Guns, Germs and Steel

[Dave Howery]

Well, I have to admit that it's possible that this is exactly how it is. But, I still have a hard time swallowing the idea that all the animals with this sort of behavioral compatibility just happened to live in basically two regions of the planet (Middle East/Eurasia and Southeastern Asia).

You could argue that certain environments select for "domesticable" behaviors in animals. I mean, that's pretty much what my thesis is for human behavior. But there are no consistent environmental variables, either: "domesticable" animals live on the plains, in the forests, in the mountains, and in the deserts. They live in tropical climates and arctic climates and everything in between. The only consistent variable that I can think of is that sub-Saharan Africa has a higher diversity of ungulates than anywhere in Eurasia does. But, why would environments with fewer ungulate species select for animals that are easier to domesticate?

So, not only has this innate behavioral compatibility never been demonstrated to exist, but it would also be completely inexplicable if it did exist.

I've wondered if part of the reason might be migration. Bison in America and a lot of the big animals of Africa make long migrations every year, and none of them were ever domesticated. Of course, that's not the whole answer, since plenty of big animals that don't migrate were never domesticated either, and reindeer do migrate and they were domesticated. So along with migration, social patterns come into it somehow, but 'long migration instinct' seems to inhibit domestication in a lot of animals...

 

[Malta]

I've wondered if part of the reason might be migration. Bison in America and a lot of the big animals of Africa make long migrations every year, and none of them were ever domesticated. Of course, that's not the whole answer, since plenty of big animals that don't migrate were never domesticated either, and reindeer do migrate and they were domesticated. So along with migration, social patterns come into it somehow, but 'long migration instinct' seems to inhibit domestication in a lot of animals...

Well, it is hard to say the extent of domestication. The Native Americans certainly shaped the migration patterns and herd sizes of the Bison as well as the environment by periodic burnings of the Great Plains.

 

[twovultures]

Well, it is hard to say the extent of domestication. The Native Americans certainly shaped the migration patterns and herd sizes of the Bison as well as the environment by periodic burnings of the Great Plains.

I would not call that domestication. The Native Americans did not control the breeding of the bison, nor did they have enough control over their movement to use them for labor or milk.

Comparing hunting bison to herding cattle is like comparing making a sandcastle to building a real stone castle.

 

[empty]

In regards to North America in my mind it's pretty obvious that the only large mammal that could realistically been domesticated was the caribou. Bison and other animals like Moose are violent, skitttish and require huge amounts of food to have a healthy diet. Caribou can only be partially domesticated in the first place anyways. They require way too much land and have too simple of a social hierarchy to be completely domesticated. The only reason why I see caribou as possible was because they were in Russia OTL. If you want to write a story about domesticating beavers, otters or something I say go ahead. Otherwise, if you want a large domestic animal in North America it is either the caribou or ASB.

Also a really interesting read for those interested in learning about domestication: http://www.americanscientist.org/is...canid-domestication-the-farm-fox-experiment/1
It was the result of a 50+ year experiment in the Soviet Union and Russia of solely selectively breeding silver foxes for the trait of tameability.

 

[DaleCoz]

What gave these regions the edge in starting civilizations was not access to domesticable animals, but access to large grains like wheat and rice that kick-started sedentary farming. Once they had sedentary farming, it was much easier to experiment with taming animals-and even though separated by thousands of miles, these different centers of agriculture domesticated the same animals, which to my mind shows that pigs and cattle are, for whatever reason, preferable to domesticate among Eurasian animals.

There are some animals that seem to have been domesticated independently of a sedentary society, but being a sedentary farmer makes it much easier to domesticate. Agriculture supporting sedentism is why East Asia and the Middle East were centers of domestication, not because of their access to animal species.

