The Intimate Bond

by Brian Fagan

  We also ignore the extent to which nonhuman animals have complex social lives and relationships with other individual beasts. Chimpanzees and wolves have intricate social lives, as do many other species. Witness the discomfort sheep feel when separated from their flock. Yet we persist in talking of such behaviors as “instinct.” As the Cro-Magnons of twenty thousand years ago fully realized, animals are not inanimate creatures that one can mold for one’s own purposes. And as Singer points out, “having given up the role of tyrant, we should not try to play God either.”18

  Singer and others have argued that it’s indefensible to discriminate against living things purely on the basis of the species to which they belong. It’s just like discrimination on the basis of race. Animals have interests, and these interests are not necessarily ones that are beneficial to people. The practice of raising and killing animals for food is deeply ingrained in today’s industrial societies and involves very powerful and affluent vested interests. Nevertheless, animal liberation groups have made significant gains in recent years. Veal crates (containers that severely restrict the movement of calves through their short lifetimes) are now illegal in the United Kingdom. Battery cages (cages that prevent free movement) for chickens are outlawed in the Netherlands and Switzerland; Sweden has proposals for a complete ban on any devices that prevent animals from moving around freely. Unfortunately, there have been relatively few gains in the United States.

  In the final analysis, we humans have the power to oppress other species, to exploit the domesticated animals that helped shape our history. Animals cannot, of course, protest their treatment or vote, as people can. This leaves us humans with the responsibility, with a wrenching dilemma that pits morality and altruism against ruthless exploitation and self-interest. Will we continue on a course that is morally indefensible? Herein lies the question of questions for the future of the enduring, ever-changing relationship between people and animals. At present, most animals are our servants, to be exploited, eaten, and handled in ways that suit our needs and not those of the eight varied beasts that were once our equal partners on earth and that changed history.

  Acknowledgments

  I live surrounded by a menagerie of beasts—cats, a horse, mosquito fish, turtles, and rabbits—for my wife and daughter are serious animal people. Indeed, I’m known in local rabbit circles as the “Bunny Husband.” This book began amid the ever-changing crosscurrents of our animals. They have taught me just how complex our relationships with them can be. The book also stems from the passionate urgings of Susan Rabiner, my much-esteemed agent, who first encouraged me to look at history from the perspective of animals as much as people. Two years later, I emerged from a morass of diverse sources and numerous conversations with a complex, fascinating, and surprisingly little-known story, very different from the simpler tale I originally had in mind. From the beginning, I decided to attempt a global book with an international compass, even if most of the emphasis is on the Old World, not the Americas—for obvious reasons. When planning the book, I decided from the outset that I would write a purely historical account, which would not be distracted by the passionate debates about animal rights of today. These controversies receive daily airing in the media and are much covered by authors with very diverse viewpoints. The roots of today’s activism and concern often lie in little-remembered events that unfolded in the past, especially over the past two centuries. My objective has been to write a straightforward and, I hope, entertaining historical story that provides a context for our ambivalence over animals in the twenty-first century.

  I’ve attempted to write history that draws on a broad range of disciplines, ranging from archaeology and molecular biology to history, cuneiform studies, animal behavior, and medieval manuscripts—to mention only a few. Herein lies the fascination of what turned into a complex historical jigsaw puzzle. This is a history peopled with agreement and disagreement, with remarkable characters, and above all, with the eight animals that transformed our history. I am of course responsible for the accuracy and conclusions of this book, and, doubtless, I will hear in short order from those kind, often anonymous individuals who enjoy pointing out errors large and small. Let me thank them in advance.

  The research for this book involved threads of mental inquiry collected over a lifetime as an archaeologist. I found my African experience especially valuable, for I was lucky to live among subsistence farmers and to spend time among game herds a half century ago, experiences that profoundly colored my perspectives on the past. To drink beer with an Ila chief in central Zambia, who grazed dozens of cattle on the nearby Kafue River Flats, was an unforgettable lesson in the realities of subsistence herding. To walk among lechwe antelope and impala in the wild, to have elephants walk through my camp at dawn, were experiences that gave me a sense of the intimacy between hunter and hunted. I realize now that this story was maturing in my mind long before Susan suggested that I write it.

