Domestic sheep began with mouflon and remade Eurasian textiles
Domestic sheep Ovis aries are ruminant livestock; everyday 'sheep' means this species even though genus Ovis holds wild kin. They most likely descend from European and Asian mouflon, with Iran near the domestication centre, among the earliest farm animals.
Husbandry spans most inhabited regions and long underpinned Eurasian farming and cloth. In the twenty-first century Australia, New Zealand, and others still lead wool and meat trades. Middle English sheep comes from Old English sceap, with a huge regional vocabulary for ages and sexes.
Around 1.2 billion domestic sheep were alive in 2019. The exact lineage is unclear; the leading view traces them to the Asiatic mouflon, with the European mouflon descending from that same stock. Husbandry reached Europe fast: around 6000 BC, Neolithic Castelnovien people near modern Marseille were among the first Europeans to keep them, and ancient Greeks relied on sheep as core livestock, reputedly naming individual animals. Sheep also loom large in myth and ritual, from the Golden Fleece to sacrifice in Abrahamic traditions.
Breeding has made them neotenic and far more varied in colour than wild sheep, which are mostly shades of brown; domestic coats run from pure white to dark chocolate or piebald. Ewes weigh 45 to 100 kilograms and rams 45 to 160. Horizontal slit pupils give a visual field of roughly 270 to 320 degrees, enough to see behind without turning. Front teeth reveal age in the early years, and the full row of eight adult incisors is in place at about four.
The FAO listed 1,229 breeds in 2006, and fine-wool breeds, mostly derived from the Merino, dominate the industry. Sheep and goats share the subfamily Caprinae, but hybrids between them are rare and always sterile.
Source: Sheep
