The abundance of domesticable mammals in Eurasia facilitated its early transition from hunter–gatherer to agricultural economies, with dramatic consequences for human history. This paper empirically examines the origins of these biogeographical advantages and finds that the extinction of large mammals during the past 100,000 years was a decisive force in the evolution of mammal domestication. In Eurasia’s domestication cradles, humans had sufficient incentives to continually practice herd management as a hunting strategy to prevent the depletion of their vital common resources. These strategies changed some targeted species and made them more receptive to human domination. The absence of these conditions (human incentive and animal receptivity) in other regions resulted in the paucity of domestication. The paper presents the most comprehensive empirical analysis of the origins of animal domestication and the roots of global inequalities to date and unearths a critical channel for the influence of deep history on comparative economic development.

欧亚大陆丰富的可驯养哺乳动物促进了其从狩猎采集者向农业经济的早期转变，对人类历史产生了重大影响。本文对这些生物地理优势的起源进行了实证研究，发现在过去的100,000年中，大型哺乳动物的灭绝是哺乳动物驯化进化的决定性力量。在欧亚大陆的驯化摇篮中，人类有足够的动机继续进行畜群管理，以此作为狩猎策略，以防止其重要的公共资源枯竭。这些策略改变了一些目标物种，使它们更容易接受人类的统治。在其他地区，由于缺乏这些条件（人类的激励作用和对动物的接受能力），导致驯化的情况很少。