This research has been funded by the IAP program (BELSPO), the KU Leuven BOF Centre of Excellence Financing on CAS, and the CNRS (T.G. and E.-M.G.). The high-containment laboratory of the Institut Jacques Monod, Paris was supported by a grant to E.-M.G. from the University Paris Diderot, ARS 2016-2018. The sequencing facility of the Institut Jacques Monod, Paris, and J.D., were supported by grants to T.G. from the University Paris Diderot, the ‘Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale’ (DGE20111123014), and the ‘Région Ile-de-France’ (grant 11015901). C.O. was supported by the FWO mobility program (V4.519.11N, K2.197.14N, K2.057.14N). Faunal research carried out by J.P. and team in Anatolia received funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG PE424/10-1,2). Research by N.Bo. M.E.P., and A.C. was supported by an ERC grant (206148) and UK NERC Radiocarbon Facility grant (NF/2012/2/4). The archaeological and archaeozoological research conducted by A.Bă. and A. Bo. was supported by the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, UEFISCDI (PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-1015 and PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0519). Research at Songo Mnara was directed by S. Wynne-Jones and J. Fleisher with support from the National Science Foundation (BCS1123091) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/J502716/1). We thank G. Larson and E. A. Bennett for critical reading of the manuscript; the Ufficio Beni Archeologici della Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano for granting access to the archaeological material of Galgenbühel/Dos de la Forca and J. Crezzini for help in sampling; M.-A. Félix, Institut Jacques Monod and École Normale Supérieure, Paris, for granting access to the pyrosequencer; M. Larmuseau and A. Van Geystelen for discussions and assistance with nuclear SNP analyses; K. Knaepen, M. Coomans, and A. Giucca for support in laboratory procedures in Leuven; and J. Nackaerts of the veterinary hospital Kruisbos (Wezemaal, Belgium) for providing cat blood samples. We also thank the curators of the following collections for facilitating access to the material under their care and the permission to take tissue samples: the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium), the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and Musée du Louvre (Paris, France), the British Museum and Natural History Museum (London, UK) and the Bavarian State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy (Munich, Germany).