European mouflon introduced into the Mediterranean basin in prehistoric times. According to some zoologists, the European mouflon is not a genuine game species, but a descendant of a very early race of domestic sheep. In fact, there are strong indications that European mouflon came to Corsica and Sardinia only some 7,000 years ago along with Neolithic peoples, since no traces can be found from earlier times. Over the last 200 years, European mouflon have been kept in various places in Europe. Prince Eugene of Savoy kept mouflon in his Viennese wildlife park, some of which were transferred to the Lainz Wildlife Park.
Dmitry Belyayev (zoologist) also been of great interest to Darwin. It was recognized that domesticated animals differ in several ways from their wild counterparts, but it was not known what principle of selection had guided the Neolithic farmers who had first domesticated these species thousands of years ago. Belyayev's hypothesis was that "all domesticated species had been selected for a single criterion: tameness." Belyayev further theorized that this attribute "had dragged along with it most of the other features that distinguish domestic animals from their wild forebears, like droopy ears, patches of white in the fur and changes in skull shape." In other