Animal Domestication

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Orleander, Mar 9, 2009.

  1. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Doesn't explain why you got all emotional and insulted me does it.I thought you didn't like people who did that.

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    ANYWAYS....I know what you are saying, I just personally don't think companionship is HUGE on the impact scale. Horses were used as beasts of burden, for wars, for hunting, for milk, for food, and for companionship as well.
     
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  3. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    so the animal that was domesticated first was the one that had the hugest impact? How do we know it wasn't a monkey in Africa or a chicken in South America?
     
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  5. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Rats were as domesticated as, say, pigs or goats or sheep. They lived with humans in much the same way as cats or other animals that were considered "domesticated". Think about it a little bit.

    Baron Max
     
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  7. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    You're splitting hairs and you know it.
     
  8. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Ya' know, Orleander, the more I think about horses, the more I'm willing to lean your way on this issue. And I'm not so sure that people are using the term "impact" in the same way. Without horses, argriculture of any scale would have been nearly impossible. No dogs could have done that. And without massive agricultural endeavors, human civilizations would have faltered badly.

    Hmm, horses, huh?

    Baron Max
     
  9. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm just trying to imagine no horses and every military campaign without them. What would the world be like? What would the Mongols or Alexander the Great have done? What would the New World have been like without Spaniards on horseback?

    Where would the world be without a dog to cuddle?
     
  10. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Take it even further than that, Orleander, think of plowing the ground, planting crops and harvesting them without horses.

    I agree that the military would have been hampered, but think in term of normal, non-war life. Even intra-city commerce would have been impossible without horses to pull the cargo wagons. City delivery without horses? That would have been a damned small city, wouldn't it?

    I'll take my dog over about 350,000,000 people right about now!

    Baron Max
     
  11. CutsieMarie89 Zen Registered Senior Member

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    I assume they would have created or used something else to transport them, or maybe just maybe they would have done what everyone still does (or should do), walk.

    While I think the world would be an awful place with out a dog to cuddle. I think you might be forgetting just how hard some dogs work. Who keeps the horses in line when they start to get antsy? Dogs do. Who helps the rancher get all of his sheep inside the pen? His dog does, not his horse that he rides on because he's too slow to or not in good enough shape to run. Who protects your livestock and poultry from coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, and wolves? Not your horse. Who helps the hunter track down rabbits, foxes, deer, and whatever else they might be hunting? Their dog does. And who does the pulling of sleds across the snowy tundra? Perhaps there's a reason they don't use horses. And whose there to play with you when you get bored or feel down? And dogs still do all of these things today. People don't use horses to take them to the office anymore. While dogs may not have carried people on their backs for thousands of miles, they were running right along next them the whole way. Not to say that horses haven't made huge contributions to humans and our way of life, but come on. Not all dogs sit there and look cute. Give dogs their much deserved kudos, they have and continue to work their tails off for us.
     
  12. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It's circumstantial, but that's good enough for a hypothesis to be treated with respect in the scientific method. Human tribes were extremely hostile to each other in the Paleolithic Era. Forensic analysis of skeletons using modern technology has discovered that more than half of adult humans in that era were killed by violence. Suddenly the first evidence of humans and dogs living together shows up, and within a couple of thousand years they're making nice with the other tribes. It's not proof but I haven't come across a better hypothesis to explain why the Agricultural Revolution and the transition to village life, which required living in harmony and cooperation with non-family members, occurred when it did--in multiple locations.
    Again, circumstantial and again that's enough. Humans had not mastered the technology of animal husbandry at that time. There is evidence of earlier experiments with large, docile herbivores that could be easily captured. To capture fast-moving, intelligent predators that travel in packs would have been a remarkable feat. Cooperation would have made it more feasible. The somewhat omnivorous diet and scavenging instinct of most canids would have made our garbage tempting as it does today to wolves and coyotes. I saw footage of an African tribesman holding out a beef leg bone to a hyena, and after a long period of patience (I don't know how many weeks, years or generations it took) the hyena peacefully accepted the offering.

