Chapter 4 two goats

animals that changed human history ★What the gods think of it Back when mythology was first created, especially in ancient Greece, even the gods had surnames.Dionysus, the god of wine, was originally named Dionysus.Dionysus Aegobolus, meaning sheep killer, may have come from the fact that Dionysus was the patron saint in charge of vineyards, and goats were notorious for destroying vines.The full name of Hera, the wife of God, is Hera.Hera Aegophagus (Hera Aegophagus), meaning the one who eats sheep; the god Zeus.Zeus Aegiduchos got his name because he was raised by a goat.Some stories describe how Zeus later copulated with a goat and thus gave birth to Aegipan, the father of the shepherd Pan.In addition, goats are chosen as sacrifices to worship Aphrodite, the god of love, Apollo, the sun god, Artemis, the goddess of hunting, and Asclepius, the god of medicine. Asclepius, Dionysus, the god of wine, Helios, the god of the sun, Hermes, the god of cattle, sheep and merchant travel, the Nymphs, and the great Zeus .

★The origin of domesticated animals? This famous animal in ancient legends may be the first animal raised by humans.Goats entered human life around 12,000 to 15,000 years ago during the Mesolithic period at the end of the last ice age, when human evolution entered a pre-agricultural period.This was an important event, perhaps no other event or achievement could have been more important in its contribution to the direction of human history. Apart from goats, the only livestock that humans have kept in the cold in pre-agricultural times are dogs, reindeer, and sheep.However, based on the sheep bones found and their age, we can judge that goats may be the first animal raised by humans.Reindeer and ibex have no overlapping ranges, and meat-eating dogs are so different that their skeletons should not be confused, but sheep are a different story.In the absence of skull and horns, the bones of goats and sheep are very difficult to distinguish, sometimes not at all, especially the long bones, so that we cannot draw any conclusions from the osteological evidence.Still, goats are considered by many to be the first species domesticated by humans; at least, it's at least the second, after sheep.In whatever order the dog came into being about that time, it was never far from man, and still holds the same place today.However, it has always been a mystery when humans began to breed dogs. The various claims about its origin in the past may be neither grounded nor conventional, but just an expedient statement.

Today, there are approximately three to four billion goats around humans; after dogs, goats are the most widely distributed domestic animal.Since it is almost the earliest domestic animal and is now the most widespread animal, it has played an important role in human development, if not among the most ubiquitous food animals on earth. Goats are often thought of as the poor man's cow, because they can survive where other animals are unlikely to survive, and they can eat bitter, fragrant plants that other species don't eat.In addition, goats can go to high-altitude areas that other animals cannot reach to graze, and they can adapt to a wide range of temperatures, almost the same as humans. Therefore, humans can expand their range of activities by using the meat and milk provided by goats. until desert or mountainous areas.

Goats are very prolific (gestation period is one hundred and fifty days, and ewes usually breed every year), and what's more, even small children can easily manage them.Goat milk is highly nutritious and easy to digest, and is often reserved for infants and the infirm; they were probably the first animals humans learned to express, a major advance for humans, although this development may have occurred during Dairy cows did not step out until thousands of years after they became domestic animals.In any case, goats provide human milk, meat, and fibers for shelter and shelter, and their hides are used to make clothes and lightweight waterproof containers (very important in dry areas), and in the era before the so-called civilization In ancient times, they were also used as offerings to the gods.In many regions, goats are still considered currency, given as dowries to young girls, and the basic unit of buying and selling.Of course, almost all domestic animals for food and fiber provide the above functions.

★Early association Before humans began to raise animals and later breed livestock, they had to establish some kind of relationship with animals.The basic condition for humans to turn animals into assets is that humans and animals should be familiar with each other and both come from the same habitat.It is understood that humans have never gone to strange places to find exotic animals to raise.This possibility is extremely low. Humans and wild goats have been living together naturally for thousands of years.Try to think about it, as long as humans are flexible enough, humans can easily catch goats that are less than three days old, and then think about the tendency of humans to keep pets, and the innate maternal instinct of women, then we can easily understand, How the connection between man and goat began.However, exactly where, when, and by which tribe, culture, or lineage the husbandry of goats began is still unknown.

As for the cause of raising animals, it may come from the relationship between humans and totem animals.Many cultures have had totem animals that were forbidden to be killed lest they incur dire retribution, for example, if the wild goat was the totem of a tribe (the myths associated with it must be rich and deep and should have been around for a long time), at least it was There is no danger among these people, but it also loses the sense of fear of these people.In this way, although humans may not have intended to raise animals, the connection between humans and goats developed naturally.This should be regarded as a windfall (and this windfall has a lot to do with what happened to other species later).A primitive relationship just happened so naturally; totemization may be the first step for humans to raise animals.

