What animals did ancient people domesticate? Domestication or how humans changed animals

The history of animal domestication still largely remains a sealed mystery. In fact, how did man manage to tame the mountain sheep - argali - an extremely wild and capricious animal? Why did our ancestors risk making acquaintance with the ferocious boar and not paying attention to the benevolent hippopotamus? Did you bring chickens into the house and pass by an ostrich?

As we know from historical information, the dog was the first animal to join man. Moreover, they joined voluntarily. Living together, a kind of symbiosis between man and dog, began almost hundreds of thousands of years ago, more or less simultaneously and independently in many places on the planet. Five thousand years before the present day in Ancient Egypt, there were already at least 15 different breeds of dogs, ranging from huge Great Danes to pugs. They were used in quite a variety of ways: for hunting, to drive water wheels, and to serve the god Anubis. In the latter case, dogs were often embalmed. This, however, did not stop us from serving them on the table. Meat breeds of dogs are not uncommon even in our time, especially in the south-eastern regions of Asia. And recently in the USA and Western Europe the issue of breeding dogs for meat was seriously discussed.

Our second pet is a cat. The place of initial domestication of the cat can be named with a little more certainty. Most likely, these were southern Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, where the wild dun cat is still found. She came to the man much later than the dog. Perhaps also voluntarily; and came not so much to the man as to his house.

In Ancient Egypt, cats were unanimously recognized as saints. They were dedicated to the goddess Baet, after death they were buried with all possible luxury, embalmed and monuments were erected. Among the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Bubastis, a huge cat cemetery was found. About a million statues of these animals were once installed here.

It is likely that the cult of the cat is not a mystical phenomenon at all, but a practical one. Egypt was a very grain-producing country, and where there is grain, there are mice. Chemical or at least mechanical measures to combat these voracious creatures were not developed at that time. The only means of fighting the tailed robbers was a cat. It is no coincidence, therefore, that for her murder, the court of Pharaoh sentenced the culprit to death without the right of appeal.

As for domestic animals that help in everyday life and feed people, first of all it is worth mentioning sheep. The centers of primary domestication of sheep are considered to be the north-eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. Most likely, several subspecies were domesticated here at once.

The main product of sheep farming is wool. The woolen clothing of wild sheep consists of a “top” - a thick layer of coarse covering hair, and a “bottom” - a thin downy undercoat. Woolen fabrics can be made from either wool or underwool. However, already 5-6 thousand years before the opening of modern department stores, the townspeople of Egypt and Babylon introduced the fashion for suits (possibly trouser suits) made of fine wool. This greatly stimulated the development of the fine wool industry, and shepherds had to immediately begin breeding new breeds of fine wool sheep with long and very fine undercoat. By the time of Homer, the fashion for beautiful woolen suits was so great that a special expedition was organized to the shores of the Caucasus, where rams with the golden fleece were allegedly found. In the end, sheep with developed wool managed to enrich entire countries, including England. The speaker who opens the meetings of the English Parliament, as is known, still traditionally sits on a sack of wool.

Another important domesticated animal is the horse. In 1969-1971, a group of Soviet and American scientists conducted joint research on the problem of the origin of the domestic horse. Their results indicate that its most likely ancestor was the tarpan. The modern horse and the Przewalski's horse turned out to have different sets of chromosomes. If this conclusion is confirmed by subsequent research, then it will be necessary to admit that the horse was domesticated in the southern Russian steppes.

If the horse parted with a free way of life relatively recently (of course, in the historical sense of the word), then a person sat on a camel much earlier. In any case, the name of the mythical Zarathustra is translated from Sanskrit as “owner of golden camels.” And no wonder, for many hundreds and thousands of years the power of many great states of the East literally depended on the same camel’s hump - only camel caravans had access to the endless deserts that cut them off from the rest of the world.

Usually the camel is called the “ship of the desert.” Meanwhile, the Arab peoples prefer to call sea vessels “camels of the sea.” However, the camel is not only transport (although this is its main purpose); it is also wool, felt, and milk. The best camels produce up to 3 thousand liters per year with a fat content above 5 percent. So this animal can simultaneously replace a ram, a horse and a cow. Camel meat, of course, does not have a good taste, but it is also used.

Despite all its other advantages, this animal makes do with thorny bushes and stunted grass. Such a meager diet does not prevent him from growing up to 220 centimeters (at the withers) and easily outstripping any horse.

One of the most popular domesticated animals is cattle. It is likely that cattle were domesticated initially as draft animals. At first, people preferred to use more flexible cows, rather than bulls, to cultivate the land. Attention has also been paid to the taste and nutritional value of milk for quite a long time. But as for the use of cattle for steaks, this is a later invention, dating back to the time when hunting for their ancestors - aurochs - began to “go out of fashion.”

Deer can also be classified as cattle. Of all mammals, they were probably the last to be domesticated. This is evidenced by the practical absence of breeds of domestic reindeer and the still extremely primitive method of reindeer husbandry, as well as the almost complete absence of signs that would distinguish “cultivated” reindeer from their wild northern relatives. Most likely, the deer was domesticated in a more southern zone compared to the one where this branch of animal husbandry is currently developed. Subsequently, the peoples who tamed the deer somewhere in the Altai and Southern Siberia region moved north along with their herds.

It is assumed that the domestication of deer occurred already in historical times, approximately 3 thousand years BC.

Nowadays, if we exclude sledding or riding reindeer herding, reindeer are kept in conditions that differ little from natural ones. In the summer, they are released to pasture, sometimes even without the supervision of shepherds. Under these conditions, crossing of wild animals with domestic animals often occurs. Only in the last 10-20 years has cultural reindeer husbandry come to the north of our country, the development of which is of great importance for the northern and eastern regions.

We can say that the deer is the cow of the north, providing the population with milk, meat, and skin, and is used for movement across the tundra and taiga. It is surprising, however, why the person’s choice stopped at the deer and passed by such an animal as the elk. However, there were attempts to domesticate it: in the Finnish epic “Kalevala” in some places it is mentioned that these animals were used as riding animals. And it’s not surprising: the speed of a moose is not much inferior to that of a horse: its stride length when running is 6 meters, and when trotting, it covers a distance of 1.5 kilometers in just 1.5 minutes. At the same time, male moose reach a height of up to 2.2 meters at the withers and weigh 600 kilograms, and females produce milk of excellent taste and nutritional quality. In our time, moose have spread very widely from the northernmost to the southern steppe regions. In some regions, moose farms are being developed, where their healthy milk is obtained from moose.

Another famous domestic animal is the pig. The wild pig was undoubtedly domesticated by agricultural peoples. In any case, historians do not know of a single primitive tribe that did not know agriculture but raised pigs. To domesticate a pig, like probably most other animals, a settled life and a fairly organized life were required. So everything suggests that the love for pork sausages and smoked hams arose in the same ancient centers of civilization: in northeastern Africa, Mesopotamia, Western Asia, India and China.

As for poultry, for example, domestic chickens began to be bred quite recently - only 4 thousand years ago, when people were already familiar with almost all modern domestic animals. During this relatively short period of time, the banker chicken greatly changed its habits: it began to lay eggs literally every day, and in unimaginably difficult conditions - when kept in cages and in the absence of the male half of its family. Chickens are the youngest inhabitants of the poultry house. But the geese are the oldest. They come from two types of wild geese - gray and so-called suknos. The first species is found to this day throughout Europe, and flies to Africa for the winter, the second lives in China, and in the summer in Eastern Siberia.

