Résumé
Reductions in hunter-gatherer mobility during the Late Pleistoceneinfluenced settlement ecologies, altered human relations withanimal communities, and played a pivotal role in domestication.The influence of variability in human mobility on selection dynamicsand ecological interactions in human settlements has not beenextensively explored, however. This study of mice in modern Africanvillages and changingmicemolar shapes in a 200,000-y-long sequencefrom the Levant demonstrates competitive advantages for commensalmice in long-term settlements. Mice from African pastoralhouseholds provide a referential model for habitat partitioningamong mice taxa in settlements of varying durations. The datareveal the earliest known commensal niche for house mice in longtermforager settlements 15,000 y ago. Competitive dynamics andthe presence and abundance of mice continued to fluctuate withhuman mobility through the terminal Pleistocene. At the Natufiansite of Ain Mallaha, house mice displaced less commensal wild miceduring periods of heavy occupational pressure but were outcompetedwhen mobility increased. Changing food webs and ecologicaldynamics in long-term settlements allowed house mice to establishdurable commensal populations that expanded with human societies.This study demonstrates the changing magnitude of cultural nicheconstruction with varying human mobility and the extent of environmentalinfluence before the advent of farming.