I agree that sedentary farming tended to lead to domestication of herding animals, but I think the cause and effect may be a little different. I'm guessing that the sequence went something like this a lot of places:

1) As human populations grew, farming became obligatory to support the higher populations.
2) Animal protein became scarcer as populations grew, for several reasons, including that there were more people depending on an animal population, increased hunting pressure depressed animal populations, conversion of land to crop use and human water use reduced animal populations.
3) The now-scarce animals tended to ignore human political boundaries, as they always had, but now humans couldn't follow them without political ramifications.
4) In some cases, surviving animal populations centered on buffer areas between political groups because it was more dangerous to hunt there. That was true of deer in parts of North America. The Sioux and Ojibwa settled a long war and hunted in buffer areas at one point and had a brief bonanza of deer meat, followed by a dearth that gave them incentives to restart the war.

You can see the incentives to control a reliable source of protein under those circumstances.

Another possibility from this: There might have been less incentive to domesticate in Africa because African animals had longer to adapt to human hunting pressures and had adjusted not just their anti-predator behavior but also to some extent their birth rates, allowing their populations to hold up under the increased hunting pressures better.

 

[Sven]

Bison and other animals like Moose are violent, skitttish and require huge amounts of food to have a healthy diet.

You may very well be right, and I have no way of demonstrating that you are not. But, this is just an ad hoc rationalization.

On this thread, I've been trying to find out how violent an animal must be before it cannot be domesticated, and I don't have a satisfactory answer yet.

Subjectively speaking, elephants are probably more dangerous to humans than moose and bison combined, but the inherent violence of elephants seems not to have prevented their taming. In fact, were it not for complications with captive breeding, elephants may very well have been domesticated in OTL.

So, how can we be sure that humans can't or won't domesticate violent animals?

The only reason why I see caribou as possible was because they were in Russia OTL.

I think this is the critical point here: much of the reasoning relies more on OTL precedents than on the actual characteristics of the animals. Were it not for the OTL reindeer precedent, you would likely be arguing that there are no domesticable large animals in North America.

 

[Sven]

I've wondered if part of the reason might be migration. Bison in America and a lot of the big animals of Africa make long migrations every year, and none of them were ever domesticated. Of course, that's not the whole answer, since plenty of big animals that don't migrate were never domesticated either, and reindeer do migrate and they were domesticated. So along with migration, social patterns come into it somehow, but 'long migration instinct' seems to inhibit domestication in a lot of animals...

I've thought about that possibility too, and I think it's an extremely good point.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there are a range of migratory patterns: some ungulates migrate long distances, some migrate short distances, and some don't seem to truly migrate at all. This means that, at any season, a hunter in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to encounter some ungulates, but which ungulates he encounters may fluctuate seasonally. So, the optimal solution for the hunter is not to migrate with a specific prey animal, but simply shift focus from one quarry to another on a seasonal basis.

But, in the Arctic, there aren't a whole lot of options. So, following the migrating herds of reindeer is a viable solution to the problem of finding food. So, the Arctic is an environment that might foster a close association with a single species of animal.

 

[empty]

The status of Indian and Asian elephants as domesticated could be debated. They aren't significantly altered from wild elephants in any way and most of the time are only tamed after being caught as young elephants. The physical risk of an animal like the elephant may not harm it's potential for domestication because of the bonus of it's other traits as well. Elephants will eat a crazy variety of things and the potential benefit of them is incredibly obvious to everybody compared to some animals that need to be significantly altered to be useful. What does hold elephants back even today is that they take more than a decade to mature (which is why they're often captured). They also may be a threat to humans in that they could cause a lot of damage if they attacked but the probability of them doing so is extremely low relative to say a moose or bison.

 

[Sven]

Another possibility from this: There might have been less incentive to domesticate in Africa because African animals had longer to adapt to human hunting pressures and had adjusted not just their anti-predator behavior but also to some extent their birth rates, allowing their populations to hold up under the increased hunting pressures better.

Interesting. Now, the question is whether there is evidence of this. The effects of this selection should be visible today. What sort of difference in birth rate should we expect between African animals and Eurasian animals under similar human hunting pressures?

Would you expect shorter gestation periods in Africa?
Or, higher proportions of females giving birth each year?
Or, shorter time to maturity?

I wonder if something like that has been done before. I wonder if there are estimates for mammoth growth rates or birth rates. That's apparently a thing in paleontology these days.