Over several thousand years of being in the poultry yard, the goose has changed a lot; he is overweight, has lost his passion for flying and has generally changed his everyday habits. The wild goose is always monogamous, strictly monogamous and madly adores his only betrothed. The domestic gander is a devout Muslim and, in general, a completely unprincipled, albeit arrogant, creature.

At the end of the Roman Empire, geese breeding was stimulated by the invention of feather beds and pillows. On this occasion, Pliny complained: “We have now reached such a degree of effeminacy that even men cannot lay their heads on the bed without this device.” Thus, the decline of morals in Rome contributed to the development of goose farming.

Ducks in Europe were domesticated literally “before our eyes.” The process of their domestication began in the first millennium BC in Greece, but back in the 8th-9th centuries AD, the Byzantine agricultural encyclopedia recommended “lying in wait for places where wild ducks drink,” pouring red wine into the watering hole and catching intoxicated birds for the purpose of taming. In China, ducks were locked in poultry yards much earlier. So there were two centers of domestication of this bird. More likely, even three: the musky duck was domesticated in South America.

The New World gave Europeans another poultry - the turkey. The wild ancestors of this arrogant creature lived exclusively in the temperate zone of North America. Among the ancient inhabitants of Mexico - the Mayans - turkeys and dogs were the only domestic animals. True, some Indian tribes tried at one time to domesticate large turtles, but nothing came of this venture.

Thus, we see that man domesticated many animals in order to provide himself with the products and transport necessary in everyday life. The domestication and use of many animals, such as sheep, for example, led to further development of production and generally raised man to a new level of development.

Domestication or otherwise domestication is the process of changing wild animals or plants, in which for many generations they are kept by humans genetically isolated from their wild form and are subjected to artificial selection.

The process of domesticating wild animals begins with the artificial selection of individual individuals to produce offspring with certain characteristics necessary for humans. Individuals are typically selected for certain desirable characteristics, including reduced aggression towards humans and members of their own species. In this regard, it is customary to talk about taming a wild species. The purpose of domestication is to use an animal in agriculture as a farm animal or as a pet. If this goal is achieved, we can talk about a domesticated animal. The domestication of an animal radically changes the conditions for the further development of the species. Natural evolutionary development is replaced by artificial selection based on breeding criteria. Thus, as part of domestication, the genetic properties of the species change.

One of the first animals domesticated by humans was the dog. This happened, according to some sources, from 9 to 17 thousand years ago.

The study of fossil remains of ancient dogs began in 1862, when Neolithic skulls were found in Switzerland. This dog was called "peat", and later its remains were found everywhere in Europe, including Lake Ladoga, as well as in Egypt.

The peat dog did not change in appearance throughout the Stone Age; its remains were found even in deposits of the Roman era. The Spitz-shaped Samoyed dog is considered to be a direct descendant of the peat dog. The dog from Lake Ladoga, larger than a typical peat dog, is considered to be the ancestor of mastiffs and sometimes huskies.

There is less clarity about the ancestors of the dog itself. The following are called: 1) wolves - both our gray Tambov comrade and the Indian one (the most common hypothesis); 2) wolves and jackals; 3) the now extinct wild “ancestral dog” - this is what Carl Linnaeus, the creator of the first classification of living beings, believed.

Based on the method of application, there are five main types of dogs: mastiffs, wolfdogs, greyhounds, hunting pointer dogs and herding dogs. Since ancient times, dogs have been painted, carved in stone, minted on coins - this gives us the opportunity to trace the development of the “relationship” between a dog and a person.

In ancient Egyptian tombs, images of a pharaoh's dog, deified by the Egyptians, were found: thus, according to Herodotus, in connection with the death of a dog, mourning was declared in Egyptian houses. On the bas-reliefs of Babylon and Assyria we see mastiffs used for hunting and as war dogs.

In Greece and Rome, many coins with images of dogs are known, the oldest of which date back to the 7th-6th centuries. BC e. War dogs were in particular demand. They occupied an honorable place in the army of Alexander the Great. Assyro-Babylonian dogs, known as Epirus or Molossian Dogs, were brought to Ancient Greece and Rome, where they were also used as fighting dogs. Hunting dogs, greyhounds and hounds were highly valued (the constellation of Canes Venatici, which remained in the sky with their owner, Actaeon, was named after them).

In Rome, fighting dogs began to act as gladiators, competing alone with bulls, lions, elephants, and bears. Miniature decorative melitas also became widespread there, which later became known as Maltese lapdogs. The matrons' passion for dogs was so great that emperors repeatedly condemned it, since, in their opinion, it prevented noble ladies from having children.

In the 1st century BC. e. the first treatise on dogs known to us appears. In Marcus Terence Varro's encyclopedic work On Agriculture, he describes the different types of dogs, choosing a puppy, dog food, breeding, and how to train dogs. However, even earlier in China and Japan, written references to the education and breeding of dogs were preserved - they are about four thousand years old. A monument was erected to the dog that saved the ancient Greek city of Corinth. And in Pompeii, covered with ashes, a large dog was found covering the body of a child. The inscription on the silver collar said that the dog had already saved the life of its owner twice...

The next most domesticated animal was apparently the goat. This happened from 9 to 12 thousand years ago on the territory of modern Iran, Iraq, and Palestine. Its wild ancestors were bezoar and horned goats. The goat was respected as a nurse (according to legend, the goat Amalthea nursed the baby Zeus), and goat skin refers to the divine attire of Pallas Athena. There are also images of goats on the frescoes of Ancient Egypt. Not all of the consequences of befriending goats were predictable. The domestication of goats gave man high-quality milk, wool, and leather, but also harmed his environment. Where herds of goats graze for a long time, all vegetation disappears, and the desert encroaches on the flourishing region. Goats not only completely destroy the shoots - they even get to shallow seeds that could germinate in the coming rainy season. The soil exposed by goats is eroded. This fate befell the plateaus of Castile, Asia Minor, and the once famous Moroccan and Lebanese cedar groves.

Around the same time - 10-11 thousand years ago - sheep were domesticated on the territory of modern Iran. From there, domestic sheep - descendants of wild argali and mouflon sheep - first came to Persia, then to Mesopotamia. Already in the twentieth century. BC in Mesopotamia there were various breeds of sheep, one of which - a fine-wool sheep with horns twisted in a spiral - spread widely: Merino sheep later became the pride of Spain. 7-12 thousand years ago a cat appeared next to man. Cats that settled near human habitation of their own free will are an exception among domestic animals.

It is generally accepted that the single ancestor of the domestic murka is the North African and Central Asian steppe dun cat, domesticated in Nubia about four thousand years ago. From here the domestic cat came to Egypt, later crossing with the Forest Bengal in Asia. In Europe, furry aliens met a local, wild European forest cat. The result of crossings is a modern variety of breeds and colors. Fossil remains of cats were found in the Neolithic and Bronze Age layers of Western Asia and the Caucasus, in Jordan and the cities of Ancient India. On the paintings in the tombs of Saqqaraha (2750-2650 BC) the cat is depicted with a collar, and on the fresco from Beni Hasan - in the house, next to the mistress.

