I noticed this thread at the front page and could have sworn I gave an answer to it. It turns out, though, I only gave an answer to a similar question which can be found here.
In it I included some giraffids from the Miocene, which wouldn't exactly fit the bill for "realistic" (although the Plei...
I'd like to see your argument for zebra considering the Egyptians tried and failed to domesticate them. As for bovids consider oxen were the beast of burden of choice for everything but riding.
@John Two things. One, where is your source for the Egyptians attempting such a thing? The Egyptians kept and bred many tame animals in captivity, especially the oryx, but the intention was never to turn them into draft animals. The extant zebra species are no different from wild horses and donkeys in social structure, and the "failure" of zebras to be domesticated in the 19th century is a myth brought on by an uncritical and incomplete reading of history. Zebra taming and breeding actually caught on quite well but lost their practicality with the internal combustion engine.
You are correct, I was confusing the antelope with hte zebra, it was the dutch boers who tried many times and failed to domesticate zebra. as draft animals, keep in mind horses were not domesticated as draft animals either but as food animals and later turned in to draft animals. your statement about horse and zebra behavior is not correct even for their herding habits much less other behavior. animalstudiesrepository.org/socbeh/11 the only zebra to ever show any proclivity for taming (the burchellii subspecies) is also basically extinct.
+1 for elands. I've seen zooarchaeologists call the giant eland one of the only large mammals that could be domesticated (it has a social structure and temperament similar to cows and horses) that never has been domesticated. Cervids for some reason don't domesticate well, during the rut they have a habit of getting aggressive regardless of their normal disposition. I have no idea how people did it with reindeer.
@John The first source you linked backs up my statement. Equids have two different structure types, Type I and Type II. Type II is the loose, territorial fission-fusion type seen in donkeys, Grevy's and mountain zebras and Type I is the female-dominant herd structure seen in horses and...wait for it, Burchell's zebra. And your last two links are also not exclusive to zebras. Horse stallions can and do kill the foals of other stallions, and a horse kept cooped up in a small paddock would have the same issues as a zebra in a bad zoo exhibit.
@John There's tons of zebras in captivity today kept on farms and being trained for the saddle and for driving. There are many simply flat out incorrect myths about the nature of harnessed zebras. This constant talk of a "failure" to domesticate does not accurately reflect what was actually going on. The Boers you mentioned didn't "fail" to domesticate a zebra, they were simply taming the quagga for convenience - quite successfully too - but also hunting them and feeding them to their Khoisan slaves just as much. Horses, cows, etc. all had aggressive, intractable wild ancestors.
@user2352714 That's interesting, where did you hear that claim? I would have to contest that one. Obviously there's plenty of large animals that "could" have been domesticated; the domesticates we have today are poor indicators. If we never domesticated the cow, people would look at the aurochs and think "there's no way anyone could farm those things". As for deer: bovids do basically the exact same thing, especially the wild ones. Domestication seems to have toned it down, but uncastrated males are still kept few and isolated during mating season.
@ThesaurusRex where is your source that horse and bovine ancestors where just as aggressive as zebra. species can vary greatly in their aggression and triggers. aggression is not a binary state it is a spectrum, if you read the paper it quite plainly states that horses don't show nearly the same level of infanticide or aggression in captivity. Yes many zebra are in captivity, that is how we know their aggression is problematic, unpredictable, and widespread. vetfolio.com/learn/article/…
@ThesaurusRex royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/… is one. Interestingly there have been successful attempts at semi-domesticating giant eland in the extreme south of Africa. It looks like the problem is not just aggressiveness but unpredictability. Aurochsen you at least know are aggressive all the time. A lot of deer and antelope (except eland) are seemingly harder to predict. You'd think deer would be readily domesticated as an easy, renewable source of raw materials to make tools.
@user2352714 To be fair, unpredictability is something that applies to nearly all wild animals, and also doesn't disclude domestic ones either. One should never be too trusting of bulls or pigs. Or even dogs.
@ThesaurusRex True, but the problem is they're consistently unpredictable. Deer will be fine ten months of the year but then suddenly get aggressive for the remaining two and it's hard to predict when that will happen. They'll even start attacking females if there are no males to spar with. You have to constantly change housing arrangements throughout the year in a way that was infeasible for Neolithic peoples. It's like with elephants and musth (which is one reason why elephants haven't been truly domesticated).
