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Animal
Domestication
What is “domestication?”
With regard to animal domestication, there are two different meanings,
and those who use the word don’t often reveal which one they mean. James Scott distinguished between
“domesticated,” meaning tamed (modified behavior), versus “fully domesticated,”
meaning genetically different from their wild ancestors as a result of
selective breeding (modified DNA), and dependent on humans for their
survival. Elephants in India have been
tamed to do work for humans, but they remain genetically wild. Poodles are obviously genetically different
from their gray wolf ancestors. The
difference between wild humans and civilized ones seems to be far more cultural
than genetic.
On the following pages, “domesticated” will refer to animals
that have been held in captivity for many generations, selectively bred to
encourage specific traits, and genetically different from their wild ancestors
— manmade critters that had never existed before. They look and behave differently. Animals that have merely been tamed, like a friendly
peanut loving squirrel, are not a matter for concern. But the control and exploitation of
domesticated critters has really rocked the ecological boat over the
centuries. The enslavement of animals
enabled the growth of most civilizations, increased their environmental
impacts, and frequently stimulated bloody conflicts.
Why
Do It?
As we’ve learned, the success of hominins has been
substantially boosted by our success at hunting and feasting on large wild
herbivores — animals weighing more than 100 pounds (43 kg). Herbivores did not compete with humans for
the same wild foods. They converted the
solar energy that was stored in grass into a highly nutritious form that we
could digest. This enabled hominins to
develop big brains (but not necessarily wise).
As we’ve learned, “the perfection of hunting” eventually
moved our ancestors over a line. We
began taking some game a bit faster than they could replace their losses. For a very long time, large game remained
abundant in many lands, enabling local hominin tribes to live well, and grow in
numbers. As long as food was abundant
and easy, there wouldn’t be much motivation to contemplate family planning
strategies and wise taboos. But growing
numbers of mouths needed growing amounts of food in order to remain strong,
healthy, and alive.
While large game was abundant for a very long time, the
delicious critters were not infinite in number.
Big Mama Nature was simply not in the mood to magically accelerate
herbivore reproduction in order to keep the tropical primates fat, happy, and
annoying. It was long past time for the
half-clever primates to learn some important lessons about life. Because they lacked immaculate wisdom, acute
foresight, or PhDs in wildlife management, they were forced to learn these
lessons the hard way. Big Mama fetched a
paddle named scarcity. Smack! Ouch!
Stop it! Smack!
As we’ve learned, climate change reconfigured the ecological
playing field. The last glacial period
spanned from about 80,000 to 12,900 years ago. The peak of this ice age was the Last Glacial
Maximum (LGM), which spanned from 26,500 to 19,000 years ago. Barry Cunliffe said that at this time, much
of Europe was buried under ice sheets up to one mile (1.6 km) thick (as was
North America). So much water was held
frozen in glaciers that global sea levels were 410 feet (125 m) lower than
today. During the frigid LGM, forest
country was pushed far to the south.
Trees survived along the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic coast of
Portugal and Spain, and the south shore of the Black Sea.
Following the LGM, a warming trend began, which spanned from
19,000 to 12,900 years ago. Then, the
Younger Dryas cold snap chilled things down again for another 1,300 years,
until 11,600 years ago. Then began the
warm climate period that we still enjoy today, which enabled the possibility of
large scale agriculture, civilization, skyrocketing population, and the
fantastic craziness of modernity. This
warm era has lasted an unusually long time.
Normally, we’d be overdue for a shift back to cold. Instead, we’re sliding sideways at high speed
into a much hotter era, and it seems likely to blindside life as we know
it. Clive Finlayson warns that the end
of farming is just one climate change away.
The warm era that we’ve been living in for the last 11,600
years led to a sequence of big changes.
Glaciers shifted into retreat mode, and a tundra ecosystem eventually
emerged on the newly exposed soil. A bit
later, steppe grasslands appeared, displacing some tundra. Still later, increasing warmth enabled the
expansion of forests. As forests
migrated northward, they began displacing the open tundra and grasslands that
provided optimal habitat for the herds of large herbivores that our ancestors
so deeply loved. So, hunters had to devote
more attention to forest critters, which were less abundant: elk, aurochs, red
deer, roe deer, wild pigs, and small animals.
For centuries, the human diaspora enjoyed some freedom to
roam and expand. There were still
frontiers, beyond which humans had never before set foot. Eventually, uninhabited ecosystems became
more and more scarce, and red neon No Vacancy lights became common. Continued expansion ceased being free and
easy. The intrepid pioneers kept
smacking into <bleeping> limits, which got very annoying (and sometimes
bloody).
