Reconstructing the climatic niche breadth of land use for animal production during the African Holocene

Aim Domestic animals first appeared in the archaeological record in northern Africa c. 9000 years before present and subsequently spread southwards throughout the continent. This geographic expansion is well studied and can broadly be explained in terms of the movement of pastoralist populations due to climate change. However, no studies have explicitly evaluated changes in the climatic niche of these domesticates. A priori, one cannot assume a...