© Peter Watson 2017 Instead, look at it this way. If, as is now generally conceded, sedentism preceded the domestication of plants, then the first villages would have been surrounded by half-domesticated stands of plants, at about 12,500-9,500 BC (see below). Now assume that the move to sedentism leads to, or is accompanied by, the domestication of dogs. This is due to the close overlap in the lifestyle of wolves and humans but also includes the fact that, unlike all other potentially domesticable mammals, dogs have a very short gestation period. The gestation periods for the most common domesticable mammals are: Dogs 63 days Dingo 64 Wolves 62-75, depending on species Goats 150 Sheep 152 Cows 285 Horses 340-342 We may conclude, therefore, that it was through observation of the (newly) domesticated dog’s behavior that early people first spotted the all-important link between coitus and gestation. Findings reported only in March 2010, by Bridgett M. vonHoldt and Robert K. Wayne, of the University of California at Los Angeles, using DNA evidence, puts the domestication of dogs somewhere in the Middle east at 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC). Intuitively, this seems very late for humankind to have made the discovery of the link between sexual union and birth. And yet, according to Malcolm Potts and Roger Short, Australian aborigines did not associate sexual intercourse with pregnancy until they domesticated the dingo – a form of dog with a similarly short gestation period (64 days), between 6000 and 3000 years ago. We need to give this some thought. But it does fit the facts. We can now see that cave art died out around 12,000-11,000 BC because the dangerous animals had become extinct and because people were settling down in villages. There was no longer any need of caves and the refuges they provided. At the same time there was no longer any need for Venus figurines either. People were not travelling long distances, following the deer herds, so they did not need pendants, and in any case they now understood the link between sexual intercourse and birth. Life had a rhythm that it hadn’t had before.