  The book draws on an enormous academic literature, much of it obscure in the extreme, often contradictory, occasionally brilliantly insightful. As is inevitable, it involves the research of dozens of scholars. Years of discussions with colleagues in many disciplines have also contributed to the story, but they extend back so far that I cannot possibly remember them all. Please forgive me if I offer only a collective thank-you. I’m deeply grateful for your insights, criticism, and encouragement. Special thanks are due to Mitch Allen, Gojko Barjamovic, Nadia Durrani, Barbara Fillion, Charles Higham, Danielle Kurin, David Mattingly, Susan Keech McIntosh, Fiona Marshall, George Michaels, Richard Nelson, James Ngato, Thijs Porck, Harriet Ritvo, Stuart Smith, Alex Wilson, the late professors Desmond Clark and Grahame Clark (no relation), among many others.

  Susan Rabiner helped develop the idea and is always there for me. The debt that I owe my former editor, Peter Ginna, is enormous. He has breathed on drafts and offered encouragement and deep reservoirs of timely advice. I’ve learned a huge amount about writing from him. This book is as much his as mine. Rob Galloway of Bloomsbury Press edited the manuscript skillfully. My friend Shelly Lowenkopf, himself an author and editor of vast experience, has been at my side since the beginning. We’ve shared moments of triumph and literary despair for many years, and drunk innumerable gallons of coffee in the process. Steve Brown, again an old friend, drew the maps with his usual perception and skill. Last, my gratitude to Lesley and Ana, who have introduced me to the realm of animals at a very special level. Without them or, indeed, our various beasts, this book would never have come into being. And perhaps I should in particular acknowledge the cats, which, as usual, always sit on my keyboard at the wrong moments.

  Notes

  The academic and popular literature surrounding the history of animals, and especially their domestication and behavior, proliferates daily. The specialized literature is a maze of brilliant ideas, controversies, repetition, and downright speculation, enlivened with occasional insightful syntheses. The notes that follow attempt to guide the reader through the morass. Most articles and books cited here have comprehensive bibliographies for those who wish to navigate further through what is often a fascinating, if often obscure, literature.

  Chapter 1: Partnership

  1.Paul Bahn, Cave Art: A Guide to the Decorated Ice Age Caves of Europe (London: Francis Lincoln, 2007), pp. 96–101. A general account of Late Ice Age hunters and their sites appears in my Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).

  2.My discussion is based on Adrian Tanner, Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters (London: C. Hurst, 1979), chapters 6–8. For another compelling example, see Dorothy K. Burnham, To Please the Caribou: Painted Caribou-Skin Coats Worn by the Naskapi, Montagnais, and Cree Hunters of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992). I’m grateful to Dr. Barbara Filion for making perceptive comments on this chapter.

  3.Genesis 1:28.

  4.Ti
m Ingold, “From Trust to Domination: An Alternative History of Human-Animal Relations,” in Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, eds., Animals and Human Society (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 5. The paragraphs that follow draw heavily on this important paper.

  5.The Koyukon description relies on Richard Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), quote from p. 240. Nelson’s ideas are central to much of this chapter.

  6.This section is based on David Lewis-Williams, Seeing and Believing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings (New York: Academic Press, 1981). See also David-Lewis Williams and Sam Challis, Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011). For a description of the figures referred to here, see Harald Pager, Rock Paintings of the Upper Brandberg (Köln: Heinrich Barth Institute, 1989).

  7.Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, p. 17.

  8.Ibid., p. 83.

  9.Ibid., p. 31.

  10.This section is based on Tim Ingold, Hunters, Pastoralists, and Ranchers (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980), chapters 1 and 2.

  11.Samuel Hearne, A Journey from the Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1911), p. 214. Samuel Hearne (1745–1792) was an explorer, naturalist, and fur trader who, while an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was the first European to travel north overland to the Arctic Ocean.

  12.Discussed by Tim Ingold, Hunters, pp. 144ff.

