Mice infested human settlements 15,000 years ago

Mice began infesting human settlements some 15,000 years ago in the Middle East, said a study Monday that suggested the little rodents have been scurrying underfoot far longer than previously thought. As soon as hunter-gatherers began settling down rather than roving from place to place, house mice began to edge out their wild counterparts, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed US journal. "The research provides the first evidence that, as early as 15,000 years ago, humans were living in one place long enough to impact local animal communities -- resulting in the dominant presence of house mice," said co-author Fiona Marshall, a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.