In Egypt, cats had a special position among other deified animals. Their corpses were embalmed and buried in luxurious tombs in special cemeteries. They were considered the incarnation of Bast, the goddess of the moon and fertility, in whose temple in Bubastis sometimes up to 700 thousand believers gathered for holidays. Archaeologists have discovered about 300 thousand cat mummies dating back to the 4th millennium BC. e. In the 19th century, one enterprising merchant loaded a whole ship with them in Egypt and brought them to Manchester, thinking of selling them for fertilizer. The idea failed, and most of the mummies ended up in scientific collections.

The law also protected the sacred animal: killing a cat was punishable by severe punishment, including the death penalty (Herodotus tells about the unfortunate Greek who unknowingly killed a cat). The export of cats abroad was prohibited for a long time. Only in the second millennium BC did domestic cats appear in Babylon, then in India, China and Japan.

From Egypt, the cat came to many parts of the Mediterranean on the ships of Phoenician merchants, but until the beginning of our century. e. she was a rare and expensive animal. The demand for cats began to fall sharply only with the spread of Christianity, which perceived them sharply negatively. If in the era of early Christianity cats could still live in monasteries (in a number of convents they were the only animals that were allowed to be kept), then later cats (especially black ones) began to be perceived as accomplices of witches, sorcerers and the devil personally. Innocent animals became victims of the Inquisition, they were hanged and burned as heretics.

On all Christian holidays, unfortunate animals were burned alive and buried in the ground, fried on iron rods and in cages with ritual ceremonies in front of crowds of believers. In Flanders, in the city of Ipern, Wednesday in the second week of Lent was called “cat day” - on this day cats were thrown from a high tower. The custom was introduced by Count Baldwin of Flanders in the 10th century and lasted until 1868. European cats would inevitably have been exterminated, but they were saved by the invasion of rats, which brought with them the “black death” - the plague, and the cats found a worthy use for themselves, and then the respect of their owners .

The “peers” of cats—in terms of time of domestication—are geese. Geese were the first to be domesticated among birds: the wild gray species in Europe, the Nile species in North Africa, and the Siberian-Chinese species in China. Drawings of the Nile goose bred in Egypt in the 11th millennium BC have been found. e.

In historical times, geese were kept in almost all countries of Europe, Asia and North Africa. In Ancient Greece, geese were sacred to Aphrodite; in Rome they began to be treated with great respect after, according to legend, at the beginning of the 4th century. BC e. sensitive birds, raising the alarm, helped repel the attack of the Gauls. Seven thousand years ago, ducks, descendants of the common mallard, were domesticated in Mesopotamia and China.

Chickens as poultry first appeared in South Asia. Their wild ancestor was the bank rooster. Chickens were bred both for eggs and meat, and for fighting. Themistocles, preparing to go to war with the Persians, included cockfighting in the training program so that soldiers, looking at the birds, would learn from them perseverance and courage. The people of the Gauls got their name from the bold, cocky birds.

Buffaloes, the most prized domestic animals in Southeast Asia, were domesticated about 9,000 years ago. Surprisingly unpretentious in food, tireless in work and immune to many diseases that are destructive to other livestock, with the conquests of Islam they were brought by the Arabs to Western Asia and North Africa, from Egypt to Eastern Africa. The Arabs brought buffalo to Sicily and Northern Italy, and the Turks to the Balkans.

About 8.5 thousand years ago the cow was domesticated. This happened, according to various versions, on the territory of modern Turkey, in Spain, South Asia... Its wild ancestor, the aurochs, was exterminated in the Middle Ages, and the cow, which spread throughout the world in antiquity, was everywhere elevated to the rank of a sacred animal. This status is still maintained in many Indian religious schools and in Africa. Sacred winged bulls, carved from stone, decorated the temples of Assyria and Persia. In Egypt, the bull Apis was the earthly incarnation of the patron god of Memphis, Ptah. In Crete, the homeland of the bull-headed minotaur, bulls took part in the famous bull games - circus performances with religious overtones. And it’s not for nothing that one of the epithets of the goddess Hera is “hair-eyed”... Buffaloes and bulls were widely used not only as sources of milk, meat, skins, but also as draft animals. They pulled heavy carts and ralas behind them, helping man do farming.

Their analogues in South America are the llama and alpaca, domesticated five to seven thousand years ago in Peru. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, llamas were the only transport animal among the Indians. On mountain roads, a llama can carry a load of 50-60 kilograms, which is quite a lot, considering that it itself weighs about a hundred. Alpacas are bred for their fine wool.
9,000 years ago, pigs were domesticated in China and Southeast Asia, bred for their meat and hides. Somewhat later, their images appear on the frescoes of Ancient Egypt. Pigs of those times did not look like the pigs we are used to, but like today’s boars: sinewy, agile, and by modern standards very thin.

In Europe, pigs were grazed on unique grounds - in oak groves. These artiodactyls love to feast on acorns, although they are able to digest almost any organic food. Always hungry pigs were a source of trouble in medieval cities. Their usual crime is infanticide. They were treated like criminals - they were arrested, kept in a city prison along with people, tried, sentenced to hang... And the little piglets were confiscated in favor of the court.

The first centers of horse domestication arose 4 thousand years BC. e. Supposedly, two types of wild horses were domesticated: small, broad-fronted steppe horses, vaguely similar to tarpans (wild European horses that became extinct in the Middle Ages), and larger forest horses, with a narrow forehead, long facial part of the head and thin limbs. Domestic horses retained the characteristics of their wild ancestors for a long time. The peoples of the Ancient East were the first to improve horses. In the VII-VI centuries. BC e. The Neseean horses of the Persian kingdom were considered the best in the world.

The regions adjacent to the Caspian Sea were famous for horse breeding. At the end of the first millennium BC. e. the glory of the Nessean horses was inherited by the horses of the Parthian kingdom, which was formed on the site of the northern provinces of Persia and Bactria. Parthian horses of a golden-red color were stately and tall for those times (one and a half meters), they became a desirable military prize for any state. Horse breeding in the forest belt of Eastern Europe was completely different in those days - here horses were used mainly for meat, their height was only 120-130 cm. In the 17th century BC. e. chariots appeared. Thanks to them, the Hyksos, alien tribes, conquered Egypt for a long time. Much later, cavalry appeared - armed horsemen in large military formations (individual riders were much earlier), this happened at the beginning of the 1st thousand years BC. e. among the Assyrians. It is interesting that at first the mounted warrior, as in chariots, had a driver-driver: in battle he controlled two horses (his own and his warrior’s), and at the same time the fighter had both hands free for shooting and throwing darts.

The African wild ass was domesticated 5-6 thousand years ago. Domestic donkeys have long been the main transport animal, especially in countries where horses were unknown or for some reason donkeys were preferable. A donkey's hooves are much stronger than those of a horse, and they do not need horseshoes even on rocky and uneven mountain soil. Donkeys have been widely used as riding and pack animals for many millennia, they were used in the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and even in battles. Thus, the Persian king Darius once, with the help of donkeys, dispersed an army of Scythians who had never seen these animals and were afraid.