★Theory of Cuteness One of the unsolved mysteries of all husbandry is the idea of ​​breeding.With no concept of genetics, how do humans know how to conduct selective breeding, or even interfere with the process?The answer is actually not hard to imagine, probably because humans usually like to keep and trade animals that they want or have fascinating characteristics for a long time.Except during times of famine, these animals are usually not slaughtered indiscriminately like other animals. In contrast, they will reproduce more young generations, and these offspring also have the same fascinating characteristics. These traits will continue to be strengthened until they are fixed. down.Once we know the probable age of early domesticated animals, and consider the degree of sophistication exhibited by Mesolithic human artifacts, we can see that anthropic breeding was apparently largely by chance.During the first millennium when humans allied themselves with goats, and later with other animals, improvements in captivity should have developed slowly later.

Therefore, when we refer to skeletons found on archaeological sites, the time required for the evolution of various types and breeds should be taken into account.If we judge and generalize the approximate age of various breeds or species of goats or other domestic animals by carbon dating, laminar radiography, or other standards of time, we find that, at least in the thousands of years of their existence, Years ago, these species were already companions of humans. In the centuries before the age of agriculture, people must have grazed domestic animals freely in the fields.We can speculate that the early animal herders later became herders, and their herding methods should be comparable to the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania today.The shepherd must constantly find food and water for the animals, whereas the animals feed the humans and give them status.Shepherds do not provide archaeologists with a reference point like city dwellers; the whole world is their midden.So we still don't know for sure how long it took for domesticated animals to evolve, or whether humans were involved.

★Ibex In today's Pakistan there is a place called Sindh, which was originally a province of India with an area of ​​about 48,136 square miles. The capital is in Karachi, and its southwest faces Arabia. To the west and north are Baluchistan and Punjab, to the south is the vast Rann of Kutch, and to the east is Rajasthan in India.Much of the Faith is mountainous and dry, a rugged land of deserts, hills, and verdant river valleys, the eastern limit of the prehistoric wild goat range.From there, the range of goats extends north and west, passing through Persia, across most of Asia Minor, across Crete, and to the 220 islands known as the Cyclades in the west. The islands, scattered across the Aegean Sea between the Peloponnesus Peninsula and the Dodecanese, cover an area of ​​more than 996 square miles.

The breeding of goats into domestic animals by humans took place somewhere in this area, and spread from the local area, and now it has spread all over the world except the polar regions.In fact, husbandry may have occurred at the fringes of the wild goat's range.At the fringes of an ideal or core habitat, animals are more likely to mutate in order to adapt to different habitats.From a biological point of view, they are more prone to change and differentiation, that is, they tend to be domesticated and have their genes changed through natural selection or human selection.Genetic plasticity is actually a marginal benefit.

