Mice lived alongside humans since 15,000 years ago and proliferation of their classes depend on what kind of human settlements are available. If there are crops and vegetation, the wild mice will flourish. On the contrary, house mice will multiply if humans decided to settle into a non-nomadic lifestyle.
Scientists discovered that there is a direct link between the mice and human since the earliest record of settlements. These rodents were drawn even before humans learned to cultivate, according to Lior Weissbrod of the Israeli University of Haifa. The study cemented the baffling theory that mice did not associate with humans just because of farming.
To determine the fate of two mice classes - the house mice and the wild mice or Macedonian mice, Weissbrod collaborated with Thomas Cucchi of the French National Center for Scientific Research. They studied hundreds of mice teeth from archaeological sites that date back some 10,000 to 200,000 years ago. Simply put, the house mice can be identified from the wild mice depending on its teeth structure.
Weissbrod linked the mice on Natufian hunter-gatherers who settled in the eastern Mediterranean 15,000 years ago. They found out that the house mice immediately displaced the wild mice because of fixed settlements. Then after 3,000 years, the Natufians returned to a nomadic lifestyle. It is when the wild mice decided to take their place back and they displaced the house mice in turn, according to New Scientist.
The link between human settlements, crops, and lifestyle to that of either house or wild mice has been established. But then there is still a question about the driving factor that split the lineage of house mice and wild mice. However, there is a theory that house mice's longer tail and the agility resulting from it helps them escape the dangers of human traps. Other have proposed that it is their higher stress level and flexible diet that allows them to live in close proximity to humans.
