Naming
The Latin word ''dāma'' or ''damma'', used for roe deer, gazelles, and antelopes, lies at the root of the modern scientific name, and the German ''Damhirsch'', French ''daim'', Dutch ''damhert'', and Italian ''daino''. In Croatian and Serbian, the name for the fallow deer is ''jelen lopatar'' , due to the form of its antlers. The Hebrew name of the fallow deer, ''yachmur'' , comes from the Aramaic language, where ''chamra'' means "red" or "brown".
Distribution
The Fallow Deer is a Eurasian deer that was a native to most of Europe during the last Interglacial. In the Holocene, the distribution was restricted to the Middle East and possibly also parts of the Mediterranean region, while further southeast in western Asia was the home of the Persian Fallow Deer, that is bigger and has larger antlers. In the Levant, Fallow Deer were an important source of meat in the Palaeolithic Kebaran-culture , as is shown by animal bones from sites in northern Israel, but the numbers decreased in the following epi-Palaeolithic Natufian culture , perhaps because of increased aridity and the decrease of wooded areas.
Evolution
The Fallow Deer is a Eurasian deer that was a native to most of Europe during the last Interglacial. In the Holocene, the distribution was restricted to the Middle East and possibly also parts of the Mediterranean region, while further southeast in western Asia was the home of the Persian Fallow Deer, that is bigger and has larger antlers. In the Levant, Fallow Deer were an important source of meat in the Palaeolithic Kebaran-culture , as is shown by animal bones from sites in northern Israel, but the numbers decreased in the following epi-Palaeolithic Natufian culture , perhaps because of increased aridity and the decrease of wooded areas.References:
Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.