In Europe and Asia, strong, tall breeds of domestic donkeys were bred, such as Khomad in Iran, Catalan in Spain, Bukhara in Central Asia. In Greece, the donkey was dedicated to the god of wine Dionysius and was part of his drunken retinue along with the Silenians and Satyrs.

Originating about five thousand years ago in India, falconry quickly conquered the world, and the “sport of kings” reached its peak in the early Middle Ages. In Europe, falconry was widespread: it was a hobby for both feudal lords and commoners. There was a special table of ranks that prescribed who should hunt and with what bird. In England, stealing or killing someone else's falcon was punishable by death. Genghis Khan's hunts, involving hundreds of birds and thousands of dogs, were enormous and majestic. Many hundreds of birds were kept under Ivan the Terrible - they even took the road tax from merchants in pigeons for falcons.

Man actually domesticated pigeons about 6.5 thousand years ago (in Mesopotamia). Doves were often depicted on Assyrian bas-reliefs. In many countries, pigeons were sacred animals dedicated to the goddesses of love - Astarte, Aphrodite.

In ancient Rome, pigeons were bred for meat in special columbariums. Pliny the Elder wrote that his contemporaries were “mad for roast pigeons.” But the main purpose of the dove is different. This is the only bird that faithfully serves as air mail, thanks to its ability to find its way to its native places.

5000-6000 years ago camels were domesticated: in Arabia - one-humped (dromedary), in Central and Central Asia - two-humped (Bactrian). A figurine of a loaded dromedary was found in Egypt, which is more than 5,000 years old. Apparently, the drawings depicting dromedary camels on the rocks of Aswan and Sinai are of the same age. Both camels have been mentioned in literature since 700-600 BC. e. Herodotus wrote a lot about camels due to the great importance of these animals for wars. “Ships of the desert” were famous for their ability to go without water and food for a long time.

The north was not left without pets either. Two to three thousand years ago, reindeer herding arose in Chukotka. In the rather poor world of the tundra, the deer became a real salvation for the northern peoples. The entire carcass of the animal was used, not just the meat and skin. Everything was eaten, including young horns, tendons, bone marrow and the larvae of the subcutaneous gadfly!

The yak, domesticated in the first millennium BC, became the same salvation in the mountains, steppes and semi-deserts of Tibet. e. From fatty milk—twice as fat as cow’s milk—in addition to the usual butter and cheese, they make special cottage cheese, which does not spoil for a long time and weighs almost nothing (which is very convenient for travelers). Yak wool and skin provide protection from the cold, and dried dung was often the only available fuel in the mountains.

A little later - according to various estimates, from 2300 to 5000 years ago - people began to domesticate bees. The oldest image of a bee was found in the Arana Cave (Spain) - a drawing from the Paleolithic period is more than 15 thousand years old. The ancient Egyptians began the systematic breeding of bees, and in Egypt beekeeping was nomadic: hives on rafts, as honey wasp plants bloomed in the northern provinces of Egypt, slowly moved down the Nile. From the second millennium BC, the custom arose in Assyria of covering the bodies of the dead with wax and immersing them in honey. The custom lasted for a long time - until Alexander the Great, whose body was also transported in a coffin, filled to the top with honey, to his burial place in Egypt. Judging by the frequency of mentions in literature, bees were one of the most popular animals in antiquity: King Solomon and Democritus, Aristotle and Virgil, Aristophanes and Xenophon wrote about them. In 950, by order of Emperor Constantine VII, an encyclopedia on beekeeping, Geoponics, was compiled. Honey was practically the only raw material for preparing sweet dishes until the middle of the Middle Ages, and wax was used to make candles.

At the opposite end of Eurasia, another insect has found use - the silkworm butterfly. The first mention of silk appears in an ancient Chinese manuscript ca. 2600 BC e. For more than twenty centuries, the Chinese maintained a monopoly on silk production. According to legend, the first successful attempt to smuggle caterpillar cocoons was made in the 4th century. n. e. one Chinese princess who married the king of Little Bukhara and brought him as a gift “silkworm eggs” hidden in her hair. It was not possible to breed silkworms outside of China. The second smuggling was more successful in 552, when two monks carried cocoons in staves and presented them to Emperor Justinian. Since that time, sericulture began to develop outside China. True, then it died out for some time, but was revived after the Arab conquests.

Rabbits began to be domesticated back in Ancient Rome - there the animals were kept in special pens called leporaria. As everyone knows, a rabbit is “not only valuable fur.” The Romans began to fatten them for meat (gourmets especially loved rabbit embryos and newborn rabbits). Rabbits were also valued in medieval Europe - for example, in England at the beginning of the 14th century. a rabbit cost no less than a pig. And already in ancient times, the rabbit began to cause a lot of trouble. In the Balearic archipelago, a pair of rabbits released into the wild produced so many offspring that local residents began to ask Emperor Augustus to help them cope with the scourge and send soldiers to fight the voracious animals. Judging by Australia, which was “eaten” by rabbits already in modern times, this story has taught no one anything.

Several thousand years BC. e in the New World, the domestication of guinea pigs began. It is likely that these animals themselves came to human homes in search of protection and warmth. Among the Incas, pigs were sacrificial animals, which were brought as a gift to the Sun God, and were also eaten on holidays. Pigs with variegated brown or white colors were especially popular. They were brought to Europe in the 16th century. They are now called “marine” rather by mistake - it is much more correct to call them “overseas”.

The ostrich was domesticated by the ancient Egyptians five thousand years ago for its feathers and eggs. Birds were kept in flocks and protected. Young animals were tamed and periodically plucked after reaching adulthood. Ostriches were also domesticated in eastern Sudan, where they were kept with herds of cattle and camels. In Ancient Egypt, guinea fowls also began to be bred. For quite a long time, guinea fowl in Greece and Rome were only sacrificial birds. This continued until Emperor Caligula, who decreed that, as a sign of “divine greatness,” guinea fowl should be sacrificed to him—that is, to the table.

In the 5th century n. e. carp was bred from wild carp. In Europe, carps were bred mainly in monastery ponds. The first mention of them is in the orders sent by the minister Cassiodorus to the provincial governors: the minister demanded that carps be regularly supplied to the table of King Theodoric (456-526).

Since ancient times, there have been pets whose functions were reduced to purely decorative ones. In the 10th century BC e. In China, various breeds of goldfish were bred from crucian carp, which quickly spread to Japan and Indonesia. And in the Middle Ages (XV century) the canary was domesticated. Today we can hardly imagine such animals as thrushes, partridges, swans, storks, cranes, pelicans as domestic animals - in Egypt they were fattened for meat and used as laying hens. Hyenas (!) were also bred for meat, and they were also used as guard animals. In Ancient Rome, dormice (small rodents) were kept in special pots (doli), where they were fed with nuts. Their meat was valued as a great delicacy. It has long been a custom at feasts to place scales on the table, weigh the dormouse on them in the presence of a notary, and record its weight in the protocol. Serving the most well-fed dormice was a matter of prestige and pride for the rich. And in ancient Roman ponds, moray eels were bred to the delight of gourmets.

