CAN RELIGION ACCOUNT FOR EARLY ANIMAL DOMESTICATIONS - A CRITICAL-ASSESSMENT OF THE CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIC ARGUMENT, BASED ON NEAR-EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA

Cultural geographers often ascribe early animal domestications to the spiritual propitiation practices of ancient peoples, an interpretation that is not widely shared. This paper evaluates the sacrifice theory against Near Eastern archaeological data and refutes the idea that ritual sacrifice could have induced the earliest animal domestications of the Near East. The earliest domestications were the outcome of essentially ecological and economic processes which later gave rise to the sacrificial practices referred to by cultural geographers.