Poked around where? The local comic book shop?
Don't be an asshole. It doesn't lead any place good. It also doesn't lay well in your mouth, considering some of your more spurious assertions.
Seriously can you name a single published scholarly work that that denies the fact that tens of thousands of years of evolution in Africa has absolutely zero effect on the domesticability of African herbivores?
I don't think that there's a peer reviewed publication which is at this time able to make an assertive case one way or the other. The notion that African megafauna is somehow more sophisticated in dealing with human predation has been around, but its frankly intangible and hard to support.
In some cases, for instance, the extinction of the Moa, one can make the case that the animals were not well equipped to cope with human hunters and lost out. But then again, in the case of Moa, these were slow growing, slow reproducing megafauna who were notably vulnerable to disruption. Even in other 'clearcut' cases - its not so clear cut. The Elephant Birds and Megalemurs of Madagascar may have been as much the victims of deforestation and habitat destruction as hunting. The extinction of North American and Australian Megafauna is often simplistically attributed to human hunting, but there's increasing evidence that the picture is a bit more complex.
The assertion that African fauna are or were generally superior at coping with humans than the fauna of other continents, and therefore less domesticable is interesting but unproven.
Its a difficult hypothesis to test, but it is testable. One could try and compare hunting rates and hunting success/failure in and out of Africa. I don't think that the Cree or Ojibwa, the Yanomano or the Salish, the Nigritos were better or worse hunters than their african counterparts in regions of equivalent biomass.
If, in fact, African animals did have an advantage, I would argue that as much as 60,000 years almost certainly erased that. The time spans work against you. Even taking North America and an occupation date of 12,000 years ago, that's 4000 generations for a great many forms of megafauna. It's hard to believe that animals could not adjust their behavioural frameworks in that time.
There's other ways to test. One could, for instance, look at the flight reflex for comparable African/non-African animals. If your hypothesis is correct, the African animals should have a much higher flight reflex from humans - they should start running earlier and faster from the silhouette of humans than Animals not from Africa.
Yet, so far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a measurable difference. A friend of mine living in Africa told me once of watching a pride of 26 lions cross the road in front of him. There were lots of situations of wildlife relatively close by.
Do African Animals have less of a flight reflex from humans? How is that sensible to your theory. Are they more sophisticated in interpreting human intention? But then, this should make them more domesticable, not less.
That being the best index of domestication potential around?
Not sure what you're referring to here. Not caring really.
uhhh, African hunter gatherers didn't have domesticates. The Kung hunter gatherers never domesticated the cheetah or selectively bred them for hunting.
As I've pointed out, there's not a lot of benefit to be gained by trying to selectively breed Cheetahs, because there's not much to select from. No real genetic diversity.
Second, hunter gatherers didn't domesticate animals. They ate them. There's no economic advantage to a hunter gatherer attempting to domesticate an animal. The investment cost of the effort exceeds the short term reward drastically enough that no one makes the effort.
The sole exception seems to be the Dog. But that's a subject in and of itself.
Other situations of subsistence populations incorporating domesticates involve populations acquiring them from borderline agricultural populations.
Look you may think its possible to herd cats just by selectively breeding them, that's your business.
????
I know it's clearly possible to selectively breed cats for appearance and behaviour. That's pretty much established out in the real world. There's nothing magical about cats.
I don't think anyone has tried to selectively breed cats to exhibit the clustering behaviour of sheep. Strikes me as a bit of a pointless errand. One of those things which involves herculean amounts of time and work with limited prospect of success... and where success gets no better than a 'meh.'
On the other hand, I don't believe its possible to selectively breed cats to speak french.
Wolves gravitating to human habitation and humans selectively breeding their more desireable traits overtime and harnessing their pack mentality to make them view their human owners as their pack,
Y'know, a while back, I read something that suggested that dogs had begun to diverge from wolves before they were domesticated. The implication being that humans did not create dogs, but rather dogs created dogs. This seemed to support theories of autodomestication - literally, animals domesticating themselves or more broadly, habituating to humans and human activity.