As we’ve learned, the increasing scarcity of large herbivores
required that the menus at the diner had to be rewritten. Expanding forest cover inspired folks to
relocate to wetlands, or to the shorelines of seas, lakes, and streams. A number of foods that used to be second
class became regular mainstays — birds, small game, fish, shellfish, plant
foods. They had been second class
because they were far more labor intensive than hunting large game. Tedious hard work sucks. Second class stuff had also provided a life
insurance safety net, a reserve of food set aside for droughts, famine times,
and so on.
Mark Nathan Cohen, Diana Muir, Craig Dilworth, James Scott,
and others noted that there was a clear pattern in the archaeological record at
many locations. The older evidence
indicated a diet in which large herbivores were core. Above the old layers, evidence revealed the
shift to labor intensive second class foods.
Above that, evidence of herding and horticulture begins to appear — food
production that was even more labor intensive.
These shifts were motivated by a gradual process of growing
scarcity.
Scott pointed out that our hungry ancestors were not merely
domesticating plants and animals, they were also domesticating ecosystems to
promote this new and laborious experiment in weird living. Forests were being swept aside, and replaced
by open cropland and pasture. Wild
animals that might harm crops or livestock were no longer welcome to exist in
these new domesticated ecosystems.
Long ago, overspecialization contributed to the extinction of
the saber-tooth cats, as hominin hunters competed more and more for their
primary prey. Our ancestors avoided a
similar fate. They were omnivores, so
they could consume a huge variety of stuff that wasn’t meat. Because they had fire, and knew how to cook,
they had far more food options than species that were restricted to a raw food
diet. At the same time, successful
efforts at eliminating man-eating predators sharply reduced the vital
assistance they had provided for discouraging population growth.
Scott summed up the pluses and minuses of animal
domestication. Both a deer and a steer
provided meat, bones, hides, and tendons, but the deer required zero human
assistance to grow from doe to adult.
The steer could require corrals, winter feed and shelter, herd dogs,
salt licks, and a source of water. As
long as deer and other game was plentiful, labor intensive herding and farming
would have been moronic.
On the plus side, enslaved female livestock could be
milked. Milk could be made into cheese,
yogurt, and butter, and stored for later.
Herders have milked cattle, zebu, water buffalo, yak, goat, sheep,
reindeer, dromedary, camels, horse, and ass.
Dairy foods provide vitamin D, an essential nutrient. In winter months, folks living in snow
country often could not acquire sufficient vitamin D via exposure to direct
sunlight, so dairy foods could provide a beneficial supplement.
All infants can digest lactose, the sugar in milk. Before animal domestication, kids would
normally become lactose intolerant a few years down the road. They could no longer digest milk. Lactose intolerant people are able to digest
cheese, yogurt, and butter. In cultures
with a tradition of dairy consumption, evolution eventually modified the gene
pool for lactose tolerance in adults.
This shift was not universal in all humans. In cultures where milk is not consumed, most folks
become lactose intolerant after infancy.
Poultry and waterfowl produced meat and eggs. Folks rode on the backs of horses, donkeys,
yaks, reindeer, and camels. Mounted
cavalry radically redefined the rules for warfare and raiding. Beasts of burden were used to pull plows,
carts, and sleds, and to haul loads of cargo on their backs. Animal manure could be used for fertilizer or
burned as fuel. Hairy critters,
especially sheep, provided fibers that could be spun and woven into many useful
products. An animal can give up its hide
just once, but a sheep can provide wool every year.
Herders could also tap some nutritious blood from living
animals from time to time. Up to 80
percent of a wild human’s diet was plant based food, but animal products
provided nutrients that were beneficial for a strenuous outdoor way of
life. I have found no evidence of wild
cultures that were vegetarian.
From
Aurochs to Cattle
On many fine days in years past, I have taken walks in
grasslands where cattle were grazing. I
always felt safe, because the animals were not the slightest bit anxious or aggressive. I walked, they grazed, all was good. Let’s take a peek at the cattle family tree.
Aurochs were the wild ancestors of today’s herd of 1.3
billion domesticated cattle. They were
huge, strong, and fierce — the opposite of the passive cud-chewing manure
makers of today. In regions having ideal
conditions, bulls could grow up to 6 feet (180 cm) tall at the shoulder, and
weigh up to 3,300 pounds (1,500 kg).
Their horns were much longer than cattle, and pointed forward,
aggressively.
Some believe that the species originally emerged in India
between 1.5 and 2 million years ago.
They survived in a world along with similarly large, strong, and fierce
predators. Eventually their range
spanned from England to China. Aurochs’
preferred habitat was dense ancient forests with lakes, rivers, bogs, and
fens. They didn’t hang out in frigid
tundra regions with woolly mammoths and horses.
In 51 B.C., Caesar wrote that aurochs were animals “a little
smaller than elephants, having the appearance, color, and shape of bulls. They are very strong and swift, and attack
every man and beast they catch sight of.
