Chapter 5 three sheep

From fiber to factory ★People's opinion In a Greek settlement in Libya called Kyrene, men and boys worshiped the god Aristaios with faith and zeal.He is the husband of the goddess Autonoe, but his other, more important role is that of the patron saint of shepherds and beekeepers.He watches over the shepherds and their livestock, protecting them from the weather, wolves and lions, and other deadly forces that no one dares to mention. In Killeen, the shepherds are worthy enough to have a special god that belongs only to them, a god who can empathize with the shepherds' fears and anxieties.In contrast, during the ranch wars between shepherds and cattlemen in Arizona in the nineteenth century (these battles were so violent that many men, women and children were killed), the cattlemen insisted that the only thing worthless than sheep, Even stupider are the people who keep them; meanwhile, sheep, especially ewes, have very little brains and nothing but bad tempers.True shepherding, however, is nothing like that; it goes hand in hand with the civilization of man.

★Livestock The husbandry of goats and sheep is not too far apart in time, either in historical events or results.In fact, we cannot be sure which of them were domesticated by humans earlier.In the absence of skulls and horns, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to tell whether the bones we find belong to goats or sheep. [Note that sheep and goats, like cattle, have horns, not antlers.Horns grow directly from the skull and do not fall off.The prongs grow from a bud and are shed in the spring when the females are no longer fighting after the breeding season.The only exception is the pronghorn, which sheds its horns but is not an antelope.The pronghorn, like other animals with horns, is a lucky and indomitable relic of paleontological history; it is obviously not related to other animals still living.The same is true of the North American goat, which is not really a goat at all. 】

The close relationship between sheep and goats can be seen in two species of wild sheep known today as blue sheep.In Mongolia and Tibet, traces of Himalayan blue sheep can still be seen. It is considered to be between goats and sheep, and may be closer to goats.North African bearded sheep, also known as Barbary sheep, are distributed in the area between Morocco and Egypt and Sudan.According to reports, due to its close relationship with goats, it can breed with goats and produce fertile offspring.If this is the case, then the boundary between sheep and goats is far more blurred than we currently believe.One day, science will re-correct all of this, and we may have a surprising new definition.

The genus Ovis (Ovis) includes eight kinds of sheep, one of which is the domesticated sheep that is now domesticated by humans. It has various strains and is large in number and spreads all over the world.According to records, the seven surviving sheep are: Red sheep, distributed in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.It is thought that this sheep may have been used in the breeding of domestic sheep.But maybe not. The ibex, also known as wild sheep, is native to Siberia, China and the Himalayas.This sheep is also considered the ancestor of the domestic sheep.But maybe not. The Oriental sheep is almost universally considered to be the true ancestor of the domestic sheep.Its wildland populations spread throughout Iran, Asia Minor, Sardinia (in Italy), Corsica (in France), Cyprus (Cyprus, [Note]), extending to Central Europe.Hunting by humans has wiped out many species of the Eastern sheep throughout its range, as have other wild sheep, which are the most coveted big game trophies. (In fact, the live wild sheep look more memorable, and all the wild sheep I have ever seen have a certain nobility, which must have influenced more or less those who hunt them for no need, and will They were hunters in sheepfolds. Of course, we have no way of knowing how much Stone Age humans appreciated the wonders of nature, but wild sheep did play an important role in human life anyway.)

[Note] The third largest island in the Mediterranean, after Sicily and Sardinia, is located in the south of the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It became independent from British rule in 1960. The closest range of the American bighorn sheep, or alpine sheep, has been from Alaska and western Canada down through the western United States to Mexico.It has no history of being involved in domestic sheep husbandry. White bighorn sheep, also known as white sheep, can still be found in Alaska, northern British Columbia and Canada. Siberian bighorn sheep are only found in northeastern Siberia. It can be seen from the above that the distribution of wild sheep on the earth starts from southern Europe in the west, passes through Asia Minor along the Mediterranean coast, arrives in Asia, crosses North America through Siberia upwards, and then descends southward from Alaska, passing through Canada, the western United States, and finally Mexico, forming a huge arc. shape.This distribution range is very wide, including all from the Iberian Peninsula to Mexico.Theoretically, any kind of sheep could be raised by humans in this large arc region.But in fact, animal husbandry only occurred between Asia Minor and Central Europe, where the oriental sheep are located, and judging by the speed at which the idea of ​​raising animals spread across cultural boundaries, animal husbandry may only have occurred on the mainland, not on the islands.Even an idea as good as raising sheep can only be accepted if cultures can connect and interact with each other.The material wealth that this idea can bring to mankind is unimaginable when mankind first established this new relationship; relatively, mankind has paid a considerable price for this.

