Animals as Domesticates: A World View through History

Foreword by James A. Serpell

ix Foreword JAMES A. SERPELL Domesticated animals are such commonplace features of the modern world that we tend to take them for granted. Yet evolutionarily speaking, this remarkably successful and ubiquitous category of living organisms is still a newcomer. A mere 20,000 years ago—a blink of the eye from the perspective of evolution—none of these animals existed, except perhaps for a few tamed wolves, soon to become dogs. At that time, the vast bulk of Earth’s terrestrial vertebrate biomass consisted of wild animals, while the human population was a diminutive fraction of its current size, perhaps no more than a million persons altogether. Now, according to a recent report, domesticated livestock (including poultry) constitute a staggering 65 percent of all terrestrial vertebrates by weight.1 Humans and their pets account for most of the rest, while “wildlife” represents a mere three percent of the total. In other words, within the space of a few thousand years, domesticated animals have virtually replaced their wild progenitors across most of the planet’s surface. In the process, domesticated animals have fundamentally altered the evolutionary trajectory of our own species. In terms of its influence on human culture and ecology, animal domestication easily rivals the invention of stone tools, religion, written language, mathematics , and the more recent industrial and information technology revolutions. But it receives far less attention and credit from scholars than might be expected given its extraordinary impact. After roughly a million years of living successfully as hunters and gatherers, humans embarked on a radical, unparalleled, and unprecedented shift in lifestyles, with the enfolding of other species of living animals within their societies. The domestication of animals developed, the author believes, from the unique nurturing behavior of the human species, and once established it soon spread across the globe, leaving few, if any, ecosystems and cultures unaffected. So, what caused this departure from nomadic hunting and gathering? Where and when did it happen, and why? And why were only some species domesticated and not others? These and other fundamental questions form the framework for this wonderfully illustrated and informative book. Juliet Clutton-Brock is a world-renowned zooarchaeologist and probably the greatest living expert on the history and prehistory of domesticated animals. She was already an established authority in the field when I was taking undergraduate courses in archaeological science back in the early 1970s, and certainly nobody is better qualified to write a book on this complex and fascinating topic. At the same time, Clutton-Brock knows how to tell a story. She writes x| Foreword in a clear, accessible, and down-to-earth style and possesses a remarkable ability to conjure up evocative images of the past from the scattered traces left by ancient remains and artifacts. She also reveals a true affection for her subject matter. Animals as Domesticates is not only an outstanding synthesis of archaeological, scientific, literary, and pictorial evidence, but it is also an engaging celebration of the extraordinary diversity, adaptability, and resilience of all those dogs, cats, cows, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, camels, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and so forth, to whom the author has dedicated her life’s work. ...