In ancient times, goats of ever-evolving strains and sizes traveled with humans, and the more difficult the environment that humans experienced, the goats became more and more important; in the history of living with humans, they have only recently become domesticated. Pets of economic importance, and limited to a few near-over-abundant societies.Of the nearly four billion goat households today, the vast majority are critical assets to shepherds, often intermingled with sheep, cattle, horses, donkeys or camels. The scientific name of the domestic goat is Capra hircus, which should include at least two subspecies, one of which is usually reminiscent of Sicily, and the other is the Mamber goat, which originated in Palestine.The main wild ancestor of the domestic goat is the wild goat, which is distributed between Xindi and the Aegean Sea. It is a very resilient animal.Many experts now attribute the lactating breed and the mohair-making breed to the two species of the domestic goat and the Angora sheep, rather than lumping them into the same species.In other words, the genealogy of goats is complex. As for the use of the term ibex, it is not precise enough. It actually includes three species, but there is no ancestor of the domestic sheep.Their distribution range overlaps with wild goats, domestic sheep and humans, but for some reason, ibex has not become one of the livestock animals of humans. A Nubian goat with whom I have a personal relationship has helped rebuild the fauna in Israel.It was found entangled in a barbed wire fence with badly injured legs from struggling.Israeli veterinarians managed to save his life and he was placed at a wildlife sanctuary and breeding ground near the Red Sea called Hai|Bar.Ewes were brought to it from all over Israel, and almost every one was pregnant with its offspring.When I went to take a picture of it, it was really eye-catching to see its broad horns and huge harem of women.Later, its descendants were taken to other reservations in the emerging country, where wild populations were established under strict protection. Although this tall ram has been living in a natural environment with large groups of its own kind, and has not been controlled by humans after recovering from surgery, it has become a docile animal and obviously does not care about the approach of humans.Therefore, it should be easy to domesticate, and it should be equally simple to use it for breeding programs.In fact, it is really used by humans in this way, but these ewes are selected to breed species with the best wild characteristics, rather than considering the benefit to human economy.All in all, this domesticated goat does demonstrate how easily wild goats came under human control thousands of years ago. The story of this glorious wild Nubian goat has a tragic ending.During the Six-Day War, the deafening sonic boom of an Egyptian or Israeli fighter jet flying low over the Seamaster to evade detection terrified the ibex, who was so overwhelmed that it rushed to the ground. It fell into a pile of huge rocks that it was supposed to climb for fun. As a result, it broke its neck and died instantly. ★Our evidence At the end of the Pleistocene, that is, the post-glacial period, Mesolithic hunter/gatherers moved around Syria and Palestine, and even spread across most of the Middle East and Eurasia.At that time, there was a unique Natufian culture (Natufian, [Note]), people would regularly stay in a cave called El︱Khiam in Palestine, thus leaving some clues for studying their way of life .Domestic goats have been around them for at least 10,000 years; scientists currently place these goats between the wild Shizu goats and true domestic animals.At the time, this process had been in progress for some time. 【Note】The Mesolithic civilization discovered in Palestine is about 12,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Not far from here, in Zhelico, the oldest walled city in the world, abandoned remains of goats and shards of pottery were found. (The more objects left behind by ancient humans, the more we can learn about them. From the trash of one culture a doctor of another can be born; things that cavemen threw over their shoulders were later placed in in our museum.) Bones have been found at Zhelico and Elkim, separated by only a few hundred years; at a site on the coast of the Caspian Sea called Belt Cave, and in many places throughout Iran Goat remains from a difference of less than a thousand years.The domesticated scimitar-horn sheep evolved in central Europe about 10,000 years ago, before the beginning of the Neolithic age, and before long, also during the Neolithic age, it became a common animal in northern Europe. In addition to the breeding of domestic goats, the process of raising animals has also advanced, and human beings have been different since then.The goat breaks down the wall of human self-isolation and opens the way for mankind to an infinite future.With goats, travelers can carry food on the road, and even go to sea; humans can thus feed the increasing and concentrated population, and towns and later cities can also grow; what the shepherd has is a precious commodity with its own feet. ;Humans no longer need to carry their own belongings, because the goats will serve him in the front.Many times I have seen a Maasai shepherd walking behind a large herd of goats, whistling softly to control the movement of the goats, and the goats moved almost without hesitation.Usually only two teenagers at most, or even shepherd boys under the age of 13, can control hundreds of goats. The goat guides us to a crossroads where our potential is clearly revealed.The husbandry of goats was the greatest cultural breakthrough ever accomplished by man; henceforth man's evolution was free to move forward, and this progress included a gradual diversification of herding cultures, on which humanity would eventually humblely depend. cultural achievement.This phenomenon has continued until now, and we have no sign of breaking away from this dependence.So husbandry of goats and other species is a double-edged sword that frees us from old dependencies but also creates new limits and constraints on our behaviour, many of which persist even today. ★Fiber Although not as prolific as lactating breeds, Angora sheep can provide the fiber needed for the mohair, and the use of this fiber can be traced back to at least 1200 BC, when the Israelites fled Egypt, but Angora wool became a commercially valuable product in the Ankara province of Turkey only later.Interestingly, the fur sea is not as detailed today as it was in biblical times; in the 19th century, the Turks, eager to make a fortune out of the hair sea, foolishly used the best Angora rams with the poorer, more common ewes. Breeding resulted in a sturdier but coarser-haired hybrid, the ancestor of the Angora as we know