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To be honest, though, I think early humans had pretty low impact on ungulate populations, simply because humans eat a lot less meat than other predators. For example, lions' meat intake averages about 10-15 lbs (5-7 kg) a day. On the other hand, a typical human would be hard-pressed to eat 1-2 lb of meat in a single day, let alone average that rate over a period of days.

So, it would take about 10 humans to match the meat intake of 1 lion. So, until our populatiosn had grown to outnumber lions 10 to 1, lions provided a more important selection pressure for prey than we did. I'm not sure when our populations had grown to that point, but I don't think it happened much earlier than 100,000 years ago (if then). That doesn't leave a lot of time for us to have made an evolutionary impact in Africa before we began having a similar impact in Eurasia.


But, I'm just throwing this together as I go: I could be way off.

 

[Sven]

The status of Indian and Asian elephants as domesticated could be debated.

I think we can all agree that elephants aren't domesticated in the strictest sense.

They also may be a threat to humans in that they could cause a lot of damage if they attacked but the probability of them doing so is extremely low relative to say a moose or bison.

I don't think that's true at all: if I had to guess, I would say elephants are just as likely to attack as moose or bison. But, I have no statistics that definitively support either side.

The real pivotal role animal aggression plays in domestication is in determining whether or not the animal can be tamed. Clearly, elephants can be tamed, despite their aggression. Incidentally, moose have been tamed, too.

In both cases, it seems to be something other than aggression that prevented successful domestication. So, I'm still doubtful that aggressiveness is really a major barrier to domestication.

 

[DG Valdron]

I've wondered if part of the reason might be migration. Bison in America and a lot of the big animals of Africa make long migrations every year, and none of them were ever domesticated. Of course, that's not the whole answer, since plenty of big animals that don't migrate were never domesticated either, and reindeer do migrate and they were domesticated. So along with migration, social patterns come into it somehow, but 'long migration instinct' seems to inhibit domestication in a lot of animals...

Actually, for draft animals, I tend to take the opposite view. Migrators make better candidates for domestication than non-migrators. They're adapted for a lot of energy output over a long period of time, and adapted to erratic feeding cycles, and usually adjusted to high population densities and exposure to pathogens.

 

[Dave Howery]

Actually, for draft animals, I tend to take the opposite view. Migrators make better candidates for domestication than non-migrators. They're adapted for a lot of energy output over a long period of time, and adapted to erratic feeding cycles, and usually adjusted to high population densities and exposure to pathogens.

one way to test that would be to look at the wild ancestors of pigs and sheep (can't do anything about cattle, their wild ancestors are all gone)... do the wild boar and sheep of Europe migrate long distances? I imagine they move short distances, like most big animals, for seasonal purposes, but I doubt they do the long distance migration like African wildlife does it.

 

[DG Valdron]

one way to test that would be to look at the wild ancestors of pigs and sheep (can't do anything about cattle, their wild ancestors are all gone)... do the wild boar and sheep of Europe migrate long distances? I imagine they move short distances, like most big animals, for seasonal purposes, but I doubt they do the long distance migration like African wildlife does it.

Wrong animals. Pigs and sheep aren't particularly known as draft animals. They don't pull plows, they don't pull wagons or carry packs for the most part and they certainly aren't ridden.

You'd be better off studying plains grazers in ecological niches similar to horses and cattle = migrators.

 

[RGB]

Wrong animals. Pigs and sheep aren't particularly known as draft animals. They don't pull plows, they don't pull wagons or carry packs for the most part and they certainly aren't ridden.

I've seen people use goats (very minorly) as draft animals, but not sheep.

I don't really see how sheep help domesticate horses other than by giving basic experience with herding and also providing the necessity to cover lots of ground quickly. Any other herding animal might do just as well.

(Also, how migratory were forest bovines? The Aurochs and the Zubr aren't really migratory. Are any of the water buffalos? The latter are usable as draft animals, the former have all been hunted out. What's the difference?)

 

[DG Valdron]

I've seen people use goats (very minorly) as draft animals, but not sheep.

Actually, I can find reference to minor use of sheep as draft animals as well. Not for pulling a plow, there just isn't the horsepower in them for that. But in terms of carrying packs, or perhaps pulling small wagons.

