The Near East is the cradle of sheep and goat domestication. It is also the first place where farming began to specialize in sheep husbandry from the Neolithic period onwards. This paper focuses on the evolution of husbandry and the contribution of caprines (sheep and goats) to the animal economy in Mesopotamia and the Levant, par- ticularly from the Chalcolithic period to the Early Bronze Age. The increase in caprine breeding, especially sheep, is very significant from the Uruk period onwards in North Mesopotamia. The rise in the number of sheep was encouraged by the developing need for secondary products linked to the urbanization process. The control of sheep hus- bandry must have been fundamental for the implementation of the new economic and socio-cultural systems – urbanization, state-cities, empires – that developed at that time.