In the Ancient East, leopards and lions were kept as sacred and sacrificial animals (and also for the prestige of the ruler). They even hunted with lions, although cheetahs were much more popular as hunters. In some places, caracals (large wild cats) are still hunted with them, as well as with caracals (large wild cats) that were domesticated much later - 1000-2000 years ago. The use of tamed cormorants dates back hundreds of years - in China and Japan they are used as “live fishing rods”: an iron ring is put on the bird’s neck, preventing it from swallowing the fish, after which the cormorant is released for fishing. In the last two centuries, attempts have been made to domesticate several more animals: moose, musk oxen, antelope; as well as decorative animals - Syrian hamsters and many aquarium fish.

In the process of domestication, under the influence of new environmental conditions and arts, selection, animals developed characteristics that distinguished them from wild ones, and the more significant, the more labor and time a person spent on obtaining animals with the properties he needed. The size and shape of the body have changed to the greatest extent in animals whose living conditions are very different from wild conditions (cattle, pigs, sheep, horses) and to a lesser extent in animals such as camels and reindeer, whose living conditions are in captivity close to natural. The so-called protective coloring has disappeared; Pets come in a variety of colors.

Compared to wild animals, they have a lighter skeleton, less strong bones, and thinner skin. The internal organs have also undergone changes. Many domestic animals have less developed lungs, hearts, and kidneys, but their mammary glands and reproductive organs function better than wild animals (domestic animals, as a rule, are more fertile); many of them have lost seasonality in reproduction. Most domesticated animals are characterized by a decrease in brain size, a decrease in the reactivity of the nervous system, a simplification of behavioral reactions, an increase in heterozygosity and high phenotypic stability in changing living conditions, a change in the phenotypic expression of mutations under the influence of an altered gene pool, and a general increase in variability.

Humanity would have developed differently if its path had not crossed the paths of its smaller brothers. Would people be able to survive and create a modern culture without the participation of dogs, cows, horses, and sheep? Even the absence of such a simple insect species as bees on Earth would greatly change the way of life of humans.

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Domestication or otherwise domestication is the process of changing wild animals or plants, in which for many generations they are kept by humans genetically isolated from their wild form and are subjected to artificial selection.

The process of domesticating wild animals begins with the artificial selection of individual individuals to produce offspring with certain characteristics necessary for humans. Individuals are typically selected for certain desirable characteristics, including reduced aggression towards humans and members of their own species. In this regard, it is customary to talk about taming a wild species. The purpose of domestication is to use an animal in agriculture as a farm animal or as a pet. If this goal is achieved, we can talk about a domesticated animal. The domestication of an animal radically changes the conditions for the further development of the species. Natural evolutionary development is replaced by artificial selection based on breeding criteria. Thus, as part of domestication, the genetic properties of the species change.

One of the first animals domesticated by humans was the dog. This happened, according to some sources, from 9 to 17 thousand years ago.

The study of fossil remains of ancient dogs began in 1862, when Neolithic skulls were found in Switzerland. This dog was called "peat", and later its remains were found everywhere in Europe, including Lake Ladoga, as well as in Egypt. The peat dog did not change in appearance throughout the Stone Age; its remains were found even in deposits of the Roman era. The Spitz-shaped Samoyed dog is considered to be a direct descendant of the peat dog. The dog from Lake Ladoga, larger than a typical peat dog, is considered to be the ancestor of mastiffs and sometimes huskies. There is less clarity about the ancestors of the dog itself. The following are called: 1) wolves - both our gray Tambov comrade and the Indian one (the most common hypothesis); 2) wolves and jackals; 3) the now extinct wild “ancestral dog” - this is what Carl Linnaeus, the creator of the first classification of living beings, believed. Based on the method of application, there are five main types of dogs: mastiffs, wolfdogs, greyhounds, hunting pointer dogs and herding dogs. Since ancient times, dogs have been painted, carved in stone, minted on coins - this gives us the opportunity to trace the development of the “relationship” between a dog and a person. In ancient Egyptian tombs, images of a pharaoh's dog, deified by the Egyptians, were found: thus, according to Herodotus, in connection with the death of a dog, mourning was declared in Egyptian houses. On the bas-reliefs of Babylon and Assyria we see mastiffs used for hunting and as war dogs. In Greece and Rome, many coins with images of dogs are known, the oldest of which date back to the 7th-6th centuries. BC e. War dogs were in particular demand. They occupied an honorable place in the army of Alexander the Great. Assyro-Babylonian dogs, known as Epirus or Molossian Dogs, were brought to Ancient Greece and Rome, where they were also used as fighting dogs. Hunting dogs, greyhounds and hounds were highly valued (the constellation of Canes Venatici, which remained in the sky with their owner, Actaeon, was named after them).

In Rome, fighting dogs began to act as gladiators, competing alone with bulls, lions, elephants, and bears. Miniature decorative melitas also became widespread there, which later became known as Maltese lapdogs. The matrons' passion for dogs was so great that emperors repeatedly condemned it, since, in their opinion, it prevented noble ladies from having children.

In the 1st century BC. e. the first treatise on dogs known to us appears. In Marcus Terence Varro's encyclopedic work On Agriculture, he describes the different types of dogs, choosing a puppy, dog food, breeding, and how to train dogs. However, even earlier in China and Japan, written references to the education and breeding of dogs were preserved - they are about four thousand years old. A monument was erected to the dog that saved the ancient Greek city of Corinth. And in Pompeii, covered with ashes, a large dog was found covering the body of a child. The inscription on the silver collar said that the dog had already saved the life of its owner twice...

The next most domesticated animal was apparently the goat. This happened from 9 to 12 thousand years ago on the territory of modern Iran, Iraq, and Palestine. Its wild ancestors were bezoar and horned goats. The goat was respected as a nurse (according to legend, the goat Amalthea nursed the baby Zeus), and goat skin refers to the divine attire of Pallas Athena. There are also images of goats on the frescoes of Ancient Egypt. Not all of the consequences of befriending goats were predictable. The domestication of goats gave man high-quality milk, wool, and leather, but also harmed his environment. Where herds of goats graze for a long time, all vegetation disappears, and the desert encroaches on the flourishing region. Goats not only completely destroy the shoots - they even get to shallow seeds that could germinate in the coming rainy season. The soil exposed by goats is eroded. This fate befell the plateaus of Castile, Asia Minor, and the once famous Moroccan and Lebanese cedar groves.

Around the same time - 10-11 thousand years ago - sheep were domesticated on the territory of modern Iran. From there, domestic sheep - descendants of wild argali and mouflon sheep - first came to Persia, then to Mesopotamia. Already in the twentieth century. BC in Mesopotamia there were various breeds of sheep, one of which - a fine-wool sheep with horns twisted in a spiral - spread widely: Merino sheep later became the pride of Spain. 7-12 thousand years ago a cat appeared next to man. Cats that settled near human habitation of their own free will are an exception among domestic animals.