@user2352714 Eh, the biggest reason for elephants is that they're not bred in captivity - they take too long and don't captive breed well anyway. Deer, as should be reminded, are wild animals so of course their rut will be stronger and more unpredictable. The same is true for wild bovids and the ancestors of cows and goats would have been the same. Deer and elk are farmed today, and their rut is managed no problem.
@ThesaurusRex Another reason elephants aren't domesticated is the males go crazy and try to kill anything that moves when they go into musth during the breeding season. They'll even kill the females instead of mating with them in wild settings if they aren't careful. Goats and cattle are consistently aggressive, and more importantly the herds don't break up during the breeding season. The reference I linked above gives exact reasons why goats, sheep, and cattle are easily managed but antelope and most deer aren't.
@ThesaurusRex And just because animals are farmed in captivity today with modern technology doesn't mean they're viable livestock for a pre-modern setting. We can farm just about any animal today using modern technology and the fact that we have resources we can afford to spare on such a pursuit (see: zoos). European sea bass are farmed and bred in captivity today, but people had to manipulate their hormones using modern technology in a lab to do so. There's no way for a Neolithic society to do anything like that.
@user2352714 You're still thinking backwards in terms of the animals that are already domesticated. The wild ibex not only has the aggressive rut you mentioned but also the same fission-fusion behavior of deer. Same with mouflon, they're nothing AT ALL like sheep. As for elk farming - it's surprisingly low tech and cheaper than cows. The only significant difference is a stronger fencing that's only really a thing because of the circumstances of modern farming, but it's nothing an aurochs farmer wouldn't have also been able to handle.
@user2352714 Also, I'm perplexed at how being "consistently" aggressive is even a factor. You do realize that doesn't even apply to domestic bulls? Have you ever been around one? You do realize they DO get highly aggressive during the mating season and even the most docile ones can become dangerous quickly? It's little different from a wild animal - a deer's rut is highly predictable, even.
@ThesaurusRex That's the point. A pastoralist must always consider a bull aggressive. There's no inconsistency in behavior that makes them difficult to predict and have to treat them differently depending on the time of year. The males of deer and antelope also disperse and become territorial, in contrast to mouflon, ibex, eland, and cattle that fight for dominance within in the same herd (and hence can be more easily controlled) during the breeding season.
@John You'll find those in the primary sources referring to tarpans (the ancestor of the horse) and the aurochs (the ancestor of cattle). Tarpans have widely been considered intractable, even the offspring of tarpans and horses, and many tarpans captured from the wild simply died of stress. Many of these sources are in the book Age of the Horse by Susanna Forrest. The ferocity of the aurochs has been written in sources as old as the Bible, Caesar and Old English poems, but Anton Schneeberger's 16th century account (can be found in Retracing the Aurochs) is the most detailed.
@user2352714 You're making zero sense. A bull becomes aggressive during a predictable mating season = they must always be considered aggressive. A deer becomes aggressive during a predictable mating season = completely unpredictable, all bets are off, no way any ancient member of Homo sapiens could ever manage this? Again, you're also assuming the aurochs and cattle behaved exactly the same way - still thinking theologically. Finally, ibex and mouflon herds do disperse in very much the same way deer do.
@ThesaurusRex Okay, by that logic, why have caprines and bovines been repeatedly domesticated by humans, and no species of antelope or deer aside from reindeer have ever been domesticated despite being easier to capture and a more important prey animal for most Neolithic societies? If elk are so easy to domesticate why did Native Americans never domesticate them? The extreme asymmetry in domestication implies an underlying pattern, which correlates well with differences in social structure between the taxa.
@ThesaurusRex that source does not say a thing about tarpan demeanor nor that of wild horse ancestors and does not mention auroch at all. If you actually read Schneeberger's account, he says auroch were actually very docile, "the auroch is not afraid of humans and will not flee when a human being comes near, it will hardly avoid him when he approaches it slowly. If someone tries to scare it by screaming or throwing something this does not scare it in the least" he goes on to say they required deliberate repeated provocation to become aggressive. Your own source refutes your claim.
