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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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"More wives, more children" is a sign of virility which is indeed a kind of "success" but the movers 'n' shakers in the Middle East as elsewhere don't have massive families; that's a sign of poverty not wealth.
People had to be exhorted by their religious scriptures to multiply, which makes one suspect the plebs weren't carrying out their duties sufficiently. Do you of all people lend credence to the stories surrounding various mythical kings/sultans/moguls and their prodigious feats of multiplying the human race?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| It's also Mick's idea. original, so far as I know. |
This is the first time I've ever heard the suggestion that cheetahs were bred to hunt...
Mick has indeed proposed that animals were bred to perform specific tasks which isn't original though he's carried it further, much further than anyone else, by arguing that what we regard as wild animals carrying out apparently "natural" activities were in fact trained by humans (beavers and dams for example).
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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| Deer can't be rounded up like sheep can they? (Saami herders don't use dogs to either hunt or patrol their animals as far as I recall.) |
Sorry to harp on about this...but man could never have herded or indeed domesticated large herbivores without the assistance of dogs. Even today, once you remove motorized vehicles, man has only two ways to herd large animals -- he either enlists the help of dogs...or climbs on horseback and mimics the tactics of the dog himself.
And don't forget the horse itself needed to be herded and domesticated in the first place...you can bet your life the dog had a hand (or rather a paw) in that.
Do you think it a coincidence that man, who had spent eons splashing about in nice warm water, could rapidly and independently invent a herding culture so similar to that of the wolf, once he found himself sharing the wolf's environment?
Man and dog was the most successful symbiotic relationship that ever there was.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| People had to be exhorted by their religious scriptures to multiply |
Origins-of-mankind scripture always seems to be about origins-of-agriculture-and-civilisation, so "multiply and fill the Earth" sounds like a story of the (sudden) conversion of wilderness into rural countryside: an unprecedented demand and opportunity for labour.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| man could never have herded or indeed domesticated large herbivores without the assistance of dogs. |
Right on, brother. Not that he ever herded wild herbivores -- herds of domesticated animals will have been farmed out from the cities, just as amber waves of grain would later be.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Do you think it a coincidence that man, who had spent eons splashing about in nice warm water, could rapidly and independently invent a herding culture so similar to that of the wolf, once he found himself sharing the wolf's environment?
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A pack culture, consisting of leader and followers. It's an interesting thought, that human society may owe its structure to wolf packs. Wolves go in for hunting rather than herding but presumably aggressiveness can be bred out.
| Man and dog was the most successful symbiotic relationship that ever there was. |
Indeed. Man replaced the pack leader (dog trainers insist that dog-owners must be top dog if they want manageable pets).
| The summer dog was an excellent edge dog, who without difficulties could search an area for lost reindeers and gather the scattered herd, while the winter dog was a more enduring dog. He had stronger legs and thicker fur in order to force the herd forward. Of course there were also those that were equally good in summer and winter. |
Reindeer/caribou are one of the few (only?) deer species to undertake large-scale seasonal migrations. It's funny, I always thought people followed the herds/food sources in order to survive but it looks like reindeer might have been trained to go where people wanted instead. They were no doubt selected as being particularly sturdy.
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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| Wolves go in for hunting rather than herding but presumably aggressiveness can be bred out. |
The wolf.s hunting technique involves quite a lot of herding. They will follow herds for weeks on end and when they need to make a kill, certain individuals are employed to run the flanks to prevent the herd from scattering before a victim has been selected. It.s precisely this herding behaviour that has been selected for in collies and the like.
One of my dogs, a Border Collie pup, already demonstrates this instinctive ability...you should see her herd the grandkids. - - (My other dog, a Staffie, has tool making skills on a par with any chimp. But that.s another story.)