    It might be hyperbolic of me to insist that it was dogs who adopted humans, but at the very least it was a mutual transaction.
    I don't understand. Horses are not native to North America. They were brought here, already domesticated, by the Europeans. The Indians bartered or stole their herds, or picked up those left riderless in combat, and learned how to "break" them for riding by watching us do it.
    No. "Domestication" requires captive, and at least rudimentarily selective, breeding. Animals that breed ferally and then hang out with us are not domesticated, nor are captive animals that can only be bred by AI. This obviously bears on the timeline for the domestication of cats. Unlike dogs they're not pack-social by instinct so they would not have so readily and quickly established companionship with another species that clearly merited the respect of alpha status.
    It was more like one-third. It's been argued that the plague was a major factor in Europe's economic improvement and concomitant rise out of the Dark Ages. When the plague was over everyone had 50% more wealth.
    No, that wasn't my point and forgive me if I wasn't clear. I was just suggesting that the impact of the horse on human culture must be shared with the other large herbivores that were domesticated first. Dogs came out of nowhere in the depths of the Stone Age. Horses were the latest in a long line of exercises in animal husbandry throughout the Neolithic Era and the Age of Civilization.
    Because archeologists make it their business to figure that stuff out. They've got rather precise dates for the first evidence of domestication of every tamed animal you can name. I haven't got the whole list here but it looks like sheep and goats came first, then pigs and cattle, then horses and donkeys, then camels and ferrets, then elephants and rabbits. (And I could be off there Max but it hardly matters in this context.) With various birds and smaller game animals along the way. The New World had its own species and timeline. Since nobody could figure out what to do with bison they were rather limited. Llamas and the other camelids, turkeys, guinea pigs. Amazingly, the large, docile and meaty capybara has only been domesticated within our lifetimes, strictly as a pet. Just as amazingly, the North American Indians never tried it with mountain goats, deer or javelinas, so they only had half of agricultural technology (plants) and had to hunt for their protein.

    The Eskimo-Aleut didn't even domesticate the reindeer (called "caribou" here but it's the same animal) like the cousins they left behind in Asia did.
    Uh dude, you're forgetting that millions of people have used oxen, donkeys, yaks and llamas as beasts of burden. And let's not forget elephants.

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    The only civilization that was built without draft animals was the Olmec, because there were no large herbivores in Mesoamerica. Gotta give those guys credit.
    Oh come on. Haven't you seen any movies set in ancient times where everything is hauled by asses? Most people couldn't afford a horse! They were the Cadillac of draft animals.

    And since you love to use the anomalies of the New World people to shoot down hypotheses, how do you explain the fact that the Olmecs and their successors, the Maya and Aztecs, ran their impressively large cities quite well without draft animals?

    And don't forget that we have abundant historical accounts of large dogs being used to haul carts, even quite recently (e.g., the Rottweiler). A lot of us dog breeders wonder whether that was the reason the St. Bernard was developed. Dogs with their separated toes can be more sure-footed than hooved animals in rugged mountains. I'm pretty sure there were no large dogs in the Americas so that still doesn't explain the Olmecs.
    Well you're certainly a counterexample to my hypothesis that living with dogs made people more sociable.

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    Last edited: Mar 12, 2009
  13. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Hey BM? Where are these conclusive studies of yours that show women's only contribution to history was having babies and cooking?
     
  14. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle, you keep talking about the dog and humans interacting, and I agree that dogs and humans probably did live together in a symbiotic way of some kind from very early times. Yes, I agree with that.

    However, it's the issue of the "largest impact" that bothers me. You've provided nothing but fligths of fantasy to explain it with regard to the dog.

    I agree, but I don't want to see the hypotheses taken too far or used for too much for flights of fantasy. Yes, dogs and humans lived together.

    But from that line of evidence, how can you conclude that the dog had anything to do with that progression? Why not just believe that the dogs came along for the ride ...and that humans simply learned, after thousands of years, to make peace with the other neighboring tribes of humans. Why conclude that the dogs caused it?

    I disagree. The idea that "the dogs caused it all" is a giant leap of faith for the ability of dogs to teach humans to plant crops and live in harmony. How did the dogs teach humans this marvelous new agriculture thing? How did dogs teach humans to get along? I think perhaps, just like now, the dogs came along for the ride ...as humans learned agriculture.