★The breeding process We now think of wild sheep as alpine animals, as if mountains were their only natural domain.However, the mountains are not so much their domain as their retreat.They were driven there by human hunting pressure, especially after humans started domesticating some sheep as livestock.Wild sheep use the same food and water resources as domestic sheep.Wild sheep were originally grassland animals, but after humans began to domesticate them, humans can go anywhere with food. The source of meat is no longer the focus of his concern when collecting food, and he no longer needs to follow the herd. Migrate around, or predict the movement of herds so they can be intercepted.Humanity now has new needs, new priorities.

Those who own sheep are far richer than those who do not.Envy has been a force in cultural interactions since pastoralism began; at this point, humans possessed actual wealth in addition to the forages on which predators and eaters depended.In addition to bartering, people may have started to trade; and the pastures were valuable not because of what people could gather there, but because of how much food and water they could get there, and How many livestock can be raised on it later.Sheep, like goats, are excellent food converters.With the help of sheep and goats, grasses and other plants that were inedible to humans in the past have become edible food for humans.Together, sheep and goats have redefined our relationship with soil and plants; a whole new world that humans have yet to understand and adapt to.

Whether goats or other animals that were later domesticated, some relationship had to be established between the low-tech caveman and the target species.Of course, hunters in the Mesolithic Age never immediately decided to capture and select a certain animal for breeding when they came across it by chance; this kind of plot is unreasonable for any kind of animal husbandry in history.The domestication process should have occurred when two species (one of which is humans) have been very familiar with each other for a long time, and then slowly shortened the distance.However, it is unknown whether human beings understood what they were doing at the time. Perhaps after doing this once or twice, he became more comfortable with the new species.We still don't know if any one animal is raised only once by the same person at the same time at the same time.Many cultures develop in parallel, and any one culture, like any other, is always ready to move on to the next stage of evolution.

Wild sheep, creatures of the open grasslands, were well known to hunters long ago, and were hunted for food and hides (before textiles were invented. The idea of ​​using animals as a source of fiber was much later. But , in the past two thousand years, the aborigines on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America have been using the wool of wild alpine sheep to weave before raising animals, and their original designs are indeed masterpieces of art). In feeding their peoples, Mesolithic nomads between 8,000 and 3,000 B.C. may have made a stunning leap from hunting to herding animals in two cases.First, like wild goat lambs, three- and four-day-old lambs are easy prey for juveniles or quick adults.Ewes can be very aggressive in order to protect their newborn lambs (sheep are considered the most docile of the large domestic animals, so it is often a surprise to witness such ferocity).Still, groups of hunters armed with stones and clubs drove off the ewes and took their lambs.But since wild or domestic sheep give birth to lambs at about the same time, there must be an excess of lambs every spring.

The second scenario may involve the evolution of some primitive forms of grazing.Either driving feral herds into traps or simply surrounding them could turn hunting (presumably difficult on open grasslands with primitive weapons) into selective slaughter.This method of obtaining food and hides was far more sophisticated than hunting, and it soon developed into a process of selecting domestic sheep from among the oriental sheep.It is difficult to determine whether capturing or simply manipulating wild herds would have led to a domesticated species more quickly; the two processes may have worked together.While manipulating a group of wild sheep, a human can easily get the lamb he wants to eat or raise, and a single lamb provides another more personal and new way of interaction between humans and his animals.

