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.
---
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
I view it as a kind of equilibrium.
Oxymoron.
Actually the two are very different. The only similarities is that they look somewhat similar (in the same way a wolf may look like a dog) and that they share a common evolutionary ancestor.
Male Zebra have fighting fangs (yep, you read that right). They are extremely aggresive and are quite adept at biting (a zebra that is trying to fight off other males so it can mate, or one that is fending off a predator, does much more than a horse does ....much more than flashing hooves and neighing ....think flashing hooves and slashing teeth). While such tactics are nothing to a lion they can give a person sufficient body alteration to spawn instant conversations at a thousand Christmas parties and bar outings.
There was a movie called 'Sheena: Queen of the Jungle' (your typical 1980's b-flick about some Tarzan-esque woman who can speak to animals and all that jazz), and in it Sheena was riding a Zebra. Well, it was actually a painted horse. They tried Zebra, but they quickly discovered it was far more prudent to take the time to paint a horse rather than risking losing the arm of their leading lady.
Comparing a zebra and a horse is like comparing a highschool amateur wrestler with a Ukranian combat Sambo master ....they are both grapplers, but they are also several light years apart.
Am I saying Zebra cannot be tamed? No! Any animal can be 'tamed' to some extent. It is just that the comparative risks between taming even the wildest stallion (and there are risks, especially when a fool and a wild horse come together) versus trying to tame your standard Zebra (PARTICULARLY the males) is quite substantial. A bucking bronco and a biting zebra are at two very different pay grades.
"Am I saying Zebra cannot be tamed? No! Any animal can be 'tamed' to some extent. It is just that the comparative risks between taming even the wildest stallion (and there are risks, especially when a fool and a wild horse come together) versus trying to tame your standard Zebra (PARTICULARLY the males) is quite substantial. A bucking bronco and a biting zebra are at two very different pay grades."
It is true that the zebra and a wild horse have different temperments that may affect domestication. However, keep in mind that the current wild horse was derived from domesticated horses brought over from Europe and escaped. There were no horses in north America at the time of Columbus. The ancestral wild horses may have had temperments closer to the Zebra. I agree it would be very difficult to tame/domesticate full grown wild zebras. It would be much easier to start with captured young or orphaned zebra and raise them away from the herd. You then select for mild temperment over many generations. Theoretically it should be possible to domesticate virtually any wild animal you can get to breed in captivity. Of course some would be more difficult than others and the price of failure more severe with a tiger than a cow. Maybe that's why we drink cow's milk instead of tiger milk.
Egypt is considered the first nation state, Sumer had the first city states, but they were not united until Saron from Akkad in about 2300 BC or so.
Obviously, you forgot to post the link to Taby Tote cat carrier for only $16.95
Cats think humans are just warm furnature.
A suggestion from another Free Republic thread today: lampreys.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.