Aurochs in the context of "Bos"

Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.

Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 104,000 years ago. However, domestication did not occur until much later. The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. By around 9500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops – emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chickpeas, and flax – were cultivated in the Levant. Rye may have been cultivated earlier, but this claim remains controversial. Regardless, rye's spread from Southwest Asia to the Atlantic was independent of the Neolithic founder crop package. Rice was domesticated in China by 6200 BC with earliest known cultivation from 5700 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Rice was also independently domesticated in West Africa and cultivated by 1000 BC. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 11,000 years ago, followed by sheep. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and India around 8500 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3000 BC.

Wadi Mathendous is a prehistoric archaeological site in the Mesak Settafet escarpment, located in the southwestern Fezzan region in Libya. It contains many petroglyphs of figures and objects, as well as other rock art. The chiseled animals include elephants, giraffes, aurochs, wildcats, and crocodiles. These rock engravings and cave paintings have been dated to the Neolithic period, around 6000 BC.

The European bison (pl.: bison) (Bison bonasus) or the European wood bison, also known as the wisent (/ˈviːzənt/ or /ˈwiːzənt/), the zubr (/ˈzuːbər/), or sometimes colloquially as the European buffalo, is a European species of bison. It is one of two extant species of bison, alongside the American bison. The European bison is the heaviest wild land animal in Europe, and individuals in the past may have been even larger than their modern-day descendants. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, bison became extinct in much of Europe and Asia, surviving into the 20th century only in northern-central Europe and the northern Caucasus Mountains. During the early years of the 20th century, bison were hunted to extinction in the wild.

By the late 2010s, the species numbered several thousand and had been returned to the wild by captive breeding programmes. It is no longer in immediate danger of extinction, but remains absent from most of its historical range. It is not to be confused with the aurochs (Bos primigenius), the extinct ancestor of domestic cattle, with which it once co-existed. Besides humans, bison have few predators. In the 19th century, there were scattered reports of wolves, lions, tigers, and bears hunting bison. In the past, especially during the Middle Ages, humans commonly killed bison for their hide and meat. They used their horns to make drinking horns.

Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (Bos taurus). Beef can be prepared in various ways; cuts are often used for steak, which can be cooked to varying degrees of doneness, while trimmings are often ground or minced, as found in most hamburgers. Beef contains protein, iron, and vitamin B12. Along with other kinds of red meat, high consumption is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease, especially when processed. Beef has a high environmental impact, being a primary driver of deforestation with the highest greenhouse gas emissions of any agricultural product.

In prehistoric times, humans hunted aurochs and later domesticated them. Since that time, numerous breeds of cattle have been bred specifically for the quality or quantity of their meat. Today, beef is the third most widely consumed meat in the world, after pork and poultry. As of 2018, the United States, Brazil, and China were the largest producers of beef.

Sanga cattle is the collective name for indigenous cattle of some regions in Africa. They are sometimes identified as a subspecies with the scientific name Bos taurus africanus. Their history of domestication and their origins in relation to taurine cattle, zebu cattle (indicine), and native African varieties of the ancestral aurochs are a matter of debate. "African taurine", "sanga", "zenga", "sheko", "African indicine" are all sub-groups of Sanga cattle.

Cave hyenas (Crocuta (crocuta) spelaea and Crocuta (crocuta) ultima) are extinct species or subspecies of hyena known from Eurasia, which ranged from Western Europe and West Asia to eastern Siberia, East Asia and Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene epoch. They are well represented in many caves, primarily dating to the Last Glacial Period. Cave hyenas served as apex predators that preyed on large mammals (primarily large ungulates, such as wild horse, steppe bison and aurochs), and were responsible for the accumulation of hundreds of large Pleistocene mammal bones in areas including horizontal caves, sinkholes, mud pits, and muddy areas along rivers. It was one of the main apex predators of northern Eurasian ecosystems alongside the cave lion (Panthera spelaea), with the two species likely engaging in hostile conflict over carcasses. Much like African spotted hyenas, they likely lived in clans.

Often treated as subspecies or populations of the living African spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) to which they were closely related and heavily resembled (though considerably larger in size), genetic evidence from the nuclear genome suggests that Eurasian Crocuta populations (including the west Eurasian Crocuta crocuta spelaea and Asian Crocuta crocuta ultima) were highly genetically divergent from African populations (having estimated to have split over 1 million years ago), with evidence suggesting limited interbreeding between Eurasian cave and African spotted hyenas. Some authors have suggested that the two subspecies should be raised to species level as Crocuta spelaea and Crocuta ultima.