Humans started keeping dogs, probably only when the first sheep were domesticated.Even so, there may not have been enough time for wolves to be bred into dogs that could be instructed to assist with herding.The natural herding instinct of dogs, a repressed aggression, is characteristic of special breeds now used for herding that did not exist when sheep and goats first came under human control. These breeds, like poodles, chihuahuas, and Like the golden retriever, there is also the potential for a wolf or another possible gene provider. In a sense, wolves do drive their prey to pick out the old and weak, but when the animals were first raised, wolves probably did not have this ability. The real cooperation between humans and wolves may be developed later.When man began breeding dog breeds for herding, he was almost reawakening some ancient instinct in these dogs.But it must have taken a long time to breed dogs that can sublimate their aggressiveness towards sheep and other animals into being responsible for humans. At the beginning, no matter what the shepherd did, he might have done it alone, and the number of sheep he owned at that time might not be large.Even so, caring for new sheep can be a chore.We can imagine how much damage a ram with huge horns can do. Therefore, humans must make this species have a docile temperament, and therefore, humans must select animals that are easy to domesticate. Humans had not started to drink animal milk at that time, so the consideration of dairy products and fiber came later.The standard of so-called fine cooking may have been quite low in cave life, but to our ancestors, some things did taste better.Meat to fat ratio, balanced body weight, growth rate, feed conversion ratio, fiber length and texture, and other things that now dominate may not have mattered at the time, but behavior was in the first place consider. Animals that are not easily handled by humans can be strenuous to care for.Over the millennia, some of the larger animals we have brought into our pens have been selected for ease of control.If not, it would be a false start.Many animals, such as zebras, some pigs, and some of the domestic cattle's blood relatives are examples of failure (a term for large animals, used with silkworms, hamsters, guinea pigs, goldfish, and canaries that are not particularly dangerous to humans. different animals). Hunters who depend on their skill for a living will most likely prefer to kill rams only during the first half of the year, unless they are in dire need of meat.When winter is coming to an end and early spring is approaching, the ewes are raising their lambs and relying on forage that is poorer than in summer, so they consume their bodies and use up the fat stored in the previous summer and autumn into milk. .In this case, the mutton not only tastes poor, but also has low nutritional value. It tastes no different from natural grazing sheep.This reason allows ewes to escape human slaughter during the period when they are most needed, that is, during the period of raising lambs.If the early shepherds killed ewes, it was only during the early grazing period, and they quickly learned to slaughter ewes after their lambs could stand on their own.More likely, they'll get rid of the extra rams, just like people are doing now.There are fundamental truths about animal husbandry that don't change over time, and its aesthetics don't improve over time. ★Shock Incorporating animals into the patterns of life is a huge cultural step.To do this humans had to invent language, and at the same time, methods of classifying animals and establishing their value were developed.How many sheep are equal to the value of a bride?Buying and selling is an inevitable trend, and the monetary system may be derived from it.Since then, human beings have a new way of thinking, beautiful dreams to dream, gods that exist because of imagination, carefully completed value systems, taboos that go deep into life, traditions to be created, and new legends to be passed on.Humans must therefore adapt to the extremely difficult concept of wealth; it all has a direct connection to animals, and humans should deal with it with more respect.In fact, domestication of animals is far from an accident in human history, but one of the most frightening upheavals imaginable.The impact of the sheep species was as socially shocking as any event in our history; it changed the way we see each other. Things that used to be considered very important, such as the migration of wild herds, no longer matter so much, and things that were not obvious, such as predators, bourgeoisie, and class systems, suddenly explode in importance.The places humans can live, the seasonal migrations they must make with their flocks and cattle, and the things they have to worry about all become relevant to the new responsibilities of livestock.The buildings that humans build for themselves depend on the number of times they migrate with the herd, and the clothes they wear depend on the materials that the herd can provide them and the technology they learn to use. depends.Humans must develop new crafts and begin to adapt to the grading system of craftsmen.At the same time that culture itself shapes the phenomenon, these phenomena must also be incorporated into the culture. Domestic animals also give humans something else, time to think, to worry, to invent and new reasons to wage war.A whole new subculture flourished spontaneously: the theft of livestock, and new laws in response, or customs of regulation and punishment.This of course depends on the enforcers and the police, and these people must also be able to agree with the new concept of property and wealth.Finally, humans had to develop new or adapted technologies, such as butchery, shearing, carding, spinning, weaving, and veterinary science, which had not been developed during the early days of raising animals.The job of butchery may have been the first skill to be attained to the desired