The Intimate Bond (9 page)

Many variables act on survivorship curves, especially for subsistence herders, who rely heavily on their animal for food and raw materials, while at the same time being well aware of the risks that could decimate their herds. They tend, for example, to space out the slaughtering of rams as a hedge against food shortages. Herders have to respond to a
wide range of environmental, political, and social realities, which can change dramatically within a short period. For instance, just the movement of herds from summer to winter pastures can skew curves obtained from a single site. Circumstances also change dramatically when the herders are engaged in the business of supplying meat and other products to larger urban populations, which was the case in later times.

We can track some of the changes, at least in general terms, from a series of Turkish sites that have yielded large numbers of goat and sheep bones.
⁹
For instance, the inhabitants of Asikli Höyük, a large village in central Turkey occupied during the second half of the eighth millennium
BCE
, slaughtered caprines between the ages of one to three years. There are no signs of size decrease or other telltale indications of domestication. Perhaps the animals were not under intensive human management and still associated with wild breeding populations. At contemporary Süberde, the herders killed most animals between one and three years, most of these between twenty-one and twenty-four months. Süberde's sheep are smaller than wild sheep beasts, probably living and breeding under human management. The earliest definitive evidence for a deliberate strategy of culling young adult male sheep, especially larger rams, comes from Erbaba Höyük, northwest of Süberde, occupied during the seventh millennium
BCE
.

By 6000
BCE
, farmers over wide areas of Southwest Asia followed a strategy of herding goats and sheep for both meat and dairy products, often in landscapes outside the natural habitats of their larger wild ancestors. Surplus rams provided tender flesh, but goats survived longer, perhaps because of their much-valued hair.

Changing Beasts

Quite when the changes that distinguished domestic from wild goats and sheep began, we don't know, but they were gradual and probably took hold around and after 9000
BCE
, as flocks became larger.
¹⁰
The danger of predators receded dramatically. The need for camouflage, so important in the wild, would have vanished in founder herds. Colors would have become more variable. The shape and size of the animals changed as
agility and large body size became less important. Short-limbed, smaller beasts would have had a much better chance of surviving when domesticated. Horns, once valued as defense weapons against attackers and in competition for mates, became smaller, more varied, and sometimes were absent altogether. Goats and sheep in the wild had a heightened awareness of danger and were more aggressive toward one another during mating season or when defending territory than were domestic beasts. The latter no longer needed the familiar defense mechanisms of the wild.

Both goats and sheep had been seasonal feeders, moving to different locales in spring and fall. Now the pattern changed as their human masters preferred more open terrain, which had previously exposed the beasts to predators. Humans also restricted herd movement, which led to changes in limb size and proportions, such as a shortening of the extremities. Both animals became somewhat more sedentary and therefore more easily controlled. With a less mobile existence, the availability of food and water differed greatly from that in the wild. Richer, more stable environments may have resulted in less herd competition, and to automatic selection for accelerated sexual maturity, greater fertility, and increased fat storage. From the beginning the herders may have culled surplus males over and above those needed for breeding purposes. For one thing, rams were more aggressive and harder to control. The age and sex composition of herds changed dramatically, with major variations in reproduction patterns. Rams could now start reproducing much earlier, long before dominance competitions in the wild allowed. They became smaller; their horns changed and became reduced in size.

Tracking the subtle changes that transformed wild into domestic beasts is extremely difficult. We have only fragmentary bones to document herding practices. It's an ineluctable fact of biological life that many more males are born in domesticated herds of all kinds than are needed for breeding purposes. This means that there are always fairly compelling reasons to cull surplus males before maturity, or to castrate them. However, other factors come into play. Was the herd merely a source of meat, or were its owners interested in milk or wool? Did the landscape provide sufficient winter feed to nourish both breeding stock and an excess of males? These were important questions when
individual ownership and animal management were transforming farming and herding societies in profound ways.

The domestication of goats and sheep changed the dynamics of human life in fundamental ways from the beginning. Some values remained the same. Respect for animals endured, for flocks and herds were small. Every beast was valued, and each was recognized individually. These gregarious creatures became part of the family in a real sense. They were guarded carefully, driven to pasture daily, shorn for their hair and wool, with their surplus males culled for meat to control the size of the group, and their pens kept close to or even as part of human dwellings. There was a strong element of sustainability. Those who herded goats and sheep were well aware of the dangers of overgrazing, of stripping vegetation promiscuously from the landscape. At the same time, a profound sea change was afoot. For tens of thousands of years, game was there for the taking, the property of everyone; the hunter's only obligation was to share his kill with others. The animal-human relationship involved respect and ritual that treated beasts as vibrant players in the cosmos. Even when domesticated flocks and herds were small, they represented something new in the subsistence equation. Goats, pigs, and sheep became property in ways that game animals never were. They were owned and cared for and passed on to one's children and relatives. These were the creatures, other than game, that provided meat and raw materials and tied people to fields and grazing grounds. The investment of time for herders was entirely different, devoted as they were almost entirely to animal care and protection, activities that often dovetailed with cereal cultivation. Almost immediately, these new responsibilities caused changes in what were now village societies anchored to their land by their animals and crops. New undercurrents coursed through society—issues of inheritance, of grazing rights, and of ownership came into play. Inevitably, too, respected members of herds and flocks became social instruments used to seal marriages and other relationships. In due course, they became wealth, counted by the household head, and, inevitably, symbols of prestige and power.

