When did people begin keeping rabbits as livestock?

The timing of rabbit domestication is a subject of ongoing debate, as the process likely occurred over hundreds or thousands of years rather than as a single event.1

While humans have hunted wild rabbits for meat and fur since the Pleistocene Epoch, the oldest historical record of rabbits being kept as livestock appears in the writings of the Roman author Marcus Terentius Varro during the 1st century bce.1

Evidence from DNA analysis and the fossil record suggests that domestication originated in southwestern Europe sometime between the retreat of continental ice sheets and the 1st century bce. It is a common but untrue legend that rabbits were first domesticated around 600 ce by monks in southern France.1