it today. In 1881, the Sultan of Turkey carefully guarded the productive rural crafts and banned the export of Angora sheep, but he was still a step too late.Sheep flocks have long been bred in Europe, South Africa, South America, and the United States (dairy goats had already arrived in the Americas with the early settlers of Virginia). The current mohair industry in the United States is concentrated in Texas.The oils obtained from the washings of hair were shipped abroad by large freighters, and because of their lanolin content, they were used in large quantities in the manufacture of cosmetics; many people used these products without knowing that they were made in Moses Manufactured from goat breeds and variants that evolved before the partition of the Red Sea. ★Real war in the world We can imagine that in order to obtain profitable new assets, humans began to domesticate goats far more than they needed for survival; goats are a symbol of wealth, so people hoarded goats in large quantities at that time as they do now. This behavior and other The culture of hoarding wealth in gold and paper money is the same.Goats provided human status and political power, and were an essential item in a bride's dowry; a man's wealth was measured by the number of goats he owned, just as we measure wealth in bank deposits today.There is one big difference, though: gold and paper financial tools don't require us to feed them, but legions of goats desperately need land. Mining and oil wells are minor ecological problems compared to the devastation goats have wrought over the past few thousand years.When the goat brought humans out of the dark cave life, it also brought humans their worst ecological havoc.The number of goats has increased from thousands, to millions, to billions today. They have not only eaten up the vegetation on the surface of the earth, but also changed the appearance of the earth.Goats are probably to blame for most of the climate in the Sahara Desert, as well as in the Mediterranean and southern Europe.North Africa's 3.5 million-square-mile desert is also affected by the tropical storms that periodically hit North America from the South Atlantic Ocean, and this is at least in part due to the previous culture of goat husbandry and the excess of goats Livestock.Greece has long since been depleted of land by goats, as has much of the Middle East.The imprint the goat left on our planet may never be erased. Unidentified stone carvings discovered in remote Wadi Mukateb in the Sinai Peninsula show that the area was home to grassland animals and wetland wildlife before it became a harsh desert environment; On the stone carvings, a large number of goats are depicted.I've wandered among these ruins that have been moved by so many forgotten earthquakes, marveling at the profusion of wild and domestic animals, and wondering if the same goes for the goats. Hanging yourself from a cliff by a rope and noting down certain things that some people have to do must be a very dangerous business.Imagine yourself on a ledge, relying on binoculars to see what's on the ground, and on the sand in a dry river bed, a herd of goats is marching.Is this to investigate the number of sheep?Or count fleets or something?I kept thinking. There were other things going on simultaneously with the husbandry of the goats.After raising goats, in order to protect their own wealth, the predators who were peaceful around them suddenly became sworn enemies; human beings can no longer coexist harmoniously with those animals that he thinks will harm domestic animals. In the end, even animals with hooves became enemies of man simply because they competed with his goats and his wealth and position for food and water.Since man no longer needed to hunt for meat and hides, he would erect barriers around water sources, starve wild animals, or drive them away.For humans, these wild animals are not only useless, but also compete with the domestic animals he raises, so the war between humans and animals begins. Goats don’t really require much from humans, except that humans need to challenge nature and separate goats and humans from their common evolutionary origins.In this way, for the future, we have to pay a very high price.We are constantly struggling to find a balance between our own excesses, the joy and benefit of our livestock, and the dignity of the earth, our habitat.This is indeed a very complicated matter, and far more complicated than we imagined. The raising of goats is one of the most far-reaching actions of human beings, and at the same time, it is also the first big ecological mistake made by human beings.Once humans have goats, goats quickly turn into a kind of power, but humans don't know how to deal with them except to obtain the benefits brought by goats.When human beings only consider profit as the only consideration, losses are inevitable. Crossroads, cities, and universities, which came later, came too late.We have done damage to our planet long before environmental awareness developed, yet the vast majority of goats, the livestock of emerging nations, are among those least appreciative of ecological considerations.Yet even if goat owners around the world understand the impact goats have on the environment, they are still the least likely to respond to the demands of modernity. As for the cultural aspect, since we let the goat come between us and the earth, we must of course live with the consequences.Most of us no longer hunt or gather our own food, so we must rely on goats and other domestic animals to do these things for us.Humans need to eat fruits, vegetables, stone fruits and berries directly from the earth; compared with grasses, reeds, bark and shoots, these foods are relatively delicate and rare, but goats can convert foods that humans cannot access into meat , fiber, milk, leather and money.Today's goats can be separated from humans at any time and restore their former freedom, but it is impossible for the owner.So, in the end, who domesticated whom? ★Postscript It is worth noting that goats are usually raised in areas with less lush green grass, which is also common to most husbandry practices.Humans would not want to raise animals in places where food is abundant, such as rain forests, because they would have more than enough to hunt these animals with blowguns or bows. Raising animals is almost a response to need.In other words, it is unlikely that humans domesticated animals simply by chance.Although raising animals has caused a severe split in the center of cultural gravity, it is still a necessary process for humans to move forward; raising animals is a survival strategy, although humans have never foreseen the threats to the environment and the alarming consequences. Change.One suspects that even if man knew the consequences in advance, he might still be willing to pay the price.