It is generally accepted that the single ancestor of the domestic murka is the North African and Central Asian steppe dun cat, domesticated in Nubia about four thousand years ago. From here the domestic cat came to Egypt, later crossing with the Forest Bengal in Asia. In Europe, furry aliens met a local, wild European forest cat. The result of crossings is a modern variety of breeds and colors. Fossil remains of cats were found in the Neolithic and Bronze Age layers of Western Asia and the Caucasus, in Jordan and the cities of Ancient India. On the paintings in the tombs of Saqqaraha (2750-2650 BC) the cat is depicted with a collar, and on the fresco from Beni Hasan - in the house, next to the mistress. In Egypt, cats had a special position among other deified animals. Their corpses were embalmed and buried in luxurious tombs in special cemeteries. They were considered the incarnation of Bast, the goddess of the moon and fertility, in whose temple in Bubastis sometimes up to 700 thousand believers gathered for holidays. Archaeologists have discovered about 300 thousand cat mummies dating back to the 4th millennium BC. e. In the 19th century, one enterprising merchant loaded a whole ship with them in Egypt and brought them to Manchester, thinking of selling them for fertilizer. The idea failed, and most of the mummies ended up in scientific collections. The law also protected the sacred animal: killing a cat was punishable by severe punishment, including the death penalty (Herodotus tells about the unfortunate Greek who unknowingly killed a cat). The export of cats abroad was prohibited for a long time. Only in the second millennium BC did domestic cats appear in Babylon, then in India, China and Japan. From Egypt, the cat came to many parts of the Mediterranean on the ships of Phoenician merchants, but until the beginning of our century. e. she was a rare and expensive animal. The demand for cats began to fall sharply only with the spread of Christianity, which perceived them sharply negatively. If in the era of early Christianity cats could still live in monasteries (in a number of convents they were the only animals that were allowed to be kept), then later cats (especially black ones) began to be perceived as accomplices of witches, sorcerers and the devil personally. Innocent animals became victims of the Inquisition, they were hanged and burned as heretics.

On all Christian holidays, unfortunate animals were burned alive and buried in the ground, fried on iron rods and in cages with ritual ceremonies in front of crowds of believers. In Flanders, in the city of Ipern, Wednesday in the second week of Lent was called “cat day” - on this day cats were thrown from a high tower. The custom was introduced by Count Baldwin of Flanders in the 10th century and lasted until 1868. European cats would inevitably have been exterminated, but they were saved by the invasion of rats, which brought with them the “black death” - the plague, and the cats found a worthy use for themselves, and then the respect of their owners .

The “peers” of cats—in terms of time of domestication—are geese. Geese were the first to be domesticated among birds: the wild gray species in Europe, the Nile species in North Africa, and the Siberian-Chinese species in China. Drawings of the Nile goose bred in Egypt in the 11th millennium BC have been found. e.

In historical times, geese were kept in almost all countries of Europe, Asia and North Africa. In Ancient Greece, geese were sacred to Aphrodite; in Rome they began to be treated with great respect after, according to legend, at the beginning of the 4th century. BC e. sensitive birds, raising the alarm, helped repel the attack of the Gauls. Seven thousand years ago, ducks, descendants of the common mallard, were domesticated in Mesopotamia and China.

Chickens as poultry first appeared in South Asia. Their wild ancestor was the bank rooster. Chickens were bred both for eggs and meat, and for fighting. Themistocles, preparing to go to war with the Persians, included cockfighting in the training program so that soldiers, looking at the birds, would learn from them perseverance and courage. The people of the Gauls got their name from the bold, cocky birds.

Buffaloes, the most prized domestic animals in Southeast Asia, were domesticated about 9,000 years ago. Surprisingly unpretentious in food, tireless in work and immune to many diseases that are destructive to other livestock, with the conquests of Islam they were brought by the Arabs to Western Asia and North Africa, from Egypt to Eastern Africa. The Arabs brought buffalo to Sicily and Northern Italy, and the Turks to the Balkans.

About 8.5 thousand years ago the cow was domesticated. This happened, according to various versions, on the territory of modern Turkey, in Spain, South Asia... Its wild ancestor, the aurochs, was exterminated in the Middle Ages, and the cow, which spread throughout the world in antiquity, was everywhere elevated to the rank of a sacred animal. This status is still maintained in many Indian religious schools and in Africa. Sacred winged bulls, carved from stone, decorated the temples of Assyria and Persia. In Egypt, the bull Apis was the earthly incarnation of the patron god of Memphis, Ptah. In Crete, the homeland of the bull-headed minotaur, bulls took part in the famous bull games - circus performances with religious overtones. And it’s not for nothing that one of the epithets of the goddess Hera is “hair-eyed”... Buffaloes and bulls were widely used not only as sources of milk, meat, skins, but also as draft animals. They pulled heavy carts and ralas behind them, helping man do farming.

Their analogues in South America are the llama and alpaca, domesticated five to seven thousand years ago in Peru. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, llamas were the only transport animal among the Indians. On mountain roads, a llama can carry a load of 50-60 kilograms, which is quite a lot, considering that it itself weighs about a hundred. Alpacas are bred for their fine wool.

9,000 years ago, pigs were domesticated in China and Southeast Asia, bred for their meat and hides. Somewhat later, their images appear on the frescoes of Ancient Egypt. Pigs of those times did not look like the pigs we are used to, but like today’s boars: sinewy, agile, and by modern standards very thin.

In Europe, pigs were grazed on unique grounds - in oak groves. These artiodactyls love to feast on acorns, although they are able to digest almost any organic food. Always hungry pigs were a source of trouble in medieval cities. Their usual crime is infanticide. They were treated like criminals - they were arrested, kept in a city prison along with people, tried, sentenced to hang... And the little piglets were confiscated in favor of the court.

The first centers of horse domestication arose 4 thousand years BC. e. Supposedly, two types of wild horses were domesticated: small, broad-fronted steppe horses, vaguely similar to tarpans (wild European horses that became extinct in the Middle Ages), and larger forest horses, with a narrow forehead, long facial part of the head and thin limbs. Domestic horses retained the characteristics of their wild ancestors for a long time. The peoples of the Ancient East were the first to improve horses. In the VII-VI centuries. BC e. The Neseean horses of the Persian kingdom were considered the best in the world.

The regions adjacent to the Caspian Sea were famous for horse breeding. At the end of the first millennium BC. e. the glory of the Nessean horses was inherited by the horses of the Parthian kingdom, which was formed on the site of the northern provinces of Persia and Bactria. Parthian horses of a golden-red color were stately and tall for those times (one and a half meters), they became a desirable military prize for any state. Horse breeding in the forest belt of Eastern Europe was completely different in those days - here horses were used mainly for meat, their height was only 120-130 cm. In the 17th century BC. e. chariots appeared. Thanks to them, the Hyksos, alien tribes, conquered Egypt for a long time. Much later, cavalry appeared - armed horsemen in large military formations (individual riders were much earlier), this happened at the beginning of the 1st thousand years BC. e. among the Assyrians. It is interesting that at first the mounted warrior, as in chariots, had a driver-driver: in battle he controlled two horses (his own and his warrior’s), and at the same time the fighter had both hands free for shooting and throwing darts.

The African wild ass was domesticated 5-6 thousand years ago. Domestic donkeys have long been the main transport animal, especially in countries where horses were unknown or for some reason donkeys were preferable. A donkey's hooves are much stronger than those of a horse, and they do not need horseshoes even on rocky and uneven mountain soil. Donkeys have been widely used as riding and pack animals for many millennia, they were used in the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and even in battles. Thus, the Persian king Darius once, with the help of donkeys, dispersed an army of Scythians who had never seen these animals and were afraid.

