It’s Aurochs Appreciation Week. 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 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.
Some say Neanderthals emerged 600,000 years ago, and others
say 350,000. They had migrated into
Europe by 250,000 years ago, and went extinct around 30,000 years ago. During their long visit in Europe,
Neanderthals hunted aurochs with wooden thrusting spears, but did not drive
them to extinction. Mark White’s team
wrote a fascinating paper on five ancient sites where Neanderthals had hunted
steppe bison, aurochs, rhinoceros, horses, and reindeer. They discussed the La Borde site in France,
where aurochs were driven into a collapsed cavern, a pit trap.
In 1971, La Borde was discovered by chance, and largely
destroyed, by a construction project.
During rushed rescue excavations, the remains of 40 aurochs were found
at the site, and far more were likely destroyed by the machines. Most of the animals were juveniles, and most
adults were cows. Avoiding adult bulls
was an intelligent way for hunters to avoid a premature death. Neanderthals combined their knowledge of
aurochs behavior with their knowledge of the land’s topography, to select the
prime location for a bloodbath, and then guide the animals into it. Their knowledge was more powerful than their
weapons. This trap was used many times.
Maybe 45,000 years ago, Homo
sapiens arrived in Europe.
Some are beginning to wonder if our visit on Earth will last as long as
the Neanderthals. In France, aurochs were
painted in the Lascaux cave 17,000 to 13,000 years ago, and carved on the walls
of Caves de la Mairie 15,000 years ago. Aurochs
disappeared on the Danish islands by 5500 B.C., from Britain by 1500 B.C., from
the Netherlands by 400 B.C. They still
survived in Germany when Julius Caesar visited around 50 B.C., to harass the
Suevi and other wild tribes.
The Hercynian forest once spanned east from the Rhine, across
modern Germany, to the Carpathians, and all the way to Dacia (present-day
Romania). A quick traveler could cross
the forest north to south in nine days, but it was very long, from east to west. Caesar noted, “There is no man in the Germany
we know who can say that he has reached the edge of that forest, though he may
have gone forward sixty days’ journey, or who has learnt in what place it begins.” Pliny also mentioned it: “The vast trees of the Hercynian forest,
untouched for ages, and as old as the world, by their almost immortal destiny
exceed common wonders.”
Caesar also commented on aurochs, 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, or Charlemagne (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.”
In Russia and Hungary, aurochs were last seen in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. In Germany,
they had blinked out by the fifteenth century.
Aurochs made their last stand in Poland.
As agriculture expanded, Europe’s ancient forests and wetlands
vanished. Grain farmers detested aurochs
molesting their crops, and herders resented them dining on prime forage. Aurochs stood in the path of progress.
Anton Schneeberger (1530 – 1581) was a Swiss botanist and
doctor based in Poland. He once wrote a
letter to Conrad Gesner, who included it in a book published in 1602. 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. As the powerful intelligent gray wolf was
reduced to the neurotic poodle, so the mighty aurochs was reduced to countless
variations of dimwitted cattle, fine-tuned for specific climates and uses
(meat, hides, milk, draught).
It’s hard to imagine such notoriously fierce animals being
forced into slavery. Dogs and horses
were likely enslaved at multiple locations independently. Alasdair Wilkins wrote about recent DNA
research on cattle. The ancestors of
every 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.
Meanwhile, back in Poland, the forests kept shrinking, as did
the number of aurochs. Farmers and
hunters kept killing them. Many likely
fell to the devastating diseases of domesticated herds, like anthrax. People became concerned at their decline, and
guards were hired to discourage poaching, but the rapidly growing civilization had
no room for them. The last aurochs died
in 1627, in the Jaktoróv forest, in Warsaw province of Poland.
Thus, the steaming beef in a hamburger comes from the bovine equivalent
of a poodle, an unhappy meal indeed. The
aurochs were displaced from their vast territory, and eventually eliminated by
heavily armed tropical primates. The
unusual primates have displaced the wolves, grizzlies, rhinos, bison, cod,
whales, the Hercynian forest, and on and on.
Look at us. How have we been
changed by this rampage? I raise my glass
to wildness and freedom, and pray that the terrible hurricane soon loses its
fury, and makes way for the dawn of a Great Healing.
Caesar, Julius, The Gallic Wars, 50 B.C.
Einhard, Vita
Karoli Magni (Life of Charles the Great), A.D. 830.
Gestner, Conrad, Historiae
Animalium, Christoffel Froschower, Zurich, A.D. 1602.
Pisa, Rustichello, The
Travels of Marco Polo, A.D. 1330.
Rimas, Andrew and Fraser, Evan D. G., Beef:
The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World,
Harper, New York, 2008.
Van Vuure, Cis, Retracing
the Aurochs: History, Morphology, and Ecology of an Extinct Wild Ox,
Coronet Books, 2005. LINK to
summary.
White, Mark, Paul Pettitt, and Danielle Schreve, “Shoot First,
Ask Questions Later: Interpretive Narratives of Neanderthal Hunting,” Quaternary Science Reviews,
Volume 140, 15 May 2016, Pages 1-20.
Wilkins, Alasdair, “DNA Reveals That Cows Were Almost
Impossible to Domesticate,” Gizmodo,
March 29, 2012. LINK
