Free The Intimate Bond by Brian Fagan Page B

flourished in India, Europe and Eurasia, and North Africa. All are now extinct, the last European aurochs dying of natural causes in Poland in 1627. Efforts to recreate
Bos primigenius
have produced animals closely resembling them, but complete success still eludes the experts. Once encountered, the aurochs were rarely forgotten. Roman general Julius Caesar encountered them during his campaigns in Gaul. He described them as “a little below the elephant in size. Their strength and speed is extraordinary; they spare neither man nor beast.” He added, “Not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed.” 1
    Caesar was wrong. Some eight thousand years before his time, farmers in South and Southwest Asia tamed the wild ox almost as early as goats and sheep. The historical consequences were momentous. Bulls rapidly became symbols of leadership, cattle a desirable form of wealth.They plowed fields and intensified agricultural production, helped cities and civilizations come into being. Oxen hauled plows in Mesopotamia as early as the sixth millennium BCE . They gradually replaced the backbreaking digging sticks and hoes used by earlier farmers and increased agricultural productivity significantly.
    Domesticating a larger animal such as an aurochs would have been much harder than taming smaller farm animals. Just its size and unpredictable ferocity would seem insurmountable obstacles. Apparently, however, a small number of people in both Southwest Asia and South Asia succeeded in managing and taming a few large, aggressive, and by nature territorial beasts as a more reliable food source than game. And, in time, they apparently learned how to milk the cows. Just corralling a few aurochs would have been a major challenge. Perhaps neighboring villages exchanged information, and even partially tamed beasts. We will never know. It’s certain, however, that such animals would have had important symbolic value in societies where hunting fierce beasts and carnivores was a central part of cultural ideology. Today, cattle are the most important domesticated animals in the world, 1.3 billion of them cows. They provide dairy products, leather, meat, and manure for fertilizer. We couldn’t live life as we know it today without them.
    An Excursion into Cattle Handling
    How did people tame such a seemingly formidable beast? As with smaller farm animals, here we enter the realm of intelligent guesswork, for we will, of course, never know the details. However, we can glean some clues from modern studies of cattle behavior and stock management procedures. The animal scientist Temple Grandin points out that cattle are always alert for predators. 2 Their brains operate like sentries against sudden movement. When threatened, they bunch together and seek safety in numbers, or they turn and fight with their horns. Many people who are unfamiliar with farms don’t realize that most beef cattle aren’t tame. They offer a contrast with pet cows and working oxen, and with dairy cows that are milked two or three times a day. Such animals enjoy a close association with people and have fewer fear genes. Forinstance, the well-known Holstein dairy cow is almost certainly genetically farther away from her wild ancestors than other domesticated cattle, as she has been selected for milk production. On large ranches, beef cattle are habituated to the sight of people, but again, they are not fully tame. Grandin writes of “flight zones,” the distances that wild animals will allow you to approach before they flee. Domesticated cows have a small-to-zero flight zone compared with range beef cattle.
    A great deal depends on how people handle cattle. Yelling, someone or something’s sudden appearance, or fast-moving objects, such as a galloping horse, cause fear to kick in. The beasts’ nervous systems are attuned to detect predators and threats, as they are prime targets in the wild. All cattle are