In Europe and Asia, strong, tall breeds of domestic donkeys were bred, such as Khomad in Iran, Catalan in Spain, Bukhara in Central Asia. In Greece, the donkey was dedicated to the god of wine Dionysius and was part of his drunken retinue along with the Silenians and Satyrs.

Originating about five thousand years ago in India, falconry quickly conquered the world, and the “sport of kings” reached its peak in the early Middle Ages. In Europe, falconry was widespread: it was a hobby for both feudal lords and commoners. There was a special table of ranks that prescribed who should hunt and with what bird. In England, stealing or killing someone else's falcon was punishable by death. Genghis Khan's hunts, involving hundreds of birds and thousands of dogs, were enormous and majestic. Many hundreds of birds were kept under Ivan the Terrible - they even took the road tax from merchants in pigeons for falcons.

Man actually domesticated pigeons about 6.5 thousand years ago (in Mesopotamia). Doves were often depicted on Assyrian bas-reliefs. In many countries, pigeons were sacred animals dedicated to the goddesses of love - Astarte, Aphrodite.

In ancient Rome, pigeons were bred for meat in special columbariums. Pliny the Elder wrote that his contemporaries were “mad for roast pigeons.” But the main purpose of the dove is different. This is the only bird that faithfully serves as air mail, thanks to its ability to find its way to its native places.

5000-6000 years ago camels were domesticated: in Arabia - one-humped (dromedary), in Central and Central Asia - two-humped (Bactrian). A figurine of a loaded dromedary was found in Egypt, which is more than 5,000 years old. Apparently, the drawings depicting dromedary camels on the rocks of Aswan and Sinai are of the same age. Both camels have been mentioned in literature since 700-600 BC. e. Herodotus wrote a lot about camels due to the great importance of these animals for wars. “Ships of the desert” were famous for their ability to go without water and food for a long time.

The north was not left without pets either. Two to three thousand years ago, reindeer herding arose in Chukotka. In the rather poor world of the tundra, the deer became a real salvation for the northern peoples. The entire carcass of the animal was used, not just the meat and skin. Everything was eaten, including young horns, tendons, bone marrow and the larvae of the subcutaneous gadfly!

The yak, domesticated in the first millennium BC, became the same salvation in the mountains, steppes and semi-deserts of Tibet. e. From fatty milk—twice as fat as cow’s milk—in addition to the usual butter and cheese, they make special cottage cheese, which does not spoil for a long time and weighs almost nothing (which is very convenient for travelers). Yak wool and skin provide protection from the cold, and dried dung was often the only available fuel in the mountains.

A little later - according to various estimates, from 2300 to 5000 years ago - people began to domesticate bees. The oldest image of a bee was found in the Arana Cave (Spain) - a drawing from the Paleolithic period is more than 15 thousand years old. The ancient Egyptians began the systematic breeding of bees, and in Egypt beekeeping was nomadic: hives on rafts, as honey wasp plants bloomed in the northern provinces of Egypt, slowly moved down the Nile. From the second millennium BC, the custom arose in Assyria of covering the bodies of the dead with wax and immersing them in honey. The custom lasted for a long time - until Alexander the Great, whose body was also transported in a coffin, filled to the top with honey, to his burial place in Egypt. Judging by the frequency of mentions in literature, bees were one of the most popular animals in antiquity: King Solomon and Democritus, Aristotle and Virgil, Aristophanes and Xenophon wrote about them. In 950, by order of Emperor Constantine VII, an encyclopedia on beekeeping, Geoponics, was compiled. Honey was practically the only raw material for preparing sweet dishes until the middle of the Middle Ages, and wax was used to make candles.

At the opposite end of Eurasia, another insect has found use - the silkworm butterfly. The first mention of silk appears in an ancient Chinese manuscript ca. 2600 BC e. For more than twenty centuries, the Chinese maintained a monopoly on silk production. According to legend, the first successful attempt to smuggle caterpillar cocoons was made in the 4th century. n. e. one Chinese princess who married the king of Little Bukhara and brought him as a gift “silkworm eggs” hidden in her hair. It was not possible to breed silkworms outside of China. The second smuggling was more successful in 552, when two monks carried cocoons in staves and presented them to Emperor Justinian. Since that time, sericulture began to develop outside China. True, then it died out for some time, but was revived after the Arab conquests.

Rabbits began to be domesticated back in Ancient Rome - there the animals were kept in special pens called leporaria. As everyone knows, a rabbit is “not only valuable fur.” The Romans began to fatten them for meat (gourmets especially loved rabbit embryos and newborn rabbits). Rabbits were also valued in medieval Europe - for example, in England at the beginning of the 14th century. a rabbit cost no less than a pig. And already in ancient times, the rabbit began to cause a lot of trouble. In the Balearic archipelago, a pair of rabbits released into the wild produced so many offspring that local residents began to ask Emperor Augustus to help them cope with the scourge and send soldiers to fight the voracious animals. Judging by Australia, which was “eaten” by rabbits already in modern times, this story has taught no one anything.

Several thousand years BC. e in the New World, the domestication of guinea pigs began. It is likely that these animals themselves came to human homes in search of protection and warmth. Among the Incas, pigs were sacrificial animals, which were brought as a gift to the Sun God, and were also eaten on holidays. Pigs with variegated brown or white colors were especially popular. They were brought to Europe in the 16th century. They are now called “marine” rather by mistake - it is much more correct to call them “overseas”.

The ostrich was domesticated by the ancient Egyptians five thousand years ago for its feathers and eggs. Birds were kept in flocks and protected. Young animals were tamed and periodically plucked after reaching adulthood. Ostriches were also domesticated in eastern Sudan, where they were kept with herds of cattle and camels. In Ancient Egypt, guinea fowls also began to be bred. For quite a long time, guinea fowl in Greece and Rome were only sacrificial birds. This continued until Emperor Caligula, who decreed that, as a sign of “divine greatness,” guinea fowl should be sacrificed to him—that is, to the table.

In the 5th century n. e. carp was bred from wild carp. In Europe, carps were bred mainly in monastery ponds. The first mention of them is in the orders sent by the minister Cassiodorus to the provincial governors: the minister demanded that carps be regularly supplied to the table of King Theodoric (456-526).

Since ancient times, there have been pets whose functions were reduced to purely decorative ones. In the 10th century BC e. In China, various breeds of goldfish were bred from crucian carp, which quickly spread to Japan and Indonesia. And in the Middle Ages (XV century) the canary was domesticated. Today we can hardly imagine such animals as thrushes, partridges, swans, storks, cranes, pelicans as domestic animals - in Egypt they were fattened for meat and used as laying hens. Hyenas (!) were also bred for meat, and they were also used as guard animals. In Ancient Rome, dormice (small rodents) were kept in special pots (doli), where they were fed with nuts. Their meat was valued as a great delicacy. It has long been a custom at feasts to place scales on the table, weigh the dormouse on them in the presence of a notary, and record its weight in the protocol. Serving the most well-fed dormice was a matter of prestige and pride for the rich. And in ancient Roman ponds, moray eels were bred to the delight of gourmets.

