Chapter 8 Liu Niu

vanquished ferocious behemoth ★The symbolic bull Worship, or at least reverence, for cattle has been common since prehistoric times.Before being domesticated by humans, the wild ancestors of the cattle were apparently formidable.Humans really started loving cattle only after they started raising them.The bull is a powerful, admirable male, admired and prized for his daring, aggressiveness, and prodigious fecundity (in fact, one important breeding bull today releases more sperm with each ejaculation Enough to inseminate three hundred cows. Based on the time-honored tradition of waste without want, beef and dairy operators freeze semen from bulls in liquid nitrogen for future artificial insemination, and with this The scientific magic of fertilized embryo transfer to enhance this enormous fecundity).

The strange festive atmosphere of the bullrings in some Latin countries is now carried on by an ancient breeding rite.This ritual can only be seen as a ballet of death; the battle between man and bull was seen as a test of masculinity and is one of the oldest barbaric rituals still in existence.Originally, this religious ritual under the guise of physical activity must have had something to do with sexual orgies, or at least it was physical activity masquerading as religious ritual. Of course, what bullfighting really involves is animal sacrifice.Occasionally, a matador in fine costumes died tragically, but in the end it was always the bulls who were slaughtered; the bull's role was originally played by goats, sheep, or virgins dressed in white.In these countries, the rest of the similar religious ceremonies related to bulls have given up decorations, and bulls are purely tortured and slaughtered animals.No other activity or ritual is more frightening and outdated than the Latin nation's relationship with the bull.It seems that the only concession made to modern conventions in bullfighting is that the spectators are not rolling naked on piles of cushions.

Another example of the fetishization of the strength and fecundity of bulls is the ancient phallic statues often featuring penises of striking proportions, which appear to be men but whose penises are those of bulls.In Babylon, bulls or bull-like models guarded the entrances to many important buildings.In myths and symbols, bulls and kings are often intertwined.Symbols have obviously always been in our psyche.It is said that male patients undergoing psychoanalysis will show the desire to kill their father in their dreams, and the father in the dream appears in the image of a bull. In Persia, the bull represents the source of life force.The bull was dedicated to Mithra, the god of light. Mithra's companion was a dog, and the dog was usually compared with the bull.In Hebrew and Assyrian traditions, the image of a bull with its horns encircling the sun represents power.

【Note】Before 2000 BC, Zoroastrianism in Persia had not yet emerged, and India was still in the Vedic era. Mithra was the main god in these areas, related to the sun and the monarch.Mithra is Mitra in Sanskrit and Mithras in Greek and Latin, which means the most holy agreement. ★cow The exact opposite of the bull, the cow is a symbol of love and fertility.She is the workhorse of creation, the great provider of nourishment, and has been revered, adored, or even considered divine since ancient times.She is Isis (Isis, [Note 1]), she is Io (Io, [Note 2]), she is the person Zeus admires, and she is also Aphrodite, the god of love.And before Moses could stop it, Aaron (Note 3) erected a statue of a golden heifer in the desert for the Israelites.The adoration of the image was almost certainly partly an expression of sexuality, and a symbol of the worldly and materialistic as opposed to the spiritual.

【Note 1】Isis is a goddess in ancient Egyptian religion, and is the prototype of a faithful wife and a loving mother. 【Note 2】In Greek mythology, the daughter of the river god Inachus was discovered by Sheila because Zeus fell in love with Io, so Sheila turned Io into a beautiful white cow and sent a hundred-eyed giant to guard her.After Io was rescued, Sheila ordered a gadfly to chase her, forcing her to wander continuously.Io is regarded as the moon god, and her wanderings are compared to the waxing and waning of the moon; in addition, she is also regarded as the goddess of rain.Her story is the myth of Demeter. After this legend spread to the East, the legend of Isis in Egypt, Astarte in Syria, and Kali in India all used this story. for the theme.

【Note 3】Hebrew historical figure, when he was in Egypt, he was the spokesperson of Moses, performed miracles in front of the Pharaoh, and sent plagues on Egypt, so that the Egyptian Pharaoh released the enslaved Hebrews. Bulls and Cows symbolize fertility, fecundity, strength, power, passion, love, sex, nourishment, milk, parents, divine and objects of affection, sun, origin, birthplace, regardless of any stage in the past , spring, giver, all these positive symbols are still the cornerstone of major economies today.The relationship we have with cattle is, for humans, long and fruitful.In a private meeting, I heard the conclusions of a man who had dedicated his life to cattle.This man is called Bill.Bill Pickens, Ph.D. in Reproductive Physiology, is now retired from Colorado State University in Fort Collins.It was a very cold morning and we were standing by a feedlot full of cows.The bodies of these cows exude steaming heat, and against the golden sunrise light, mist and dust hang over their bodies, forming a cloud.Dr. Pickens' voice had a mysterious tone, his face was aloof, he looked out over the cows, and he muttered to himself: Damn, I just like cows!He didn't know, I thought, that I heard him mumbling.