CHAPTER 5

Working Landscapes

Domestication changed the world, its landscapes, animals—and humanity. About ten thousand years ago—the precise date will never be known—numerous deliberate acts, such as the corralling of young ungulates, turned animal-human relationships on end. Over a surprisingly brief compass of generations what had been a symbolic partnership involving giving and taking became one of dominance, of mastership. Humans were now the masters, so the role of animals changed. They became objects of individual ownership, tangible symbols of wealth, and powerful social instruments. But in so becoming, they cast a profound influence on the nature of changing human societies. Let's explore some of the parameters. (I've left cattle until later, as they changed history, in the long term, in different ways. Being larger, sometimes ferocious beasts, wild oxen were harder to domesticate and far more demanding to herd.)

Gregarious Communities

Many early farming settlements engaged in subsistence herding, where the primary concern was feeding one's family and kin, as well as acquiring individual wealth in animals, with all the social implications that involved. At this point, the relationships between sheepherders and their flocks or herds were relatively intimate. Owners enjoyed a familiarity with a fairly small number of individual beasts, perhaps to the point of giving many of them names and recognizing them individually. Sheep are ardently gregarious and accustomed to close relationships. They tend to stay close to fellow members of their flock, for an individual
sheep can become stressed if separated from the others. Flock behavior, which is the secret to managing sheep, develops with four or more sheep. The relationships within flocks are closest among relatives, so ewes and their descendants often form a unit within a larger group.

Unlike gazelle, sheep do not form territories, although they have home ranges. They are not only gregarious, but each flock also tends to follow a leader, often the first animal to move, despite well-developed dominance hierarchies among the members. Shepherds take advantage of this behavior. They know that their beasts can recognize individual human voices, as well as the cries of fellow sheep, and recall them for years. Most important of all, flocks can be “hefted” to a specific pasture, or series of pastures, small areas where they are comfortable grazing for long periods. Sheep are entirely herbivorous. They prefer grass and short roughage and do well in areas with uniform grass coverage, which makes herding them easier. Goats consume branches, leaves, and other vegetation some distance off the ground with ardent voracity. A combination of both sheep and goats could have devastating effects on the landscape, as they eat from dawn to dusk with only short pauses for digestion. So managing them carefully soon became a paramount concern. We can only imagine the ecological damage wrought on fragile, semiarid landscapes by uncontrolled grazing, which must have become apparent within short order to herders living in denuded landscapes.

In a sense, one's sheep flock was an animal community, not accessible to everyone, as was the case with game, but managed and owned by an individual, a family, or a kin group. Most early flocks or herds cannot have been much larger than a few dozen beasts, given the small size of villages, the limited number of shepherds to manage the animals, and the scarcity of winter fodder. In order to protect one's flock, one always lived with the realities of management: the need to keep constant watch when the animals were out during the day, to establish times for milking them, and to guard corrals carefully during the night hours.

Like growing crops, herding goats and sheep is a matter of carefully managed routines—overseeing seasons of breeding and giving birth, rotating grazing so pastures are never denuded, protecting the beasts
against predators, culling surplus animals before winter or for important feasts. Behind this endless rhythm—dictated in large part by the passage of the seasons and, in warmer climates, by the availability of water and graze—were practical strategies that continued with virtually no change through thousands of years, regardless of the rise and fall of societies and civilizations. Human life revolved around the life and death of the animals, unexpected diseases that decimated flocks or herds, and the ever-changing demands of kin and social obligation. Simple, utterly pragmatic, and refined by countless generations of experience, subsistence herders, whatever their animals and wherever they lived, relied on practical experience when it came to their beasts. England's Fengate sheep farmers of thirty-five hundred years ago provide dramatic proof.
¹

Fengate and the Realities of Sheepherding

Eastern England, summer, 1500
BCE
. The rising sun casts long shadows an hour after dawn. Light mist hovers near the ground, soon to vanish in the face of warm sunlight. Another long, hot day lies ahead for the herd boys clad in skin cloaks. Their charges huddle together in the byre, mothers and growing lambs crowded by the narrow gateway. One of the youngsters opens the hurdle. The flock pushes forward as the other herd boy urges them gently with soft calls; a dog hovers nearby. The sheep follow their leader, as they always do, to the small pasture, a familiar place where they know they can feed comfortably. As the sun sets hours later, the boys will steer the beasts back to the safety of the homestead in a routine that has never changed over many generations.

Francis Pryor, both an archaeologist and a sheep farmer, has investigated Fengate, a thirty-five-hundred-year-old sheep farming landscape in the low meadows and wetlands of the Fens, in eastern England, near the cathedral city of Peterborough. He believes that the ancient sheep farmers lived amid a “landscape of the mind,” a dynamic landscape peopled with the deeds of ancestors and the symbolic associations that
populated fields and meadows with benign and hostile spirits, with the unpredictable forces of the supernatural world. Theirs was also a “working landscape,” an ever-changing environment that encompassed both physical features such as ditches and hedgerows and intangibles such as the behavior of sheep, herding dogs, and cattle.

People modified the working landscape. They repaired hedges, deepened and maintained ditches, and kept fences and paddocks in good condition. The positioning of fields and trackways, and even of houses and yards, depended on far more than the altitude and slope of the land. Drainage, shade, and soil types were critical factors, so much so that most farmers kept a remarkably accurate map of their land in their heads—they do to this day. For instance, in the flat Fen country of eastern England, farmers had several types of land. Some was floodplain; other areas flooded regularly during the winters. You needed a diversity of land and soil if your beasts were to thrive on good summer pasture in flooded areas and keep dry in the winter. This led to often confusing arrangements for handling stock, which could include establishing and using droveways (trackways for driving animals) that followed field layouts and allowed animals to pass in an orderly fashion from one form of grazing to another.