In the Ancient East, leopards and lions were kept as sacred and sacrificial animals (and also for the prestige of the ruler). They even hunted with lions, although cheetahs were much more popular as hunters. In some places, caracals (large wild cats) are still hunted with them, as well as with caracals (large wild cats) that were domesticated much later - 1000-2000 years ago. The use of tamed cormorants dates back hundreds of years - in China and Japan they are used as “live fishing rods”: an iron ring is put on the bird’s neck, preventing it from swallowing the fish, after which the cormorant is released for fishing. In the last two centuries, attempts have been made to domesticate several more animals: moose, musk oxen, antelope; as well as decorative animals - Syrian hamsters and many aquarium fish.

In the process of domestication, under the influence of new environmental conditions and arts, selection, animals developed characteristics that distinguished them from wild ones, and the more significant, the more labor and time a person spent on obtaining animals with the properties he needed. The size and shape of the body have changed to the greatest extent in animals whose living conditions are very different from wild conditions (cattle, pigs, sheep, horses) and to a lesser extent in animals such as camels and reindeer, whose living conditions are in captivity close to natural. The so-called protective coloring has disappeared; Pets come in a variety of colors. Compared to wild animals, they have a lighter skeleton, less strong bones, and thinner skin. The internal organs have also undergone changes. Many domestic animals have less developed lungs, hearts, and kidneys, but their mammary glands and reproductive organs function better than wild animals (domestic animals, as a rule, are more fertile); many of them have lost seasonality in reproduction. Most domesticated animals are characterized by a decrease in brain size, a decrease in the reactivity of the nervous system, a simplification of behavioral reactions, an increase in heterozygosity and high phenotypic stability in changing living conditions, a change in the phenotypic expression of mutations under the influence of an altered gene pool, and a general increase in variability. Humanity would have developed differently if its path had not crossed the paths of its smaller brothers. Would people be able to survive and create a modern culture without the participation of dogs, cows, horses, and sheep? Even the absence of such a simple insect species as bees on Earth would greatly change the way of life of humans.

For centuries, many peoples have tried to tame and domesticate a wide variety of animals. In addition to cats, dogs, horses and cows, the list included antelopes, crocodiles and even cave bears and megatherium (the now extinct giant sloths). However, as we see, only a few were able to truly get along with a person. Today they are the ones who live in our homes and are our true friends, helpers and even breadwinners.

To tame does not mean to domesticate

Note that throughout time people have managed to domesticate no more than 25 species of animals. But all the others, who can only tolerate the presence of a person next to them, in particular crocodiles, tigers, jaguars, foxes and bears, are only tamed.

What needs to be done to domesticate an animal?

Domestication is a very long and painstaking process, during which a wild animal must get used to living in captivity and begin to regularly bear offspring. Only then can we start selecting. By preserving from each litter an individual with the most valuable properties for humans (the main one of which is the reduction of aggressiveness) and isolating it from its wild counterparts, after many centuries you can get not just a tamed, but a real domestic animal.

For example, in ancient times, cheetahs were often kept at the courts of the rulers of Syria, India, Central Asia and even Europe. Emperors valued them for their beauty, strength and excellent hunting qualities. Genghis Khan and Charlemagne had tame cheetahs, but they have not yet become pets.

Man's first satellite

The first to join man was the wolf. Only scientists have not yet come to a consensus on when this actually happened. According to the most common version, the wolf was domesticated approximately 10-15 thousand years ago, during the Late Paleolithic. It is assumed that it was from domesticated wolves, and possibly jackals, foxes or hyenas (depending on the area of ​​habitat), that the domestic dog originated.

How was the domestication of a wild dog carried out?

Due to the fact that not a single written source remains, and the remains found by archaeologists are poor in detail, it is not known for certain how the dog was domesticated. The only thing that is clear is that this process was preceded by domestication. It is assumed that the wolf came to the man's dwelling after smelling food. People began to find benefit in a dangerous neighborhood, so they began to feed the animals, catch them and take the puppies from the den. When they grew old and died, they acquired new ones, and so on over and over again. However, this method soon ceased to justify itself: firstly, it is not known when the dog will die, and secondly, the puppies must first be found, and then raised and tamed. This whole process was very long and not always effective. Therefore, people came up with the idea of ​​​​breeding: they began to keep several dogs in the family, which ensured the change of generations without interruption.

Human friendship with sheep, goats and cows

Human friendship with sheep and goats lasts almost as long (at least 10 thousand years) as with dogs. The stories of their domestication are even somewhat similar.

The first who began to domesticate mountain sheep (mouflons) and bearded goats were the inhabitants of Southern Europe, North America and North Africa. Hunters kept lambs and kids caught in the mountains “in reserve” near settlements. Over time, sheep and goats began to breed in captivity, their numbers increased sharply, so they needed pastures. Thus the need for a nomadic lifestyle arose.

By the way, the nomadic peoples of the Arabian, Central Asian and once existing North African steppes raised very large numbers of sheep. As a result of crossing and careful selection, they created 150 breeds of these domestic animals. With goats everything turned out much more modest. The number of their breeds is small, but they are very diverse: Angoras with excellent wool, Swiss dairy, small Cameroonians, excellent tree climbers, etc.

Domestic goat

Of course, the greatest benefit to humans came from the domestication of the aurochs, the ancestor of the modern cow (about 9-10 thousand years ago). Male aurochs were used by people as traction force during construction and arable farming, and their females provided milk.

Wild aurochs were found in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and the Caucasus and became extinct relatively recently. Thus, the last female on earth was killed in Poland, in the forests of Mazovia in 1627.

Strong helpers: when people domesticated the buffalo and the horse

Man domesticated a strong and dangerous animal, the Asian buffalo, much later than goats and sheep. This happened 7.5 thousand years ago. Today, domestic buffaloes live mainly in warm countries and are not only a source of meat and hides, but also an irreplaceable traction force.

Scientists are still arguing about who was the ancestor of the horse: the exterminated Tarpan or Przewalski's horse. One thing is known that the horse pedigree begins relatively recently - 5-6 thousand years ago.

Cats were once wild

About 10 thousand years ago, man switched to a sedentary lifestyle and began to develop agriculture. When settlements and barns full of food appeared, the first domestic cats appeared.

The domestication of cats occurred in the Middle East, in the Fertile Crescent region. The wild Middle Eastern (otherwise Libyan or Nubian) cat began to increasingly come to people and receive treats from them. The man liked the purring furry creature and decided to keep it at home. The taming and domestication of cats was slow, but people still managed to do it.

The steppe cat (Felis silvestris lybica), ancestor of the modern domestic cat

The appearance of a poultry yard

Today we absolutely cannot do without chickens. For modern people, they are not only a source of meat, but also eggs, which everyone uses almost every day in preparing one dish or another. Modern chickens descend from the bank and red chickens of South and Southeast Asia. By the way, people began to domesticate them about 5 thousand years ago. At the same time, geese, descendants of the wild gray goose, also settled in the barnyard; 3-4 thousand years ago, ducks were domesticated in Europe and China, and guinea fowl in West Africa.

Note that experiments in the field of domestication are still ongoing. However, breeders have so far only managed to tame elk, antelope, red deer, musk oxen, sables and minks. Perhaps one day we will be able to admire them not only in a picture or in a zoo cage, but also in someone’s backyard.

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