The natives sedulously trap them in pits and kill them. Young men engage in the sport, hardening
their muscles by the exercise; and those who kill the largest head of game
exhibit the horns as a trophy, and thereby earn high honor. These animals, even when caught young, cannot
be domesticated and tamed.”
Charles the Great, also known as Charlemagne (A.D. 747 –
814), once had a painful encounter while on a hunting trip. When an aurochs appeared in the forest, his
hunting buddies fled in terror.
Charlemagne was less intelligent.
He rode up to one, drew his sword, and pissed off the monster, who gored
his leg. From that day forward, the
humbled king walked with a limp.
The famous explorer Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) also described
them. “There are wild cattle in that
country as big as elephants, splendid creatures, covered everywhere but on the
back with shaggy hair a good four palms long.
They are partly black, partly white, and really wonderfully fine
creatures.”
Anton Schneeberger (1530 – 1581) was a Swiss botanist and
doctor based in Poland. He wrote that
aurochs had no fear of humans, and did not flee from their approach. When they were teased or hunted, they got
very hot-tempered and dangerous, sometimes hurling idiots high into the air.
Cis van Vuure wrote the book on aurochs. He thought that domestication began about
9,000 years ago, in the Middle East and Pakistan. Over time, the mighty aurochs was reduced to
countless variations of dimwitted cattle, fine-tuned for specific climates and
uses (meat, hides, milk, draft).
As agriculture expanded, Europe’s ancient forests and
wetlands shrank. Grain farmers detested
aurochs molesting their crops, and herders resented them dining on prime
forage. Aurochs stood in the path of
progress. The last aurochs died in 1627,
in the Jaktoróv forest, in Warsaw province of Poland.
It’s hard to imagine such notoriously fierce animals being
forced into slavery. Alasdair Wilkins
wrote about recent DNA research on cattle.
The ancestors of every domesticated cow in the world trace back to a
tiny herd in the Middle East, a herd as small as 80 animals. The process of domestication may have taken a
thousand years, and it was likely done by sedentary people. It would have been impossible for nomadic
herders to confine huge powerful animals with a tremendous love of wildness and
freedom.
Nobody ever hitched a wagon or plow to an aurochs. Nobody put a saddle on one. Nobody milked them, and made aurochs
cheese. They were wild, free, strong,
and extremely dangerous. And so, they no
longer belonged in the heavily managed manmade societies we were creating. Today, thanks to centuries of selective
breeding, we can now dine on hamburgers made from the bovine equivalent of a
dimwitted yappy poodle.
The
Unlucky Losers
The vast majority of living plant and animal species have
luckily remained wild and free. Jared
Diamond wrote a lot about domestication.
Of the world’s 148 species of large land-dwelling herbivores and
omnivores, only 14 had been domesticated prior to the twentieth century. Nine of the 14 only had regional
significance, but five species soared to become multinational superstars — the
cow, sheep, pig, goat, and horse. All
five were domesticated in Eurasia, before 4000 B.C.
Most of the unlucky 14 were native to Eurasia. In the Americas, only the llama and alpaca
were domesticated, and they lived in small herds. People didn’t drink their milk. They never spread to cultures beyond the
Andes, so the Indian civilizations of Central and North America did not have
pack animals beyond dogs. In North and
South America, the heavy toll of megafauna extinctions may have eliminated a
number of potential domesticates. In Australia,
zero large animals were enslaved. In
Africa, no large mammals were domesticated south of the Sahara — in this region
only the turkey-like guinea fowl was domesticated.
Diamond wrote that the large herbivores most vulnerable to
enslavement were species that were easy to feed, rapid growing, disease
resistant, and could be bred in captivity.
They did not panic in confinement, nor were they dangerously
violent. These unlucky species were herd
animals that had follow-the-leader dominance hierarchies.
James Scott wrote that over the passage of generations,
selective breeding produces slaves that are more passive, less alert, less
intelligent, and more dependent on human care.
They reach reproductive age sooner, preserve some juvenile aspects, and produce
more offspring. The brains of
domesticated sheep are 24 percent smaller than their wild ancestors, and pig
brains are one third smaller. Because
they were dullards, Paul Shepard referred to domesticated livestock as
“goofies.”
Domesticated animals are born in captivity, and many never
experience wildness and freedom during their entire lives. One perk of their enslavement is that their
lives are, in some ways, luxurious. They
are provided with food, water, and salt licks.
Many are provided with shelter from the hot sun, and frigid
weather. They enjoy an unnatural level
of personal security because predator eradication programs ensure they will
usually be safe from deadly attacks, month after month, until their luck runs
out, and their masters send them for a visit to the butcher. Enjoying such an easy life, they don’t need
energy guzzling big brains. (As
previously noted, human brains have shrunk about 10 percent in the last 20,000
years.)