Cattle farming began in Europe 6,000 years ago; by 2,500 BC, Europe already had different breeds, suggesting that Europeans may have started raising animals before then.New breeds continued to evolve and became the most valuable of all domestic animals, providing milk, cream and cheese, meat, fat, horns, hides, manure and power.The cow was then as it is now, representing huge wealth.In Africa, someone offered seven cows in exchange for my very, very beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter; she was not at all interested in that, but her mother and I were very happy.But we had no intention of going into cattle herding.

★Origin During the Pleistocene period, there were two species of ruminants with hollow horned in Europe.One is the European bison named after the place of origin, which still survives today, but the number is small, and most of them are concentrated in Poland.The other is the aurochs. In 1627, the last auroch died in a park in Poland. After that, the wild aurochs became extinct. However, they still survive in domestic cattle all over the world. Not much is known about the wild ancestors of most domestic cattle and where they originated.They do not appear to have originated in Europe, at least no fossils of their ancestors have been found there.They most likely migrated from somewhere in Asia to Europe between several ice ages.

All true wild cattle are considered members of the genus Bos.The bison of Europe and North America belong to the genus Bison, the yak belongs to the genus Poephagus, the powerful Asian ox belongs to the genus Bibos, and the Asian and Asian buffaloes belong to the genus Bubalus. The different African or South African buffaloes belong to the genus Syncerus, and the dwarf buffalo takes its genus name from it to the genus Anoa.However, a species of Khmer cattle is known in Cambodia, which may be the result of a cross between the genera Bovis and Bovis.Thus, we are confronted with a question: All of the above species can obviously interbreed and produce a very high proportion of fertile offspring, however, based on our basic understanding of genera and species, this should not be possible.

Most of the domestic cattle we have today are descended from aurochs, but at a different time and place any other wild breed could have been involved in enhancing or altering the domestic cattle breeds that came later.The zebu of the Indian subcontinent clearly have a history of their own; they may have been interbred either deliberately or by accident.In fact, a considerable amount of DNA evidence currently points to two lines of ancestry.Evidence shows that, between 200,000 and 1 million years ago, between the European cattle (or taurine cattle, to which aurochs belong) and the Indian cattle (or taurine cattle), which we classify under the genus Indicus, zebu cattle) and apparently the two strains were eventually domesticated by different cultures in different places.Cattle currently in Africa are partly derived from European cattle strains, and the humpbacked zebu also plays a role.Many current North American beef cattle lines are also derived from this breed.

