribbean English stresses the first syllable instead. The word "Caribbean" has multiple uses, its principal ones are political. The Caribbean can be expanded to include territories with strong cultural and historical connections to slavery, European colonisation and the plantation system.
The United Nations geoscheme for the Americas presents the Caribbean as a distinct region within the Americas. Physiographically, the Caribbean region is a chain of islands surrounding the Caribbean Sea. To the north, the region is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida and the Northern Atlantic Ocean, which lies to the east and northeast. To the south lies the coastline of the continent of South America. Politically, the "Caribbean" may be centred on socio-economic groupings found in the region. For example, the bloc known as the Caribbean Community contains the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the Republic of Suriname in South America and Belize in Central America as full members. Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the Atlantic Ocean, are associate members of the Caribbean Community; the Commonwealth of the Bahamas is in the Atlantic and is a full member of the Caribbean Community. Alternatively, the organisation called the Association of Caribbean States consists of every nation in the surrounding regions that lie on the Caribbean, plus El Salvador, which lies on the Pacific Ocean.
According to the ACS, the total population of its member states is 227 million people. The geography and climate in the Caribbean region varies: Some islands in the region have flat terrain of non-volcanic origin; these islands include Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Saint Croix, the Bahamas, Antigua. Others possess rugged towering mountain-ranges like the islands of Saint Martin, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Saint Thomas, Saint John, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Guadeloupe and Trinidad and Tobago. Definitions of the terms Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles vary; the Virgin Islands as part of the Puerto Rican bank are sometimes included with the Greater Antilles. The term Lesser Antilles is used to define an island arc that includes Grenada but excludes Trinidad and Tobago and the Leeward Antilles; the waters of the Caribbean Sea host large, migratory schools of fish and coral reef
Turkish cuisine
Turkish cuisine is the heritage of Ottoman cuisine, which can be described as a fusion and refinement of Central Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European and Balkan cuisines. Turkish cuisine has in turn influenced those and other neighbouring cuisines, including those of Southeast Europe, Central Europe, Western Europe; the Ottomans fused various culinary traditions of their realm with influences from Levantine cuisines, along with traditional Turkic elements from Central Asia, creating a vast array of specialities—many with strong regional associations. Turkish cuisine varies across the country; the cooking of Istanbul, Bursa and rest of the Asia Minor region inherits many elements of Ottoman court cuisine, with a lighter use of spices, a preference for rice over bulgur, koftes and a wider availability of vegetable stews, stuffed dolmas and fish. The cuisine of the Black Sea Region uses fish extensively the Black Sea anchovy and includes maize dishes; the cuisine of the southeast is famous for its variety of kebabs and dough-based desserts such as baklava, şöbiyet, kadayıf, künefe.
In the western parts of Turkey, where olive trees grow abundantly, olive oil is the major type of oil used for cooking. The cuisines of the Aegean and Mediterranean regions are rich in vegetables and fish. Central Anatolia has many famous specialties, such as keşkek, gözleme. Food names directly cognate with mantı are found in Chinese and Korean cuisine. A specialty's name sometimes includes that of a city or region, either in or outside of Turkey, may refer to the specific technique or ingredients used in that area. For example, the difference between Urfa kebap and Adana kebap is the thickness of the skewer and the amount of hot pepper that the kebab contains. Urfa kebap is less thicker than Adana kebap. Although meat-based foods such as kebabs are the mainstay in Turkish cuisine as presented in foreign countries, native Turkish meals center around rice and bread. Turks prefer a rich breakfast. A typical Turkish breakfast consists of cheese, olives, tomatoes, jam and kaymak, pastırma, börek, simit, poğaça and soups are eaten as a morning meal in Turkey.
A specialty for breakfast is called menemen, prepared with tomatoes, green peppers, olive oil and eggs. Invariably, Turkish tea is served at breakfast; the Turkish word for breakfast, kahvaltı, means "before coffee". Homemade food is still preferred by Turkish people. Although the newly introduced way of life pushes the new generation to eat out. A typical meal starts with soup, followed by a dish made of vegetables or legumes boiled in a pot with or before rice or bulgur pilav accompanied by a salad or cacık. In summertime many people prefer to eat a cold dish of vegetables cooked with olive oil instead of the soup, either before or after the main course, which can be a chicken, meat or fish plate. Although fast food is gaining popularity and many major foreign fast food chains have opened all over Turkey, Turkish people still rely on the rich and extensive dishes of Turkish cuisine. In addition, some traditional Turkish foods köfte, döner, kokoreç, kumpir midye tava börek and gözleme, are served as fast food in Turkey.