Where we seem to be diverging strongly, is that I tend to support notions of auto-domestication, or species habituation as an integral component of most domestication events.
You, with the exception of the 'cat' do not, but seem to cleave to the notion of human driven domestication, one that involves deliberate human manipulation in a kind of socio-economic vaccuum.
I really don't think that either evidence or logic is on your side.
is not the same as trying to harness a lion's pride mentality in the oft chance that you might, might suceed in selectively breeding them to turn them into kitty cats, or using them to coral sheep in a pen.
Why would anyone want to do a thing like that? Seriously. For one thing, there aren't any sheep in Africa, so it seems a pointless activity. I suppose that one could choose some African species as a herding beast, but then again, why bother? You'd need a prior domestication event for your sheep analogue, and I'm not sure the local economics would support that. Even given that prior domestication event, lions would be a poor choice for several reasons - dogs are probably already available, already domesticated and very efficient. Lions are much more expensive, being much larger animals. And Lions don't really have the stamina for sustained work.
There's nothing inherent to stop you from making the effort. But it would be quite a lot of effort for very little return. So.... why?
Humans, societies, are not irrational. We don't go out domesticating animals because its fun. There has to be a return.
Wolves and Lions are two different things. Might aswell ask why the inuits never domesticated whales by harnessing their herd mentality, the economic factor was certainly there, they rely on whale meet.
Well, the Inuit were a subsistence population of hunter gatherers. Subsistence populations usually exist at about 25% of the maximum sustainability threshold of their environment, largely because of transient resource bottlenecks inhibiting the population.
What this means is that they don't particularly need to make the effort to domesticate whales because there are, in season, always more whales than they can eat. There's no feasible way to make that kind of domestication pay a greater return in protein than wild harvesting. To say nothing of the front end expenditure costs of the investment.
In another sense, a key reason that Inuit didn't domesticate whales was because such an effort would be antithetical to their subsistence economy. Put simply, the Inuit moved along on a seasonal cycle, from coasts to interior, taking advantage of animal populations. Whales, seals, fish.... Then Caribou, Hare, Musk Ox, Fox.
The Inuit could have domesticated Caribou. Caribou are basically genetically identical to reindeer. The degree of variation within the two populations markedly exceed the distinctions between them. They didn't.
Why? Does this mean that Caribou are magically immune to domestication? But if we apply your 'out of africa theory', Reindeer had far more experience dealing with humans than Caribou - something like 50,000 years (or 250,000 including neandertals), compared to 12,000. Reindeer should have been much more resistant, and Caribou much easier to domesticate.
The reason that Inuit didn't domesticate Caribou, is one of the reasons the Inuit didn't domesticate whales (and there's lots of other reasons). Because domestication would mean a huge lifestyle cost, huge investment. Domesticate Caribou full time, that means you can't spend half your time accessing sea protein. It's not a guarantee that the return on Caribou protein is going to make up for that loss, and its pretty much a sure thing that you'll run big deficits in the interim. No one likes to starve.
Speaking of whales though - you know what. I think Beluga's might have made a decent potential domesticate.
Nah. Sexual maturity at 6 years? Fourteen month gestation? Reproduce once every three years? Falls outside the outer edge of the economic envelope for big domesticates.
There's some nice things - herd or clustering behaviour, tends to return to the same territories.
On the other hand, its hard to see the advantage. Certainly not a draft animal. Eats fish and its probably as efficient to harvest the fish directly. And the advantage is to simply harvest wild populations, rather than making the effort and undertaking the labour costs of managing a domesticate.
What do you think of Walrus? Just for the hell of it, play along. In terms of maturation, gestation, reproduction, they're as bad as Beluga. But they're benthic bottom feeders and much less inclined to roam.
Name one sub Saharan African farming community that uses African elephants like Thailand farmers do? In a parallel universe maybe.