Aurochs are wonderful animals.It is about six and a half to seven feet high at the shoulders, more than seven feet tall including the head, and eight to eight and a half feet above the ground at the tip of the horns.Consider that our ancestors were generally shorter than we are today, and imagine how gigantic aurochs would have looked from their eye-level. This large animal is black or reddish black with a white stripe on its back and white curls around the base of its horns.Its muzzle is light gray and its coat color is smooth and shiny in summer, turning thick and curly in winter.Coat color can vary between males and females, different age groups (calves are red until six months of age), geographic strains or variations.So will the shape and size of the corners.Numerous naturally occurring variations suggest that this species is suitable for selective breeding.They are malleable. Breeding experiments began in Berlin and Munich zoos in the 1920s, resulting in offspring similar to the bison depicted earlier on cave walls and pottery.These human-recreated aurochs display interesting traits that reflect where, how and why they were brought into captivity; their size and temperament can more or less give us a glimpse of the Stone Age situation.Ferocious and elusive, the aurochs are quick and flexible in their movements.On the other hand, they are shy, nervous and suspicious animals.In short, their enormous size and strength make them very dangerous animals; however, these experimental re-creations are much smaller than the originals. In fact, the aurochs were probably the most dangerous of these animals that humans intended to domesticate, so the mortality rate of the early herders must have been considerable.It is not easy for human beings to stick to the original intention and persist until the cattle they raise become tame.With the exception of certain breeds, especially those with prize bulls, today's domestic cattle are much smaller than their wild ancestors, which may be a windfall of humans breeding for other desirable traits, or early herders The result of increasing one's own survival chips by reducing the size of the original cattle.Size and docility are considerations of course, and even now with electrified spurs, hooked or electrified fences, and tranquilizers, cattle ranchers want to make sure they're safe and sound at the end of the day.No farmer wants to hear Oh!screams.Pit bulls are an actual breed in only a relatively small number of Latin countries.Certain herders do breed aurochs for their original ferocity, but on a smaller scale.In other parts of the world, this trend, which has persisted for 6,000 to 8,000 years, has at least stabilized and tamed the auroch breed. What do cows offer humans that goats and sheep cannot?Humans had well-developed goats and sheep long before they were able to handle the dreaded aurochs.Cattle are dangerous and more labor-intensive than sheep and goats, but why would humans domesticate them when they theoretically don't really need them?This is really a difficult puzzle.It is true that a later turn of events required them, but those who raised them in the early days could not have known this in advance.Even though humans had raised goats, they still didn't know how to use milk and cheese, and they couldn't understand the value of manure for land regeneration unless they knew how to farm, but they were clearly only just beginning to move in that direction.Both the wheel and the plow came after the cattle (steers) were domesticated, because humans could not have invented them out of thin air (the Indian buffalo and the later Chinese buffalo, which became domestic animals around the same time as the domestic ox or a little later , and the wheel and plow were developed in response to this newfound power. With the buffalo and the steer, man could move mountains, or their equivalent, almost at will. When rice cultivation began, man Sure enough, it did). The wild aurochs are so common and easy to catch that their meat and hides are readily available.But it wasn't until they became domestic animals that humans discovered that their milk was actually a very valuable livestock product (in fact, goats were known to drink milk at that time).The same is true for the application of cow dung outside of agriculture. Humans may not discover the value of cow dung as a building material until after cattle are intensively raised.After deforestation and excessive gnawing by goats occurred, cow dung became an important fuel as wood became increasingly difficult to obtain. Obviously, the infinite value of cattle is only revealed after human raising.Humans may have initially tried to control bison simply because they loved them.If human beings revered the smaller cattle that were bred later, and compared them with strength, light and life, one can imagine how they would be afraid of the ferocious and huge wild cattle.After the first experience of raising livestock, humans began to have, to a certain extent, unprecedented control over their own destiny, and must have also experienced another degree of arrogance.Man is no longer entirely passive in the struggle for existence; he has acquired wealth and power.Humans control cattle and sheep, and seem to control nature as well.But is it for economic purposes or for spiritual and psychological reasons that human beings control the aurochs? An incidental reason why we keep animals with lactating potential has to do with our own genetic makeup.Mammals in the wild usually have no way to get milk after weaning. This is true for ourselves, gorillas, capybaras and three-toed sloths.The main sugar in milk is lactose, which is broken down in the human body by an enzyme called lactase secreted by the wall of the small intestine.When there is lactase in the intestine, the products of lactose digestion will be absorbed into the circulatory system. When there is no lactase in the intestine, lactose will pass directly through the digestive tract without producing any nutrition.In fact, undigested milk can cause bloating, diarrhea, and severe cramping.For some people, lactose is like a poison, not only causing gastrointestinal discomfort, but even causing symptoms such as permanent blindness. Although the situation varies among different ethnic groups, most adults lose the ability to make lactase, a function controlled by genes.When the adult is past