Pigs: Early History

The earliest swine domestication appears to have been in mainland Southeast Asia sometime in the eighth millennium BCE. Versions of these pigs were brought to Polynesia by Asian migrants and were the first in what is today the twenty-first-century United States when Polynesians entered Hawaii about 1000 BCE. European domesticated pigs came later. These descend from wild boars that were bred in the Mediterranean region and on the Continent. By the era of the Roman Republic two breeds had emerged: short-legged pigs kept in small spaces; and long-legged animals that lived in forests and were kept by swineherds. It is unclear which of these was first brought to the New World, but most likely the Spanish pigs were long-legged and the French and English pigs were the more domestic versions.