Eating out has always been common in large commercial cities. Esnaf lokantası are widespread. In the hot Turkish summer, a meal consists of fried vegetables such as eggplant and peppers or potatoes served with yogurt or tomato sauce. Menemen and çılbır are typical summer dishes, based on eggs. Sheep cheese, tomatoes and melons make a light summer meal; those who like helva for dessert prefer summer helva, lighter and less sweet than the regular one. Used ingredients in Turkish specialties include: lamb, rice, eggplants, green peppers, garlic, beans and tomatoes. Nuts pistachios, almonds and walnuts, together with spices, have a special place in Turkish cuisine, are used extensively in desserts or eaten separately. Semolina flour is used to make a cake called irmik helvasi. Olives are common on various breakfasts and meze tables frequently. Beyaz peynir and yogurt are part of many dishes including börek, manti and cacik. Butter or margarine, olive oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, corn oil are used for cooking.
Sesame, hazelnut and walnut oils are used as well. Kuyruk yağı is sometimes used in kebabs and meat dishes; the rich and diverse flora of Turkey means that fruit is varied and cheap. In Ottoman cuisine, fruit accompanied meat as a side dish. Plums, pomegranates, apples and figs, along with many kinds of citrus are the most used fruit, either fresh or dried, in Turkish cuisine. For example, komposto or hoşaf are among the main side dishes to pilav. Dolma and pilaf contain currants or raisins. Etli yaprak sarma used to be cooked with sour plums in
Hannah Glasse
Hannah Glasse was an English cookery writer of the 18th century. Her first cookery book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, published in 1747, became the best-selling volume of its type that century; the book was reprinted within its first year of publication, appeared in 20 editions in the 18th century, continued to be published until well into the 19th century. She wrote two subsequent books, The Servants' Directory and The Compleat Confectioner, published undated, but in 1760. Glasse was born in London to his mistress. After their relationship ended, Glasse was brought up in her father's family; when she was 16 she eloped with a 30-year-old Irish subaltern on half-pay and lived in Essex, working on the estate of the Marquess of Donegall. The couple struggled financially and, with the aim of raising money, Glasse wrote The Art of Cookery, she copied extensively from other cookery books, around a third of the recipes are from other books. Among her original recipes are the first known curry recipe written in English, as well as three recipes for pilau, an early reference to vanilla in English cuisine, the first recorded use of jelly in trifle, an early recipe for ice cream.
She was the first to use the term "Yorkshire pudding" in print. Glasse became a dressmaker in Covent Garden—where her clients included Princess Augusta, the Princess of Wales—but she ran up excessive debts, she was forced to sell the copyright of The Art of Cookery. Much of Glasse's life is unrecorded, her books were plagiarised for others, pirated copies became common in the United States. The Art of Cookery has been admired by English cooks in the second part of the 20th century, influenced many of them, including Elizabeth David, Fanny Cradock and Clarissa Dickson Wright. Hannah Glasse was born Hannah Allgood at Greville Street, Hatton Garden, London to Isaac Allgood and his mistress Hannah Reynolds. Isaac, a landowner and coal mine owner, was from a well-known, respectable family from Nunwick Hall, Northumberland. Glasse was christened on 24 March 1708 at St Andrews, London. Allgood and Reynolds had two other children. Allgood and his wife had a child, born three years after Glasse. Allgood took Reynolds and the young Hannah back to Hexham to live, she was brought up with his other children, but, as A. H. T. Robb-Smith writes in the Dictionary of National Biography, Reynolds was "banished from Hexham".
By 1713 Allgood and Reynolds were again living together back in London. The following year, while he was drunk, Allgood signed papers transferring all his property to Reynolds. Once he realised the magnitude of his mistake, the couple separated; the Allgood family tried to have the property returned, which they managed in 1740, providing Glasse with an annual income and a sum of capital. Glasse did not have a good relationship with her mother, who had little input into her daughter's upbringing. Although Glasse was banned from attending social events by her grandmother, she began a relationship with an older man: John Glasse, a 30-year-old Irish subaltern on half-pay, employed by Lord Polwarth. On 4 August 1724 the couple were secretly married by special licence, her family did not find out about the marriage for a month, when she moved out of her grandmother's house and in with her husband in Piccadilly. Although her family were angered when they found out, cordial relations soon resumed, a warm and friendly correspondence followed.
Hannah's first letter to her grandmother apologised for the secrecy surrounding her marriage, but did not apologise for getting married "I am sorry at what I have done, but only the manner of it". By 1728 the Glasses were living in New Hall, Essex, the home of the 4th Earl of Donegal, they had their first child while living at New Hall. The Glasses moved back to London in November 1734. Over the coming years Glasse gave birth to ten children, five of, she considered education important, sent her daughters to good local schools and her sons to Eton and Westminster. The couple struggled with finances, in 1744 Glasse tried to sell Daffy's Elixir, a patent medicine, but the project did not take off, she decided to write a cookery book. In a letter dated January 1746 Glasse wrote "My book goes on well and everybody is pleased with it, it is now in the press"; the Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy was printed the following year and sold at "Mrs. Ashburn's, a China Shop, the corner of Fleet-Ditch", according to the title page.
