The prevailing theory is that humans tamed plants before beasts.
The remains of ancient hunter-gatherer dwellings in Syria were found along with preserved dung.
The researchers say they were surprised to learn that hunter-gatherers brought live animals to Abu Hureyra between 12,800 and 12300 years ago.
Although it is in line with what we might expect, this is almost 2000 years earlier than what we have seen elsewhere.
The transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers was one of the longest documented in the world.
The location within the Fertile Crescent was an ideal place for humans to live. The initial human occupation in the Stone Age was thought to be less than 200 people.
The area can be hard to access due to ongoing conflicts. There were heaps of samples from the site.
It is dung spherulites that the University of Connecticut anthropologists studied. The ancient dung was isolated and quantified using new methods.
It has been difficult to find a method that would allow archaeologists to look at the earliest experiments with animals before they became fully domesticated.
Our taming of cereals is thought to have begun as early as 11,500 years ago. There was no evidence of animal domestication until around 10,000 years ago.
The team explains in their paper that the general understanding is that cultivation began first, tethering people to the land. This research raises questions.
Smith and colleagues created a time capsule from the various activities that took place with dung.
The use of poop as fuel left a clearer use signal, as did the use of dung to line the floors of dwellings.
They found that the first part of the Epipalaeolithic period had low isolated spherulites and almost no clusters.
In line with a dramatic shift in architecture to more durable dwellings during the second part of the Epipalaeolithic period, there was a spike of dung associated with firepits.
A small number of animals were kept and tended to on the site. The researchers think that using the dung as fuel was a convenient way to get rid of excess dung.
The animals may have been used as live meat storage to make up for variability in the presence of their main prey. The hunter-gathers would have been able to stay at the same site year-round.
The faunal records of the area show an increase in wild sheep and aurochs.
According to the team, small-scale on-site animal keeping during the Epipalaeolithic can be found in Abu Hureyra.
Tending small numbers of animals immediately outside of dwellings appears to have been a common strategy used by people as part of the early transition from hunting to herding.
This marks the earliest occurrence of such tending, raising the question of whether early animal tending occurred before or alongside early cultivation.
There are clear signs of animal tending by the Neolithic phase 2A, with herding well established and dung being used in plaster floors.
The transition from on-site animal tending during the Epipalaeolithic 1B phase to offsite herding during Neolithic 2B is marked by the data presented here.
The researchers don't know which animals were being kept beyond them.
While gazelles were plentiful and often marked territory with their dung, defecating frequently in the same area, creating dung piles that are easy to collect, males can be very aggressive.
Wild sheep would have been an easier option. The sheep bones were found around 10,600 years ago.
Smith and team conclude that the behavior of wild sheep, with fixed-membership herds based on a male hierarchy, makes them much more agreeable to tending than gazelle.
The research was published in a peer reviewed journal.
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