It's unlikely that sheep were domesticated as draft animals, that was probably a secondary purpose.

(Also, how migratory were forest bovines? The Aurochs and the Zubr aren't really migratory. Are any of the water buffalos? The latter are usable as draft animals, the former have all been hunted out. What's the difference?)

The key domesticates - horse and cattle were almost certainly migratory. Reindeer definitely. Camels and Bactrians, don't know, possibly. Yak unlikely. Water Buffalo I'd doubt. Llama, unlikely.

I don't think that whether an animal is or is not migratory is determinative of domesticable potential. Its not a meaningful factor, one way or the other.

 

[Elfwine]

One thing I'd throw out: It might be possible to domesticate an animal of a given ferocity (ability + willingness to be violent), but that doesn't mean that it's worth it.

If you have to spend significantly more calories and/or time on domestication of a given animal than hunting it in the wild, the perceived benefit of domestication shrinks significantly, even if we from the standpoint of not having to burn the calories or waste the time can argue that it would be a benefit for X to be a domesticated animal over the long haul.

So saying that certain animals can be domesticated based on modern attempts at the same may be misleading.

 

[DG Valdron]

Well it all comes down to determinations of worth. That's not in itself a neutral value, but is contingent on a multitude of factors.

For instance, supposing that you're looking at an african population domesticating an Ostrich or Cape Buffalo. How do you calculate worth?

First, there's the investment cost of the domestication itself. That cost can be high or low.

Does the culture need or require the benefit of a domestication. Hunter gatherers mostly didn't need to domesticate their protein because they took it for free while hunting. They didn't need to invest in either domesticating or maintaining the domestication.

Are there alternatives available? Why make the investment to domesticate a cape buffalo if you already have horses and cattle?

 

[PhilippeO]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_horse_domestication_theories#Current_theory

Modern genetic evidence now points at a single domestication event for a limited number of stallions

There could be a lot of element of luck on domestication. it might be horse domestication succeed only because there are some unusually tame stallion that somebody find.

The 'founder effect' from tamed animals could influence whether their domestication succeed. They might be thousand attempts of taming that did not result on domestication, until a single lucky mutation enable it.

 

[Sven]

The Anna Karenina Principle

In Jared Diamond's book, he uses what he calls the "Anna Karenina principle," which based on something Anna allegedly said: "All happy marriages are the same; unhappy marriages are all unhappy for different reasons." In the case of domestic animals, it's "All successful domestications are the same; unsuccessful domestications all failed for different reasons."

Personally, I think this is a flawed principle. All successful domestications were certainly not the same. I think there are at least two broad categories of domestication techniques:

1. Nomadic/semi-nomadic pastoralism (reindeer, horse, sheep, goat, camel); nomadic hunters slowly developed closer and closer associations with these animals over many generations of depending strongly on them for food. In this case, domestication happens rather gradually as the two parties develop mutualistic ties.
2. Catch-and-tame agriculturalism (pig, donkey, small animals); sedentary agriculturalists caught these animals in the wild (probably as immatures) and put them in cages to fatten them up or tame them for use. In this case, domestication happens as the animal grows accustomed to living in captivity and people discover that they will breed in confinement.

There are a few that I'm not sure how to classify in this scheme.

Cattle probably fit closer to the "catch-and-tame" tactic, because their domestication is associated with sedentary communities in the Fertile Crescent.

The yak, however, is associated with nomadic communities in mountainous Tibet, so it might have been more of a pastoral domestication.

The llama and alpaca were probably also pastoral.

The elephant fits in the "catch-and-tame" category, but isn't truly domesticated.

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To me, the interesting pattern is that pastoral-type domestications only seem to emerge in marginal habitats where resources are hard to come by: the steppes, the tundra, the desert and the mountains. In most of these cases, there are only a couple of species available for the hunters to hunt, and agriculture is either non-existent or effectively impossible. So, close associations with specific animals emerge.

In sub-Saharan Africa, they have some of these characteristics (non-existent agriculture, marginal habitat quality), but the diversity of ungulates is high. So, there's no call to develop a close association with a specific animal.