The book was available plainly stitched for 3 shillings. As was the practice for publishers at the time, Glasse had to provide the names of subscribers—those who had pre-paid for a copy—who were listed inside the work. On the title page Glasse writes that the book "far exceeds any Thing of the Kind yet published". In the introduction she states "I believe I have attempted a Branch of Cookery which Nobody has yet thought with their while to write upon", she explains, is to write a book aimed at the domestic staff of a household; as such, she apologises to readers, "If I have
Domestic pig
The domestic pig called swine, hog, or pig when there is no need to distinguish it from other pigs, is a domesticated large, even-toed ungulate. It is variously considered a subspecies of a distinct species; the domestic pig's head-plus-body-length ranges from 0.9 to 1.8 m, adult pigs weigh between 50 and 350 kg, with well-fed individuals exceeding this weight range. The size and weight of a hog depends on its breed. Compared to other artiodactyls, its head is long and free of warts. Even-toed ungulates are herbivorous, but the domestic pig is an omnivore, like its wild relative; when used as livestock, domestic pigs are farmed for the consumption of their flesh, called pork. The animal's bones and bristles are used in commercial products. Domestic pigs miniature breeds, are kept as pets; the domestic pig has a large head, with a long snout, strengthened by a special prenasal bone and a disk of cartilage at the tip. The snout is used to dig into the soil to find food, is a acute sense organ; the dental formula of adult pigs is 3.1.4.33.1.4.3.
The rear teeth are adapted for crushing. In the male the canine teeth can form tusks, which grow continuously and are sharpened by being ground against each other. Four hoofed toes are on each foot, with the two larger central toes bearing most of the weight, but the outer two being used in soft ground. Most domestic pigs have rather a bristled sparse hair covering on their skin, although woolly-coated breeds such as the Mangalitsa exist. Pigs possess both apocrine and eccrine sweat glands, although the latter appear limited to the snout and dorsonasal areas. Pigs, like other "hairless" mammals, do not use thermal sweat glands in cooling. Pigs are less able than many other mammals to dissipate heat from wet mucous membranes in the mouth through panting, their thermoneutral zone is 16 to 22 °C. At higher temperatures, pigs lose heat by wallowing in water via evaporative cooling. Pigs are one of four known mammalian species which possess mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom.
Mongooses, honey badgers and pigs all have modifications to the receptor pocket which prevents the snake venom α-neurotoxin from binding. These represent four independent mutations. Domestic pigs have small lungs in relation to their body size, are thus more susceptible than other domesticated animals to fatal bronchitis and pneumonia; the domestic pig is most considered to be a subspecies of the wild boar, given the name Sus scrofa by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. However, in 1777, Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben classified the domestic pig as a separate species from the wild boar, he gave it the name Sus domesticus, still used by some taxonomists. Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 BC in the Near East in the Tigris Basin, Çayönü, Cafer Höyük, Nevalı Çori being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans. Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BC in Cyprus; those animals must have been introduced from the mainland, which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then.
There was a separate domestication in China which took place about 8000 years ago. DNA evidence from subfossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe had been brought from the Near East; this stimulated the domestication of local European wild boar, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. Modern domesticated pigs have involved complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported, in turn, to the ancient Near East. Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. In August 2015, a study looked at over 100 pig genome sequences to ascertain their process of domestication, assumed to have been initiated by humans, involved few individuals, relied on reproductive isolation between wild and domestic forms; the study found that the assumption of reproductive isolation with population bottlenecks was not supported.
The study indicated that pigs were domesticated separately in Western Asia and China, with Western Asian pigs introduced into Europe, where they crossed with wild boar. A model that fitted the data included a mixture with a now extinct ghost population of wild pigs during the Pleistocene; the study found that despite back-crossing with wild pigs, the genomes of domestic pigs have strong signatures of selection at DNA loci that affect behavior and morphology. The study concluded that human selection for domestic traits counteracted the homogenizing effect of gene flow from wild boars and created domestication islands in the genome; the same process may apply to other domesticated animals. The adaptable nature and omnivorous diet of the wild boar allowed early humans to domesticate it readily. Pigs were used for food, but early civilizations used the pigs' hides for shields, bones for tools and weapons, bristles for brushes. In India, pigs have been domesticated for a long time in Goa and some rural areas, for pig toilets.
Though ecologically logical as well as economical