  13.Hussein A. Isack, “The Role of Culture, Traditions and Local Knowledge in Co-Operative Honey-Hunting between Man and Honeyguide: A Case Study of Boran Community of Northern Kenya,” in N. J. Adams and R. H. Slotow, eds., Proceedings of the 22nd International Ornithological Congress, Durban (1999), pp. 1351–57. See also H. A. Isack and H-U. Reyer, “Honeyguides and Honey Gatherers: Interspecific Communication in a Symbiotic Relationship,” Science 243, no. 4896 (1989): 1343–46. For honeyguides generally, see Herbert Friedmann, The Honeyguides: U.S. National Museum Bulletin (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1955). The image of a honeyguide even appeared on a Kenyan postage stamp in 1993.

  Chapter 2: Curious Neighbors and Wolf-dogs

  1.The literature is huge. This chapter draws heavily on two sources: Darcy F. Morey, Dogs: Domestication and the Development of a Social Bond (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and James Serpell, The Domestic Dog in Evolution: Behavior and Interaction (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Both are critical syntheses of archaeological and biological research on dogs, and of earlier literature on the subject.

  2.K. Dobney and G. Larson, “Genetics and Animal Domestication: New Windows on an Elusive Process,” Journal of Zoology 269, no. 2 (2006): 261–71. The quote is from p. 267.

  3.Fagan, Cro-Magnon, p. 3.

  4.A nice summary of Big Bad Wolf in popular culture appears at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bad_Wolf, where the Sesame Street reference occurs. Other wolf tales include “Little Red Riding Hood,” which appears in Brothers Grimm. See Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwards, Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Amazon: Create Space Independent Publishing Program, 2012). There are, of course, many other versions of evil wolf stories, among them Aesop’s fables and the immortal Russian tale “Peter and the Wolf.”

  5.Account based on David Mech, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (New York: Random House, 2012).

  6.Morey, Dogs, p. 75. These paragraphs are based on chapter 4 of this work.

  7.See also discussion in ibid., pp. 27–29.

  8.There is a rapidly proliferating literature on early dog domestication in Europe and on “dog-wolves.” Among the latest papers is Pat Shipman, “How Do You Kill 86 Mammoths? Taphonomic Investigations of Mammoth Megasites,” Quaternary International 30 (2014): 1–9. See also Mietje Germonpré et al., “Palaeolithic Dogs and the Early Domestication of the Wolf,” Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013): 786–92.

  9.Raymond and Laura Coppinger, Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

  10.Morey, Dogs, p. 80.

  11.The literature is growing rapidly. Two useful papers (among many): G. Larson et al., “Rethinking Dog Domestication by Integrating Genetics, Archeology, and Biogeography,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109 (2012): 8878–83, doi: 10.1073. Also C. Vila et al., “Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog,” Science 276 (1997): 1687–89, doi: 10.1126/science.276.5319.1687.

  Chapter 3: Cherished Companions

  1.Description and discussion in Morey, Dogs, p. 24ff.

  2.Norbert Benecke, “Studies on Early Dog Remains from Northern Europe,” Journal of Archaeological Science 14, no. 1 (1987): 31–49.

  3.E. P. Murchison et al., “Transmissible Dog Cancer Genome Reveals the Origin and History of an Ancient Cell Lineage,” Science 343, no. 6169 (2014): 437, doi: 10.1126/science.1247167.

  4.Summary in Fagan, Cro-Magnon, chapter 12.

  5.S. P. Day, “Dogs, Deer, and Diet at Star Carr,” Journal of Archaeological Science 23, no. 5 (1996): 783–87.

  6.Morey, Dogs, pp. 80ff, summarizes the evidence.

  Chapter 4: Down on the First Farms

  1.This passage draws on M. Rosenburg et al., “Hallan Çemi, Pig Husbandry, and Post-Pleistocene Adaptations along the Taurus-Zagros Arc (Turkey),” Paléorient 24, no. 1 (1998): 25–41.

  2.A charming general account of pigs is Lyall Watson, The Whole Hog (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2004).

  3.Peter D. Dwyer, “Boars, Barrows, and Breeders: The Reproductive Status of Domestic Pig Populations in Mainland New Guinea,” Journal of Anthropological Research 52 (1996): 481–500.