level; hunting men or clan women might have already possessed this skill.The job has been performed by both men and women in different cultures. Basically, there are two lines of evidence for how early humans in our history started incorporating animals into their lives.At first, the evidence was presented in the form of bones; later, it was in the form of images.From cave paintings and stone carvings, carved patterns, or small idols, decorative patterns, pottery, cloth, paintings and sculptures, every record of domesticated animals is like an exercise in aesthetic record preservation.Whether it is based on prayer or boastful pride, human beings always record the image of every new animal they capture. These records are like an art gallery without walls suspended in time.In addition, it is also a place where stories are told and memories are condensed.Interestingly, humans don't seem to have any tribal memories before having animals.Not just because this time was long before animals were owned, but perhaps also because there wasn't that much worth carving in stone or keeping in their hearts back then.We emerge as humans, hunt and keep records, and then transform into shepherds and other roles, and it is at these boundaries that the world unfolds for us. In many places where bones have been found, as long as they can be distinguished from those of goats, the bones of domestic sheep from 5,000 years ago account for a very high proportion.The remains of more than one hundred domestic sheep were found in Shah Teepee in northern Iran, mixed with three wild sheep.Why would a group of people who regularly slaughter their own flocks for food spend their excess energy hunting wild sheep?This is really intriguing, because before these wild sheep were raised into domestic sheep, not only were there fewer numbers, but they were also more likely to be frightened by humans and flee around.Maybe it was because wild sheep were trying to connect with domestic animals, maybe they were going in to escape the cold, only to encounter the butcher's knife that was waiting for them.Humans may have learned early on not to let wild rams mate with domesticated ewes, because the resulting lambs are often difficult to manage, which goes against the idea of ​​being easy to control. About 5,000 years ago, the different breeds of sheep in Mesopotamia were easily distinguishable, so husbandry should have gone fairly smoothly.A hairy breed with a ruff at the throat looks a bit like a red sheep, except it has a longer tail and its horns are straight rather than curved, screwdriver shaped.No wild sheep have horns of this shape.In the time of Uric in Mesopotamia (6,000 years ago) there were thirty-one different ideograms used to describe sheep. In addition to the two genders and different ages, we must It is speculated that there were far more sheep breeds at that time than the two breeds we can currently identify from the bones in the local area.Because so many things happened at that time, human beings are also moving forward in the comfort they just experienced.How humans can feed themselves while away from home is no longer difficult to solve.Goats and sheep were also able to go where Stone Age humans could go; A third breed of sheep evolved at Nasa in Mesopotamia, a sheep with spirally bent horns later called the horns of the nautilus (the fossil of which is the ammonite). . This sheep is clearly a domestic animal; it has wool, drooping ears, and a protruding snout.Man carefully selects and breeds according to the traits he needs.We cannot be sure whether these traits were selected for practical or aesthetic reasons.Perhaps some kind of ideal animal appeared earlier than we think.In Ur, a fourth breed of sheep appeared, a fat-tailed sheep whose image was burnt on a bowl found there.At that time, humans had invented pottery, and before that, agriculture had been developed in the local area.Once raising animals has brought about a cultural realignment, the change is immeasurable.A fifth breed of sheep also occurs in Wuer, a true long-haired sheep with elongated club-like horns. It is worth noting that no species of wild sheep has a thick, curly down coat, which is only found in domestic sheep.While wild sheep additionally grow different winter wool when exposed to harsh winters, this wool is completely different from that of domestic sheep.It is puzzling that as early as 8,000 years ago, Tepe Sarab in Iran had long-haired sheep.It is true that we cannot reconstruct a satisfactory sequence, but we can draw several arrows pointing to a richer future for the troglodytes and flint flakes.By the end of the European Bronze Age (about 4000 BC), the material of clothing had changed from leather to wool in a very advanced way.Long-haired sheep are still alive; they may be dairy animals, or used by some as meat animals, but at least their wool is definitely used by humans. Another change brought about by breeding is coat color.Wild sheep turn white and then white with black or brown faces and legs as they are raised.None of the wild sheep ancestors of the domestic sheep had this appearance.Compared with long hair, whiteness may be a higher priority trait for humans.Consciously or unknowingly breeding for certain traits, humans also unleashed other potentialities that had been dormant in the genes of newly bred livestock.It's not uncommon for humans to get these traits whether they want them or not; just as has happened over the past few thousand years, recessive genes still pop up in our domestic animals, some of which we don't really want of. The main feature of the sheep we have now is long hair and mainly white, but another feature that appeared before that is the lack of horns. This trait can be traced back at least 9,500 years ago. The lack of horns is an advantage when humans put sheep together at night, as a result of breeding sheep that are easier to raise.In contrast, in Poland, sheep with four horns were bred locally, which is also an