@user2352714 Good question, we're finally getting to the meat of it. That's not how it works. Again, you're thinking teleologically. Nothing is inevitable. The fact that we have the animals we do now doesn't mean they were destined this way. Nobody walks up to a species and goes "hey, a tame animal, guess I'll domesticate it". 99% of the time what happens instead is the species is hunted to extinction. Unlike what Jared Diamond would tell you domesticability doesn't hinge entirely on inherent qualities in the animal. It has just as much, if not more or mostly, to do with the actual human
culture. Aurochs were only domesticated twice by cultures that already had goats - in the case of taurine cattle, all the ones living today trace their ancestry to just 80 cows (with wild male admixture). In all of the Old World, horses were domesticated ONCE - repeat, ONCE - by people who had a hard time farming cattle in the region. Reindeer and caribou are the exact same animal, yet they weren't herded in North America. Likewise, there are no natively domesticated American mallards. And when were rabbits going to be inevitably domesticated before some medieval monks got bored? And have we
even brought up the subject of boars? Talking so much about zebra aggression and barely even mentioning these hairy demons? Now in North America, there were slightly different circumstances approaching animals. Agriculture all across the continent had no need for domestic animals - in fact, intensive plowing actually hurts maize agriculture. Bison for the most part existed outside the range of societies that could have held them captive, although the act of driving and holding them in pounds might resemble the techniques of proto-domestic mouflon and reindeer herders (Great Basin shamans
also 'charm' pronghorns through acclimating them and doing much the same). And the habits of elk and deer make them much easier local or "garden hunting" prey with little need to herd them or hold them captive, although Native Americans were doing just that in the Neutral Confederacy, and the Maya were even breeding them and keeping them docile. Domestication is something the culture does just as much as the animal - even in the odd case of commensals.
@John Not sure how you missed it or had the rudeness to say it wasn't there at all, but it's right there under the second and third sections of "A Swift and Savage Breed". I never said Age of the Horse had aurochs information, Retracing the Aurochs does, and I should imagine you've read all the other primary sources contained that talk about its ferocity. As for your interpretation of Scheeberger - that's not docility, dude. That's being headstrong and confident of strength. Bison behave in exactly the same way. If you think an unafraid large animal is docile, please don't go to Yellowstone.
If you can't find it, here's my statement about capture from the older Natural History of Horses: > The Tarpans always die of ennui in a short time, if they do not break their own necks in resisting the will of man: they are, moreover, said to attack and destroy domestic horses: they rise on their haunches in fighting, and bite furiously; while the mixed races, though ready to bite, are more willing to strike out with their hind feet, and neither have ever been remarked lying down.
@ThesaurusRex I disagree with you. The history of domestication and its irregular distribution suggests that some animals are more easily domesticatable than others. Obviously not every potentially domesticatable species has been domesticated, but the ones that have may give insights as to which species are more likely. Otherwise you are just throwing your hands up and giving ad hoc arguments to say that "anything can happen" regardless of evidence. By your logic humans should be able to domesticate giant pandas and rhinoceroses as easily as eland or ostriches. Your argument is not convincing.
@ThesaurusRex the only source you provided for horses was the Wikipedia page on tarpans, which are likely not the ancestor of modern horses anyway. You provided NO sources that mention the auroch until you mentioned Scheeberger As for Scheeberger I was not interpreting I was quoting him and if you think bison require repeated deliberate provocation to become aggressive, please don't go to Yellowstone. The only other accounts of aggression are either third hand information, or situations were the animals was deliberately provoked say by hunting it.
@ThesaurusRex Scheeberger's account is of animal that is neither aggressive nor fearful of humans is docility, the exact traits desired for domestication. Bison are aggressive to humans, that does not describe bison at all. Also if you are going to claim sources you could at least provide a link instead of a a vague title without a year and author. The only other primary sources for auroch behavior are either from sources that were known for wild inaccuracies about animal behavior or from situations were the animal was deliberately provoked, say by hunting it.
@John I literally gave you the names of two books. Twice. And then gave you one more. And you refuse to look at the other accounts listed in these sources that corroborate it, instead focusing on a narrow, very strange interpretation of one account from the source that isn't shared by other scholars. If both of you are going to argue this dishonestly, then I really don't have any time for this.
@user2352714 ...Yes, there is a correlation to the irregular distribution. That correlation is partly biological, partly cultural and partly economical. That doesn't equate at all to saying people would just as easily be farming pandas and is a very rude misinterpretation of what I've been saying. I've tried to explain this interconnection, perhaps insufficiently, but I've got to be honest this conversation has really worn on me and strawmanning me like that is, pun maybe intended, the last straw and really not something I need at this moment.
Discussion on answer by Thesaurus Rex…
Discussion on answer by Thesaurus Rex…