Why would they want to? Thailand's economy, and the economics that employs elephants is completely different from the Sub-Sahara. That's my consistent point. The niche that exists in Thailand largely doesn't exist in Africa. I don't know why you seem to find this so difficult.
I never said that. I was merely point out a fact, Africa has had more large predators than anywhere else in the world. A herd of horses trying to cross a river in Russia, didn't need to worry about crocodiles lying in ambush, unlike an African zebra. To say that these animals are domesticable would be asking them to ignore tens of thousands of years of environmental adaptation.
No Bears in Africa. Bears very common in Eurasia and North Am. Some very predatory ones too. Alligators and Crocodiles found throughout tropic regions - India, Southeast Asia, South China, Australia, South America, southern North America. Also, wolves very effective. Tigers endemic to Asia. I'm not sure that your argument is correct, comparing say predator/prey population ratios or comparative biomasses. I think its pretty consistent.
But anyway, is your thesis an argument that African animals are less domesticable, not because they've co-evolved with humans, but because they're subject to a lot more predation? Has your argument changed? What is your argument precisely?
But this is my point! Domestication events are the interactions of multiple factors - economic, social, cultural, physiological. Things like reproduction rates, gestation periods, maturation periods, relative stamina and tolerances, economic utilities, investment costs, maintenance costs, relative comparisons. All these things come into play. I'm talking practical things. Real world stuff.
Your approach borders on the mystical.
That's only part of the reason, the other reason being their temperament. You and most everyone here seem to want the animal to ignore its evolutionary adaptation to its environment to make him more pliable to domestiction. Pure fantasy.
Really? Prove it. Show me the ineffable soul of the Rhino that will resist domestication under all circumstances. You accuse people of fantasy, but its pretty clear that your attitude is steeped in mysticism.
I can offer a dozen reasons why a Rhino is a poor prospect.
The Rhino is a browser, but human agriculture almost exclusively favours grazers. Are grazers mystically more amenable to domestication? Not really. It's just that our agriculture - grains and field crops produce food for grazers, not browsers.
The Rhino's age of sexual maturity is 5 to 7 years. That's poor compared to most domesticates that reach sexual maturity in 2 to 4 years. Gestation period is 14 months. Much too long. Reproduces only once every two or three years. Not rapid enough. Those are bad economics compared to other potential domesticates.
Work capacity? Horsepower? Pounds per horsepower? Fodder for Horsepower? Again, poor compared to other domesticates.
Finally, other more efficient domesticates are all in place. So where's the logic? Why does a society undertake the immense costs of selectively breeding Rhinos over a period of time to get a domesticate.... when it already has domesticates who are consistently more efficient workers, faster growers, faster reproducers, and generally better candidates and whose domestication costs have been paid and amortized long ago.
These are meaningful issues.
But your attitude is simply that the 'Rhino is the Rhino and the soul of the Rhino can never be domesticated, because, you know, its a Rhino and they're not domesticable, amen.'
Why am I even bothering with your posts?
Who are you arguing against? No one said otherwise.
You're the one arguing for Hannibal's 'Indian' Elephants. That seems an outrageous proposition.
I'd really love to discuss this further with you,
I can't say that the pleasure is in any way mutual.
but seeing that debating sci fi fanboys is just anout as pointless as the debate between star trek and starwars fanboys.... forget it.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
again I'll point out, the whole premise of the op question and the animals suggested is asb.
The door? The way out? Not letting it hit you?
The operative word in the title being "cool" animals to domesticate. Rhino cavalry, Woolly mammoths being used as pack animals by prehistoric people is just I'm afraid impossible, I don't care what the Frank Frazetta graphics and the movie "10,000 BC" movie says. You can't friggin do it.
I had no idea you were an expert on the social behaviour and temperament of Wooly Mammoths. Normally, that sort of expertise would be fascinating. But somehow....
ASB and Other Magic ring a bell?
It could be the door chime. Why don't you go and check?
No hard feelings, but my 'goodbye' is profoundly sincere.
Have a nice day. I certainly hope you find your way to a timeline that you find more stimulating and engaging.