  4.A general survey: Keith Dobney et al., “The Origins and Spread of Stock-Keeping,” in Sue Colledge et al., eds., The Origins and Spread of Domestic Animals in Southwest Asia and Europe (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013), pp. 17–26. See also Benjamin S. Arbuckle et al., “The Evolution of Sheep and Goat Husbandry in Central Anatolia,” Anthropozoologica 44, no. 1 (2009): 129–57. Comprehensive bibliographies appear in both these papers.

  5.John Mionczynski, The Pack Goat (Portland, OR: Westwinds Press, 1992).

  6.Juliet Clutton-Brock, Animals as Domesticates (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2012), provides an excellent regional summary of domestication, used for this chapter. For genetics, see Susana Pedrosa et al., “Evidence of Three Maternal Lineages in Near Eastern Sheep Supporting Multiple Domestication Events,” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences 272, no. 1577 (2005): 2211–17. See also M. A. Zeder, “Central Questions in the Domestication of Plants and Animals,” Evolutionary Anthropology 15, no. 3 (2006): 105–17.

  7.A. J. Legge and P. A. Rowley-Conwy, “Gazelle Killing in Stone Age Syria,” Scientific American 255, no. 8 (1987): 88–95. Also Guy Bar-Oz et al., “Role of Mass-Kill Hunting Strategies in the Extirpation of the Persian Gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) in the Northern Levant,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 18 (2011): 7345–50.

  8.Sir Richard Burton, The Lands of Midian (Revisited), Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1879), p. 293.

  9.This section is based on Benjamin S. Arbuckle et al., “The Evolution of Sheep and Goat Husbandry,” Anthropozoologica 44, no. 1 (2009): 129–57.

  10.M. A. Zeder, “Animal Domestication in the Zagros: An Update and Directions for Future Research,” in E. Vila et al., eds., Archaeozoology of the Near East VIII (Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 2008), pp. 243–78.

  Chapter 5: Working Landscapes

  1.Francis Pryor, Farmers in Prehistoric Britain, 2nd ed. (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2006), combines both Pryor’s lifetime of archaeological fieldwork with his sheep farming experience.

  2.A summary appears in Francis Pryor, Fengate (Botley, UK: Shire Publications, 1982). A series of technical reports published subsequently describe the excavat
ions. The references can be accessed online. Christopher Evans et al., Fengate Revisited (Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2009), is a reappraisal.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Francis Pryor, Flag Fen: Life and Death of a Prehistoric Landscape (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2005).

  5.J-D. Vigne et al., “Early Taming of the Cat in Cyprus,” Science 304, no. 9 (2004): 259. The earliest-known Egyptian cats are burials of two adults and four kittens from at least two litters deposited in a cemetery at Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), which served as the capital of Upper Egypt before unification in about 3100 BCE. The burials date to between 3800 and 3600 BCE. Wim Van Neer et al., “More Evidence for Cat Taming at the Predynastic Elite Cemetery at Hierakonpolis (Upper Eygpt),” Journal of Archaeological Science 45, no. 1 (2014): 103–11.

  6.Jaromir Malek, The Cat in Ancient Egypt, rev ed. (London: British Museum Press, 2006).

  7.Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, volume 1, trans. C. H. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 1:83, 1:5.

  8.Roy Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors, 2nd ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000).

  Chapter 6: Corralling the Aurochs

  1.Julius Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul, trans. Jane Gardner (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1982), p. 47.

  2.Temple Grandin, Humane Livestock Handling (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2008).

  3.A prolific literature surrounds cattle domestication: P. Ajmone-Marsan et al., “On the Origin of Cattle: How Aurochs Became Cattle and Colonized the World,” Evolutionary Anthropology 19, no. 4 (2010): 148–57; M. D. Teasdale and D. G. Bradley, “The Origins of Cattle,” Bovine Genomics 5 (2012): 1–10. See also Ruth Bullongino et al., “Modern Taurine Cattle Descended from Small Number of Near-Eastern Founders,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 29, no. 9 (2012): 2101–4. Most recently, Jared E. Decker et al., “Worldwide Patterns of Ancestry, Divergence, and Admixture in Domesticated Cattle,” PLOS Genetics 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004254 (2014).