Posted on 10/23/2006 12:00:01 PM PDT by blam
Domestication event: Why the donkey and not the zebra?
By Eric Hand
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(MCT)
ST. LOUIS - A few years ago, Egyptologists found a new Pharaonic burial site more than 5,000 years old. They opened up a tomb.
"They're expecting to find nobles, the highest courtiers," said Washington University archaeologist Fiona Marshall. "And what do they find? Ten donkey skeletons."
"The ancient Egyptian burial shows how highly valued (donkeys) were for the world's first nation state. After the horse came, they became lower status. Of course, they're the butt of jokes and all the rest of it. That has to do with the name mostly."
Hee haw. Marshall wants to know how the donkey was domesticated from the Somali wild ass. By traveling around the world, searching for bones in London museums and African deserts, she hopes to pinpoint the time and place of this event, which Marshall says was as revolutionary as the invention of the steam engine.
She also hopes to understand why the ass was domesticated and not, say, the zebra.
Animal domestication events are rare in human history. Of 148 land-dwelling mammals that weigh more than 100 pounds, only 14 were domesticated. These animals tend to have certain characteristics, like a strong hierarchy. That allows humans to slip in atop the order. Calm, social and non-territorial animals also made good candidates.
Yet wild asses - stubborn, territorial, flighty - have none of these characteristics. "That is the conundrum. By all the rules of domestication, they're not at all suitable," Marshall said.
Marshall is working with St. Louis Zoo researcher Cheryl Asa to understand how asses breed and behave in captivity, which could provide clues as to how they were turned into donkeys.
The St. Louis Zoo has five wild asses. Only a few dozen are kept in North American zoos, and only a few thousand cling to war-torn lands in Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia, where the zoo is funding conservation work.
While the vicious and flighty zebra has resisted domestication even by modern biologists, the ass was somehow domesticated in these lands at least 6,000 years ago, according to Marshall.
Pinpointing domestication events is a challenge. Marshall looks for subtle things to distinguish donkey and ass bones, like arthritis in a shoulder bone - evidence of a pack-laden animal.
The events are important to archaeologists because they have huge historical implications. Domesticated plants and animals let farmers stockpile food in a more predictable way, said Melinda Zeder, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History.
"Domestication around the world has certainly been an incredible lever for human change," she said.
In one theory, the large number of domesticated plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent of the ancient Near East spread easily across the east-west axis of Eurasia. In his Pulitzer-prize winning book "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond credits that for the eventual dominance of European powers.
Marshall said, "It helps us understand the trajectory that's been taken to the modern world. The places that are wealthy and powerful today had good conditions for domestication long ago."
But in Africa, something different happened, she said. Few plants were domesticated. Africans did domesticate cattle and donkeys, but that didn't encourage an intensive, settled agriculture. Instead, a herding culture thrived. Donkeys were the engines that moved men, women and children from pasture to pasture with their cattle and belongings.
Pastoralism is dying in the modern world as intensive, agricultural societies prevail economically. But Marshall says donkeys still have an important role to play.
Mules, the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, are used for agriculture the world over and renowned for their endurance. Miniature mules are now popular as pets. And donkeys are making a comeback as transportation for eco-tourists in southeastern Europe, Marshall said.
"The donkey is a gift that Africa had for the world," she said.
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The estimated date and place for animal domestication changes as archaeologists find new evidence.
Animal_When_Where
Dog_13,000 B.C._Asia, Europe
Pig_10,000 B.C._Near East
Sheep, Goat_9,000 B.C._Near East, South Asia
Cattle_8,000 B.C._Near East
Cat_7,000 B.C._Europe
Donkey_4,000 B.C._Africa
Horse_3,000 B.C._Central Asia
A horse and a zebra are essentially the same animal. If europeans could domesticate one, the africans should have been able to domesticate the other. Jared Diamond's argument that Africa lacked domesticatable species was utter nonsense.
