Family: Cervidae
Persian Fallow Deer were introduced to Cyprus in the pre-pottery Neolithic (Cypro-PPNB), if not earlier. They occur in significant numbers at the aceramic Neolithic sites of Khirokitia, Kalavasos-Tenta, Cap Andreas Kastros, and Ais Yiorkis, and were important through the Cypriot Bronze Age. A Greek legend, related by Aelianus ca 200 AD, recounts how the deer of the Lebanon and Mount Carmel reached Cyprus by swimming the Mediterranean, the head of each animal placed on the back of the deer in front of it.
The Persian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica) is a deer species once native to all of the Middle East, but currently only living in Iran and Israel. It was reintroduced in Israel. It has been listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2008. After a captive breeding program, the population has rebounded from only a handful of deer in the 1960s to over a thousand individuals.
Historic
Before the Neolithic era, as humans first began to colonise Europe, Persian fallow deer were found in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia. The Anatolian population appear to have co-existed with the normal fallow deer, which still survives there today. They interbred with it freely to form intermediate populations. There is a suggestion that they may have been imported into Egypt as a menagerie animal during the time of the pharaohs. Some writers believe that the deer might have occurred throughout the Middle East in the 16th or 17th century.
The range of the deer has fluctuated between the millennia. During the Natufian period of Israel, some 15,000 to 9,500 years ago, studies in zooarcheology have shown the fallow deer became extinct in southern Israel, while gazelle and especially roe deer proliferated. This is thought to be due to climate change in combination with changing land use patterns and hunting pressure. At the same time the taxon persisted in the north in the Galilee region. During the early Iron Age, fallow deer were an important species sacrificed at the altar on Mount Ebal near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, comprising 10% of the faunal assemblage (many species were sacrificed). Pleistocene fallow deer of the region were larger, extant populations have evolved into smaller animals.
They were introduced to Cyprus by humans some 10,000 years ago, in the pre-pottery Neolithic (Cypro-PPNB), and expanded rapidly as the indigenous megafauna of the island became extinct, such as the endemic dwarf elephant and dwarf hippo species. Despite having cows, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs and cats, it is thought the prehistoric Cypriots managed the deer herds in some way for the next millennia, or may even have domesticated the animal. For six thousand years the deer were one of the main sources of meat for the islands, in marked contrast to the rest of the world; from 7,000 to 4,500 years ago the deer appear to have become possibly the most important economic mainstay of the island, with deer bones amounting to 70% of the animal remains at some sites. They occurred in significant numbers at the aceramic Neolithic sites of throughout Cyprus, such as Khirokitia, Kalavasos-Tenta, Cap Andreas Kastros, and Ais Yiorkis,[citation needed] and were important through the Cypriot Bronze Age. The deer were finally extirpated from the island in the 15th century.
In the Book of Deuteronomy 14:5, the yaḥmur (Hebrew: יַחְמ֑וּר, romanized: yaḥmûr) is listed as the third species of animal that may be eaten. This word has usually been translated as "roe", but in the King James Version it was translated as "fallow deer", and many more species have been named.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photos by George Konstantinou
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