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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| Not that he ever herded wild herbivores -- herds of domesticated animals will have been farmed out from the cities |
I'd never thought about it, but that makes so much sense...especially in the case of goats, sheep and pigs (not to mention fowl). - - But I can see valid reasons why people would leave the cities, for periods at least, to herd large wild herbivores...if only to drive them back to corrals near the cities for convenient exploitation.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Do not forget the possibility that wolves are domesticated dogs gone feral.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Genetics should be able to settle that one.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We know what happened to one branch of the Cro-Magnons. They stayed on the coastline and, once Asia was open to them, became the Hairy Anu and the Mong of Laos and the Headhunters of New Guinea and the Australian Aborigines. Now how come that arctic shore-dwellers became all-terrain shore-dwellers? And in precisely 35,000 or thereabouts? Well, that's obvious. For the first time in Cro-Magnon's entire history they discovered that "people", ie hominids, didn't need to live near the ice. They didn't need to brain baby-seals (or whatever they had been doing up there for hundreds of thousands of years) they could eat molluscs (or whatever it is that hominids did on temperate sea-shores).
But that branch went nowhere. They stayed in the Stone Age. We are concerned with Human History, with the other branch...the Cro-Magnons, who didn't just observe that "people" ie hominids could happily exist away from the Arctic but that...wait for it...could happily exist away from the sea-shore. That's right, it's just like the jump from amphibians to terrestrial animals...once you know that you don't have to hold on to Mother Sea, all kinds of possibilities open up.
If we apply the principle of What is is what was we arrive at this position.
1. The only truly polar culture is the Esquimaux whom we have good reason to suppose are (or are the cultural equivalent of) the original Cro-Magnon.
2. The only other polar-oriented culture are the Lapps.
3. The Lapps appear also to be both culturally and genetically linked to the Esquimaux. (Somebody check out links between Sami and Innuit languages...I've never bothered.)
4. So let us gently and provisionally assume that the Lapps are the Cro-Magnon who went "across country".
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Oakey Dokey
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The Lapp are a mix of clans and languages all closely linked to each other and very closely linked to the Canadian/Alaskan Esquimaux. They have similar techniques and beliefs in the afterlife etc etc. The Lapp are a genetically independent group from all other Europeans and quite distant from Asian.
They have long been thought 'inferior' to other invading groups because of their simplistic life style.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Lapps/Sami, unlike Esquimaux, have semi-domesticated their reindeer herds, though I don't know how recently. Within the community which, as Oakey says, is regarded with something approaching disdain by other groups, there exists a pecking order and the reindeer herders are at the top, above the mere fishermen for example.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Hatty wrote: | Within the community which, as Oakey says, is regarded with something approaching disdain by other groups, there exists a pecking order and the reindeer herders are at the top, above the mere fishermen for example. |
Yes. Just like Knights are above foot soldiers. All over the world, the aristocrats were associated with the animals used for rapid transportation. Why? Because the Neanderthals of Asia/ Europe/ Africa were exclusive pedestrians. The Cro-Mags rode into battle with these giants and, when they got tired, hopped back into their chariots and rode away. To be a pedestrian was to be something less than...human.
The Neandertals never learned to domesticate animals -- certainly not horses.
Aristocratic families the world over are all descendents of horse-breeders.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Of course, the whole thing got started with the domestication of the dog which was the ONE animal that the Eskimos of old had domesticated. And the dog was used exactly as it is used today -- to drag sleds across the frozen north.
But the only thing a dog can pull is a small sled and it can only be pulled across frozen ground. Anyone relying on the dog for transportation is permanently tied to the north.
When the Eskimo encountered Neanderthal, the Eskimo learned the art of fire and stone, which empowered them to exploit caribou as a food source. That's all those tools did. But the involvement of dog-domesticating Eskimo with Caribou spelled doom for the Neanderthals because, at some point, some Eskimo got the bright idea of doing to the caribou in Asia what they had been doing to the dog back in Canada.
That gave the the final technological edge to enter Neanderthal territory and eliminate the old world Hominids. They hooked up Caribou to their sleds. The sleds got bigger. Entire Cro-Mag armies could be moved southward during the winter months in their new armoured personnel carriers.
And once they owned a few hundred miles of inland territory and found themselves stuck there during the summer months, they noticed the horses grazing in the area and thought "Hmmm....I wonder if these are just caribou without antlers?"
And someone invented the wheel.
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