the age of natural milk intake and no longer needs to make lactase, the gene will send a message, so the enzyme will no longer be produced in the adult body (this is a natural chemical saving method, or an energy saving mechanism Woolen cloth?).Adults in northern Europe generally continue to make lactase today, but Orientals, American Indians, some southern Europeans, Australian aborigines, and Africans cannot continue to make lactase as adults (just think of people who have made cheese Tradition can understand). For an adult to use breast milk, some kind of change is needed in a person's genetic makeup.Before raising animals, adults around the world were generally deficient in the enzyme lactase and thus could not obtain nutrients from the milk of goats, reindeer or cows.So, the raising of these animals not only changed human culture, but also caused huge changes in the environment, economy and human evolution. ★Except dairy products Under human management, cattle, a huge ruminant, provide not only their own products, but more importantly, the services they provide to humans.In addition to its use in ceremonies, cows were the most important source of pulling power in ancient times.The value of cattle, especially steers (oxen), for carrying loads, plows, carts, and water cannot be ignored (any cattle trained as a pack animal is actually called an oxen, and they are usually castrated bull).Even now, steers are the most widely used pulling animals in the world.The emergence of horses in Europe and the United States in recent years as the main drag animal presents a distorted picture of the global animal economy. Another equally important service that cattle provide is land management, with humans free to bring cattle wherever they are needed to manure.Manure (it is so versatile and valuable that it should not be called a by-product) is still the most widely used fertilizer in the world. It is an organic fertilizer that does not need to be collected and does not pollute.At the same time, it is also a resource that does not require labor to manufacture and can be renewed without limit except for care.Simply put, manure is the most abundant animal product in the world. Through the conversion of livestock, grasslands provide us with products or services for various purposes, but they are currently under pressure from grazing.While these animals need grass to produce, grazing has an understandable stigma when it comes to environmental considerations.However, this view may be a bit superficial, because grazing is necessary, and the really stupid and abhorrent thing is overgrazing.Overgrazing is simply mismanagement; when properly managed, the herds themselves maintain the habitat because they fertilize the area as they feed.In other words, they feed back the system that fed them, which in turn feeds humans with products and services. ★Sequence The relationship between humans and aurochs before husbandry took place is easy to speculate.Humans hunted them (perhaps women did not, if one extrapolates from the Stone Age cultures we are familiar with).At that time, aurochs could be regarded as the greatest trophy of mankind.They provide humans with hundreds of pounds of beef, as well as fat, tendon, bones, horns, and hides.Furthermore, this achievement affords humanity great status and great pride.Hunting aurochs, more than any other animal hunted by man, was a rite of passage or reaffirmation; it must have been an ongoing race. Aurochs are herbivorous ruminants (may eat stems and leaves in winter).Aurochs graze on open grasslands, sometimes in large herds, and are highly alert, making hunting difficult and dangerous.At that time, humans had no horses and could not gallop on horseback. They could only rely on their hands and feet to fight this rough, aggressive and suspicious prey.Fifty cows have one hundred eyes, one hundred nostrils and one hundred ears, but they also need to protect their young calves.So there must be something else than crawling across the open grass on your hands and knees, trying to disguise yourself as brush, and then, when you get close enough, strike with primitive weapons that are by no means instantly lethal.These early hunters discovered a better method, and that was driving. Using natural highlands, as well as valleys, cliffs, valleys, river beds and other terrains, sometimes combined with wind-blown fruits, rocks and bushes, humans can scare animals and drive them into manageable enclosures; fire can also make animals A simple tool for escape, when humans already knew how to use fire.In the second method, hunters lined up, drumming and shaking rattling implements made of tortoise shells, making very loud noises to startle, confuse, and drive bison herds into camouflaged traps. From the bone burial ground not far below the cliff, we can infer that the primitive hunters drove the cattle off the cliff and killed them on the rocks below the cliff.The less wasteful and more elegant method is to drive the cattle to paddocks that people can control, and keep them until they need to be picked out one by one for slaughter, or for other purposes.Once man has been able to keep the herd in the area of ​​his choice, and the whole process has gone to some extent according to his plan, the first step in husbandry is accomplished.Religion and a purely show-of-courage motive later led to interactions between humans and these captive herds, which included extremely dangerous physical contact.The ropes woven from long strips of cowhide intensified this violence even more.As a result, once a place for humans to drive animals together is formed, the process of raising animals begins. If a human can control and manage a herd of cattle, it can then classify the herd, deciding which ones are for slaughter, which ones are for riding or direct use by humans, and which ones are for breeding.Cow calves mature precociously, so they are able to leave the side of neurotic and aggressive adults while they are young.Animals that can't hear their parents' warning calls, and can't be taught to walk with their parents, quickly lose their sense of fear of humans, at least most animals do.Thus, with successive generations, they gradually became easier to manage, and the traditional habits of shepherds did not take long to form.Once animals become part of human tradition, and they are truly integrated into our culture, within