extremely important livestock trait.At the same time, people all over the world were breeding sheep, some without horns, others with a pair of curved horns, a pair of right angles, or even four horns.What we can be sure of is that there are a lot of experiments going on, and more unexpected results.Fat rumps, fat tails, bobbed tails, tails that drag on the ground, and many different grades of wool all arose from this basic idea of ​​turning wild sheep into long white coats. And how will this sheep-related activity originate in Asia Minor and West Asia eventually develop?At present, there are thousands of sheep breeds and their varieties, many of which are only slight geographical variations, some actually exist, and some are just imagined, but there are at least 326 complete and recognized sheep breeds . Interestingly, the places that are most enthusiastic about improving skills reflect not only the local people's pursuit of economic interests, but also what culture they value, and even the almost blind exclusivity.In a very short period of time, eight completely different varieties have been bred between the United States and Canada, for a total of twenty-one varieties if the unimproved imported varieties are counted.The former Soviet Union bred 58 varieties that can adapt to various climates and cultures in Eurasia; Spain and Portugal jointly bred 19 varieties; Seven breeds; Wales, Scotland and England have bred forty-one breeds specially for mutton and wool; Australia and New Zealand have large numbers of sheep, but only four breeds have been bred, and they are obviously content. The existing European varieties have not been much improved; thirty-eight varieties have been bred on the African continent; twenty-eight varieties have been bred in India and Pakistan.Yet in the Middle East, where all sheep are likely to have originated, only thirteen breeds are considered indigenous. These are the species that are still alive today.Whether there were hundreds or thousands of varieties that failed in the improvement process of the past, no one knows; only the names of the successful ones will be recorded in history.It is said that there are more than one billion sheep raised by people of various terrains and cultures in the world. Sheep have had a huge impact on human history.The chain of historical changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution was at least partly caused by the large herds of sheep foraging on the European mainland and the British Isles in the eighteenth century.When the automatic loom was invented and the spinning factory was established, the agricultural economy was transformed into an industrial economy; a large number of people left the farm to work in the spinning factory, and lived in extremely harsh conditions.The filth, moral decay, overpopulation, disintegration of family structures, air and water pollution, spread of disease, rampant violence, and deep-rooted social antagonisms all flow out of this new economic value.At this time, the sheep still continue to eat the grass quietly, and we are getting up from the blow, trying to regain our self-esteem, facing the poverty, overcrowding and spirit of the textile mills and factories. Confused.The goat reminds us of how we use the land and its treasure house; the sheep reminds us of how humans interact with each other. After humans discovered Australia and New Zealand, they regarded the area as a place for grazing.Because lanolin is so plentiful, the multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry has sprung up.The results of this kind of sheep raising have influenced the social structure of contemporary humans.However, the sweater was an unexpected development. Humans accidentally discovered the function of wool, and this discovery subverted the entire human society.Those who argue about man's intentions in raising sheep in the first place may be puzzled by this. Back to the cultural impact.The ancient Greeks, like us, thought about sheep husbandry.As early as 320 BC, Dicaearchus recorded an idea that we think is older than its time.The development process of animal husbandry described by him is: (1) hunting and foraging, then (2) animal husbandry and later nomadic life, and then entered (3) agricultural life.In the past, people have always believed that this sequence is the process of breeding, but it is not the case.Some peoples in the New World developed agricultural life although they never raised animals.In some areas, people started to raise animals after digging the soil. Therefore, in the above process, there are actually two different life styles overlapping.Nowadays, people's life in many places is a combination of farming and animal husbandry.In fact, farms are often dual operations of agriculture and livestock.Only in a few places that still live a periodic nomadic life, will only focus on animals (sheep herding and agriculture can indeed coexist and help each other. Sheep dung is an extremely precious necessity for gardeners, and the nitrogen and potassium contained in it are two times that of cow dung. times). I am not sure that anyone who has never been with a shepherd can appreciate the intimacy between a shepherd and his flock.For the shepherd, the welfare of the flock is everything to him, and other things are secondary; they are busy all year round only for the flock.In order to protect the flock, the strong defensiveness they display and their intolerance to foreign invasion are unimaginable to outsiders.To a sheep breeder, it doesn't matter if the rest of the world goes extinct.No matter what language the shepherd speaks, no matter what race, nationality or religion he belongs to, he is part of the whole sheep culture.Once sheep are raised by humans, they become the center of gravity of local culture, which is both unique and far-reaching.Even though there are many other types of fibers (natural and man-made), the wool obtained from farmed sheep still has a profound influence on our culture.