    I was using that as a example of early man NOT using the dogs as you've suggested. The Native Americans had dogs in the camp, but they were nothing more than pets and a food source in hard times. The horse, however, changed the very nature of the plains tribes. The dogs just came along for the ride ...perhaps exactly as they did in ancient times.

    Dogs were there, I'll give you that, Fraggle. But you have to go a long, long ways to prove to me how dogs taught humans all those wonderous methods that you've ascribed to them. "The dogs made humans do it!" is not quite enough for me to accept as scientific fact.

    Well, Fraggle, you live with lots of dogs, you're a breeder of dogs, yet you let you were estranged from your own father, and let him die without a word of reconciliation from you. And you have the gall to call me anti-social?

    Baron Max
     
  15. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    History. Read it some time, you'll enjoy it.

    But, VI, that's not even a minor issue in regard to the topic. If you wish, start a new thread, it might be fun to see how women's rights were so great and wonderful in ancient civilizations!

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    Baron Max
     
  16. Ladicius Registered Senior Member

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    Zabertooths, to keep warm during the winter.
     
  17. mikenostic Stop pretending you're smart! Registered Senior Member

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    I just freakin explained it to you to where children who incessantly watch Barney the dinosaur could understand.
    You refuse to see my point, you get that reaction. It doesn't get anymore cut and dry than that. :shrug:

    Dog are also companions, on a much larger scale than horses. You cannot sit there and argue that.
    And apparently you didn't read one word of that dog article I posted a few posts above.
    Dogs have been used extensively beyond companions and hunters. Since you seem to have a problem understanding general statements, I'll break it down for you.
    -seeing eye dogs for the blind
    -guard dogs
    -search and rescue (labradors were extensively used in finding people trapped under the Twin tower rubble)
    St. Bernards have been used for centuries in helping find people trapped under avalanches
    -Police use dogs to sniff out narcotics. They use dogs to help them chase down suspects who run from them.
    -The military has extensively used dogs. Here's one example (and by far my favorite example of military dogs:
    http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/7109/wardogs.html
    This site had me choked up the first time I read it.
    -dogs are used for therapy for old people at nursing homes
    -dogs used to be used to sniff still/unconscious bodies during catasrophes to see which ones were still alive

    And let me quote some more examples from that article I posted, of which you apparently read not one word of:
    And allow me to reiterate, at anytime during history of both animals, horses were never as common, nor were they ever on a scale as large as dogs.
     
  18. mikenostic Stop pretending you're smart! Registered Senior Member

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    They could have just used camels. Camels are rideable, and they can go for far, far longer than a horse w/o water. As far as agriculture and plowing...donkeys.
    So there's the answer to your 'where would the world be w/o horses' question.
     
  19. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    But just because there are/were lots of dogs doesn't mean that they had the largest impact on humans. ...which is, of course, what the topic is all about.

    Baron Max
     
  20. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    That hardly answered her question! Wanna try again?

    Baron Max
     
  21. mikenostic Stop pretending you're smart! Registered Senior Member

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    No because she asked what the world would be like w/o horses. I answered her. No need to try again when I got it right the first time.

    YOU wanna try again?


    You're right. That in itself doesn't mean anything, but when you factor in all the stuff that falls under that, i.e. more dogs were around so more people had dogs as pets than horses, then it becomes a bit more valid.
    You're just splitting hairs with trivial meaningless questions/statements like that anyway.
     
  22. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    No, you didn't answer her. You used some silly fantasy of the military of the world using camels instead of horses!! ....LOL!

    But, see, that's what the topic question is ....the largest impact. It doesn't say anything about vast numbers.

    I hardly think that it's just splitting hairs ...in fact, I'd say that you're the one doeing that. Using vast numbers of dogs as if to explain that they had a larger impact.

    Baron Max
     
  23. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    silly isn't even the word for it.

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    I'm trying to imagine it and its ludicrous.

    Mike, if it was about numbers, wouldn't fish be the winner?

    (Oh, and I still haven't gotten all emotional, acted like a little whiney bitch, and insulted you.)
     

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