THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 176
The Domestication of Animals
12-4. The Domestication of Animals
The delta oases have been the home of man from early prehistoric time, throughout Turkestan and northern Persia. The two oldest culture-strata of Anau prove that the settlers of the first Culture cultivated wheat and barley, had rectangular houses of air-dried bricks, but only wild animals at first, out of which were locally domesticated the long-horned ox, the pig, and horse, and successively two breeds of sheep. The second Culture had the domestic ox, both longand short-horned, the pig, and the horse. The domestic goat, camel, and dog appear, and a new hornless breed of sheep.
The cultivation of cereals was discovered in Asia long before B.C. 8000. The domestication of cattle, pigs, and sheep, and probably of the horse, was accomplished at Anau between B.C. 8000 and 6800. Consequently, the agricultural stage preceded the nomadic shepherd stage in Asia. It follows, therefore, that before domestication of animals was accomplished, mankind in Central Asia was divided sharply into two classes — settled agriculturists on the one hand, and hunters who wandered within a limited range on the other hand. When the nomadic hunters became shepherds, they necessarily wandered between ever-widening limits as the seasons and pasturage required for increasing herds.
The establishment of the first domestic breeds of pigs, long-horned cattle, large sheep and horses, was followed by a deteriorating climate which may have — as Pumpelly, though questionably, assumes — changed these to smaller breeds. Dr Duerst identifies the second breed of sheep with the turbary sheep (Torfschaf), and the pig with the turbary pig (Torfschweiri), which appear as already domesticated in the neolithic stations of Europe. They must therefore have been descendants of those domesticated on the oases of the Anau district. They make their appearance in European neolithic stations apparently contemporaneously with an immigration of a people of a round-headed Asiatic type which seems to have infiltrated gradually among the prevailing long-headed Europeans. The presumption is, therefore, that these animals were brought from Asia by this round-headed people, and that we have in this immigration perhaps the earliest post-glacial factor in the problem of Asiatic influence in European racial as well as cultural origins, for they brought with them both the art of cattlebreeding and some knowledge of agriculture.
The skulls of the first and second cultures in Anau are all dolichocephalic or mesocephalic, without a trace of the round-headed element. We are therefore justified in assuming that the domestication and the forming of the several breeds of domestic animals were effected by a long-headed people. And since the people of the two successive cultures were settled oasis-agriculturists and breeders, we may assume as probable that agriculture and settled life in towns on the oases originated among people of a dolichocephalic type. Since Dr Duerst identifies the second breed of sheep established during the first culture of Anau, with the turbary sheep in Europe, contemporaneously with skulls of the round-headed Galcha type, it should follow that the domestic animals of the European neolithic stations were brought thither, together with wheat and barley, by round-headed immigrants of an Asiatic type.
Since the original agriculturists and breeders were long-headed, it seems probable that the immigrants were broad-headed nomads who, having acquired from the oasis people domestic animals and rudimentary agriculture of the kind still practised by the shepherd nomads of Central Asia, infiltrated among the neolithic settlements of Eastern and Central Europe, and adopted the stone-implement culture of the hunting and fishing peoples among whom they came. In this connexion it is not without significance that throughout the whole historical period, the combination of settled town life and agriculture has been the fundamental characteristic of the Aryan-speaking Galchas, and of the Iranians inhabiting Western Central Asia and the Persian plateau, while the peoples of pure Asiatic mongoloid type have been essentially shepherd nomads, who, as already shewn, could have become shepherds only after the settled agriculturists of the oases had established domesticated breeds of cattle.
The origin of the taming of wild into domestic animals is one of the most difficult problems of economic history. What was its aim? The use that we make of domestic animals? Certainly not, for adaptability thereto could only gradually be imparted to the animals and could not be foreseen; it could not be anticipated that the cow and the goat would ever give more milk than their young needed, and that beyond the time of lactation; nor could it be anticipated that sheep not woolly by nature would develop a fleece. Even for us it would be too uneconomical to breed such a powerful animal and such a large consumer of fodder as the ox merely for a supply of meat; and besides beef is not readily eaten in Central Asia. Moreover the wild ox is entirely unsuitable for draught, for it is one of the shyest as well as strongest and most dangerous of animals. And it should be specially emphasised that a long step lies between taming individual animals and domesticating them, for as a rule wild animals, however well tamed, do not breed in captivity.
Consequently the domestication was not produced simply by taming or for economic ends. It is the great service of Eduard Halm to have laid down the theory that the domestication — involuntary and unforeseen — was the result of forcing for religious purposes certain favourite animals of certain divinities into reservations where they remained reproductive, and at the same time gradually lost their original wildness through peaceful contact with man. The beasts of sacrifice were taken from these enclosures. Thus originated the castrated ox which quietly let itself be yoked before the sacred car; and by systematic milking for sacrificial purposes the milk-secretion of the cow and the goat was gradually increased. Lastly, when man perceived what he had gained from the animals, he turned to his own use the peculiarities thus produced by enclosure and gradual domestication.
In general, cattle-rearing is unknown to the severest kind of nomadism. The ox soon dies of thirst, and it has not sufficient endurance or speed for the enormous wanderings; its flesh has little value in the steppe. The animals actually employed for rearing and food are consequently the sheep, and to a less extent the goat as leader of the sheep flocks, the horse, and here and there the ass; also, in a smaller number, the two-humped camel (in Turan the one-humped dromedary as well) as a beast of burden. Where the district admits of it, and long wanderings are not necessary (e.g. in Mongolia, in the Pamir, in the Amu delta, in South Russia, etc.), the Altaian has engaged in cattle-breeding from the remotest times.
A wealthy Mongolian possesses as many as 20,000 horses and still more sheep. Rich Kirghiz sometimes have hundreds of camels, thousands of horses, tens of thousands of sheep. The minimum for a Kirghiz family of five is 5 oxen, 28 sheep, and 15 horses. Some have fewer sheep, but the number of horses cannot sink below 15, for a stud of mares, with their foals, is indispensable for the production of kumiz.
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