I knew that would rile the cat crowd.
lol sorry...it's just that the ones my calico's brought home have been babies. i can empathize with you, however. i live rurally but my mom lives 'in town' (which is still rural). every spring she'd spend hundreds of dollars at the nursery only to find all her pretty things ravaged by peter cotton tail and friends. i don't yet have a garden as i'm concentrating on readying my donkeys for breeding next year. i have 3 sicilian jennies and a jack.
i guess i'm still a softy at heart for the cute and cuddly looking. note, i said 'looking'. i had a pet rabbit a few years ago. she went 'adios' after going 'apey' & attacking me twice and lunging at my then-toddlers. the trophies my cat's brought home have either been laid upon my doorstep or under the wheels of my truck where i can't see them. it's usually upon my return home that i find the evidence of the kill in the driveway....but i've been the one responsible for some of the 'mutilations' ...i.e. squooshed guts & brain matter. not a pleasant site when you're about to prepare steak and mashed potatoes, you know.
not a cat person at all, really. got my first cat last year and my second one before x'mas. mostly out of necessity as we keep horses and donks and have a barn close enough to the house that cats were necessary to keep mickey & minnie from playing house in our house or where we keep the feed.
Cats aren't domesticated; they decided to live with people because we attract good things to eat, like mice. Of course, we've completely misunderstood this and now feed them directly, but that's OK with the cats, too.
With dogs you get devotion; with cats you get mutual utility and, possibly, friendship between equals.
I once adopted a feral farm cat (and her surviving kittens). They all got plenty to eat, after they moved in with me, but the mother continued to kill mice. I once estimated that she was averaging at least 5 mice a day, from the fields around the house. I never saw any evidence that she was eating them.
i thought the same thing! lol the democrats really need to change their party mascot to something a little more in line with their personality. my donks are brave, strong, and extremely courageous as well as loyal & loving. they don't "cut & run" either. any suggestions on what could be defined as a cowardly animal to replace the donkey mascot?
The Democrats didn't choose their own mascot. It was assigned to them by a Republican, newspaper, comic artist, in the 19th century. I think it was in the 1870s.
Isn't there substantial evidence of dogs living with Neandertals? More than 40,000 years ago?
Well, not exactly.
A zebra is to a horse what a wolf is to a dog.
Is a wolf a dog?
Well, yes, in a way.
But no, you can't really domesticate them.
Yes, there are people who keep wolves as pets. It's a really bad idea. The wolf, if it grows up as a puppy, can beocme very attached to the household, but it's not a dog. It's a wolf, and it's never very comfortable around other people. It looks like a dog, maybe a husky, but it doesn't ACT like a dog. It's not friendly. It's extremely protective of the family, and it's a dangerous beast inside the house. No, not (necessarily) dangerous to the family it loves and is part of, but dangerous to everybody else, including invited guests.
Wolf puppies are like bear cubs: they are playful and friendly, but grow up to be wolves and bears. Maybe they like YOU, but they do not like our SPECIES; dogs do. Zebras are probably like that.
In Genesis 43.17, Joseph's brothers are afraid that the Egyptians will enslave them, "and take our donkeys too."
I think a long time ago the Democrat symbol (to help illiterate voters cast their ballots) was a rooster, before the cartoon jackass caught on.
all the more reason for them to make a change. i think the artist was being too kind. *natch, natch, wink*. when i look at my donks, i don't see cowardly creatures. quite the opposite. i'm leaning toward pollyannaish's suggestion. but those are hard to find. lol
Humans did not domesticate the cat. The cat domesticated humans. I daily serve as a cat doorman, a cat foodserver and food provider, a cat chaser (stimulation), medical provider, ad infinitum. And I don't mind -- he keeps me greatly entertained.
Jared Diamond's entire book was utter anti-western nonsense, how else could it have won him a Pulitzer?
"Well, not exactly.
A zebra is to a horse what a wolf is to a dog. "
Dogs are derived from wolves that were domesticated thousands of years ago. The horse and zebra were probably the same species a hundred thousand years ago. Zebras today are probably much like Horses were when they were first domesticated. Over time with selective breeding, desirable traits are enhanced and the species diverge. I bet ancient Europeons would have no more trouble domesticating the Zebra than the original horse.
Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
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