three or four generations, humans no longer remember or imagine a time without cattle.Of course, the time frame of the whole process is not so brief.From the time humans drove aurochs off a cliff to the start of breeding dairy cows, we're talking thousands of years, more than generations.It takes a very long time to actually domesticate a new animal. If the practice of keeping aurochs in preselected paddocks began with hunters six, seven, or even eight thousand years ago, were there enough grass and water for these animals to survive?At first, there may be more grass and water in a larger area, but as the total number of animals managed by humans increases, the enclosure will inevitably become smaller and smaller.So when did our ancestors provide water and food to these animals?Sooner or later they had to do it, no matter when they started, and it must have soon become a specialized profession.Whenever this process occurred, the relationship between humans and animals must have changed dramatically as a result.At this time, humans are really raising them. Zebu cattle were raised and herded in India and Mesopotamia before 4000 BC.Around the same period, hornless cattle also began to appear in Egypt. This special type of cattle was obviously a choice made by early herders to avoid mutual harm between cattle and cattle, and it may also be for self-defense.From the existing works of art, we can know that some early Egyptian cattle had coat color patterns that wild cattle did not have, such as two-color mixed or spotted (the difference between these two coat colors lies in the color. Two-color mixed Cattle are black and white, and spotted cattle are any color but black and white). The first known domestic cattle in Northern Europe appear to have come from Denmark.Also, other strains from Germany, although very similar to aurochs, are obviously much smaller.In Bavaria, however, smaller types evolved quite early.Curiously, the Romans seem to have used larger descendants of aurochs whether they traded north or south; with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the larger types became extinct, while the smaller types continued into modern times, It has become the breed of domestic cattle we rely on so much today.Why the Romans would go against the increasingly widespread culture of cattle-raising by keeping larger, more difficult-to-control cattle remains unclear.Perhaps it was the arrogance of the Romans, or perhaps it had mystical or religious undertones. On Crete, high-risk sports played during the height of the Minoan civilization included grappling and bullfighting.Activities such as bull jumping and riding are recorded on pottery, metal and gold, and there has been much debate as to whether the animal used was a domestic cow or a true auroch.Since these animals are often described as spotted or spotted, we presume they were domestic animals.Perhaps they evolved from rewilded cattle. What is known is that when humans started raising and moving domestic animals, some cattle escaped back into the wild, and this is still the case today. In the Minoan civilization, the bull was an object of worship, and most of the myths are also dominated by cattle.Many of the beliefs and customs that developed on Crete may have originated in Asia.In Greek mythology, the wife of Minos was named Pasiphae.The woman had a secret that the only way she could be sexually satisfied was when her husband's technician made a cow model, and she hid in the model and had sex with a bull. As a result, she gave birth to Minor Pottery (Minotaur).This creature with a human body and a bull's head has a bad smell, and it is said that it will eat boys and girls.Undoubtedly, just as bulls are ultimately sacrificed in the ring, so are human beings sacrificed for bulls.Whether in mythology or in the real world, the close and complex relationship with bulls in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and other places reflects the role domestic cattle play in human life.One day Africa too will develop a culture dependent on cattle.Currently, there are well over three hundred recognized breeds of cattle worldwide, with thousands of different varieties. 【Note】Minos is the king of Crete in Greek mythology.Once, Poseidon, the god of the sea, gave him a beautiful white bull. Instead of using it as a sacrifice, he put it in his own herd.As a result, his wife Pahifaai gradually fell in love with the bull, so Daedalus, the patron saint of craftsmen and artists, made a lifelike wooden cow for her. Minotaur, a half-bull monster. Cattle require more care than sheep and goats.After humans owned cattle, all considerations about where to settle and in what season became the most important influencing forces in clan and tribal life.The nomadic nature of modern nomadic peoples may be the second way of life evolved to meet the needs of cattle (Masai, Samburu and Turkana in modern Africa are the best) example of】.The real development of agriculture should have started with the raising of cattle by early humans, not because of easy access to the best fertilizers in the world.And like any other foreign influence, the cow recreated man. Without cows, American pioneers might not have been able to settle the West.At the time, steers pulled pioneer wagons west, and a mix of dairy and beef cattle, or small pastoral cows like Dexter and banded Galloway, were tied to the wagons Traveled thousands of miles to emigrate.When the pioneers reached their destinations, plows drawn by oxen swept across the fields, and cow manure allowed humans to achieve self-sufficient agriculture.Gradually, the cattle herd increased, but the cattle's need for grazing pastures drove the rival bison to near extinction.While bison were threatened, the Indians who depended on them were being slaughtered, subjugated, or imprisoned by whites. The cow culture that emerged in the western United States was formed by cowboys, cow thieves, hanged judges, gunmen, rich cattlemen, and the sheriff and his local security team.While large herds still roam the American West, the people who tended and protected them are long gone.However, they still exist in legends and folk tales, becoming legendary figures.Indeed, the traditions of the American West still exist in the American spirit today, and this also proves that the cow is not only a product of human culture, but an ancestor of human culture.