Animal Domestication
Taming and breeding wild animals into livestock that give meat, milk, muscle, and manure from one investment — though only about a dozen large species ever proved tameable.
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✦ Espera, ¿en serio?
Of the world's ~148 big wild land mammals that were even candidates — plant-eaters over 100 pounds — only 14 have ever been domesticated, and no major new one has been added in over 4,000 years. Zebras look like striped horses but were never broken to harness: they bite viciously and, once they clamp down, refuse to let go.
Qué es
The multi-generation taming and breeding of wild animals into tractable livestock that live, feed, and reproduce under human control. A single herd can yield meat, milk, hides, wool, muscle power, and manure — several returns on one investment. It is agriculture's partner: the animal counterpart to domesticating plants.
Por qué importó
Domestic animals gave settled people portable, self-reproducing wealth and a power source far beyond human muscle — oxen to plow, horses and camels to carry and to fight. Their manure fertilized fields, their milk and meat buffered against crop failure, and their diseases, crossing into crowded human populations, seeded many of history's great epidemics. Societies with the right animals gained a compounding advantage over those without.
Cómo se hizo
It happened slowly, as people captured, penned, and bred the tamest wild animals, culling the aggressive and keeping the docile until a distinct domestic stock emerged. Only a handful of species had the temperament, diet, growth rate, and herd structure to allow it — most large wild mammals simply cannot be domesticated at all.
Qué desbloqueó
The plow, animal-drawn wheeled transport, wool and leather, dairying, and mounted travel and warfare. Together with crops, domestic animals made the mixed farm — the productive core of every agrarian civilization.
Versión mínima viable
Capture and pen the tamest wild animals, breed the calmest of each generation, and cull the aggressive until a docile domestic stock emerges.
Requiere
Desbloqueó
Fuentes
- — Jared Diamond, *Guns, Germs, and Steel* (1997)
- — Juliet Clutton-Brock, *A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals* (1999)
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