[HN Gopher] Horses may have been domesticated twice
___________________________________________________________________
Horses may have been domesticated twice
Author : diodorus
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-06-16 22:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencenews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencenews.org)
| jojobas wrote:
| I wonder what alternative history paths were there if the Clovis
| people figured out how to domesticate the horse in North America.
| Too bad they had other plans.
| chroma wrote:
| Agriculture is almost certainly a prerequisite to domesticating
| horses (as they must be selectively bred in captivity), so
| hunter-gatherer tribes like the Clovis never had a chance to do
| so.
| jojobas wrote:
| Is it? There were plenty of nomadic tribes dealing with
| various livestock, horses included, without agriculture.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Now one could ask question is that process itself a form of
| agriculture? And that in these cases agriculture and
| domestication happened together.
| chroma wrote:
| They got those domesticated breeds from agricultural
| societies. The only example of an animal domesticated by
| hunter-gatherers is the dog.
| orwin wrote:
| Sorry, I don't think you can say nomads or semi-nomad got
| any of their five snout from agricultural societies,
| there is no proof of that.
|
| Especially since most of those agricultural society got
| their law and political organizations from nomads
| (Turkish 'toruk', ancestral law, while influenced by
| Islam, is definitely from Goturks' 'turuk' which was at
| the time likely already thousand of years old). Rus
| political system was also heavily influenced, if not
| copied from the horde (or rather, the 'ordo', since our
| vision of what is a horde is now so wrong it isn't
| funny).
|
| You have to know that the political organization of
| central Asia nomads stayed stable from before the Xiongnu
| until the 19ty century, and their administration was as
| good, if not better than the Ottoman one until cheaper
| method of making paper was found in the 15th century.
| jojobas wrote:
| Not necessarily true. The jury is out on that.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Domestic reindeer (which, in Europe, is all of them -
| except for a small non-domesticated group in the southern
| mountains of Norway, and the Svalbard reindeer).
|
| Domestic reindeer were domesticated by a nomadic people,
| or at least not an agricultural one. When that's said,
| they don't look "tame" like cows or sheep, but on the
| other hand anyone who's been involved with bringing in
| sheep which have spent the whole summer by themselves in
| the mountains will want to discuss how "tame" sheep can
| be.. (source: Myself, as a child I joined in the "hunt"
| every September for many years to help collect my
| grandfather's sheep)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Pickets and hobbles are things; they don't require
| settlements.
|
| EDIT: I'm an idiot, there are two even simpler things:
|
| Shish kebab is a thing; it doesn't require settlements. When
| it comes time to sacrifice, are you more likely to eat the
| individual who's easy too get along with, or the ornery one?
|
| Rocky Mountain Oysters are things; they don't require
| settlements. Hence the tripartite nature of Indo-European
| gender: Bull/Cow/Ox, Stallion/Mare/Gelding, Ram/Ewe/Wether,
| etc.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You're replying to an article about the Botai, whose sites
| lack evidence for domesticated crops like other early horse
| cultures.
| azmodeus wrote:
| A nomadic horse based society like the Magyars can def
| selectively breed horses
| chroma wrote:
| Horses were domesticated long before the Magyars showed up.
| It's much easier to selectively breed horses if you start
| with domesticated ones.
| linearrust wrote:
| Horses were domesticated thousands of years prior to the
| development of agriculture.
| tzs wrote:
| Other way around. Horse domestication was around 5000 years
| ago. Agriculture started around 12000 years ago and by
| around 8000 years ago had spread pretty widely.
| Animats wrote:
| Nothing to domesticate in that period. Horses were introduced
| to North America by the Cortez expedition of 1519.
|
| The pedigrees of those horses are known. The Cortez expedition
| was launched by a government and the paperwork still exists.
| They were good Andalusians. So North American wild horses were
| descended from good lines of riding animals. They didn't start
| out feral.
| jojobas wrote:
| Equines roamed North America for millions of years before
| Cortez and were extinct ~10k years ago, most likely by human
| hunting, together with the mammoth and other species.
| jmcmaster wrote:
| Horses evolved in North America, and disappear from the
| fossil record along with other megafauna about 10,000 years
| ago.
|
| Clovis people almost certainly interacted with horses, but
| likely as food.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The whole genus is supposed to have evolved in North America.
| Horses or very closely related species went extinct in NA
| somewhere between 6000-10000 BC and definitely existed
| alongside humans. It would not be at all surprising if human
| hunting contributed to their extinction.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I know nothing about horses, but I have always wondered how
| domesticated they are. It seems they are quite happy to live in
| the wild and require a fair bit of breaking in.
|
| Compared to sheep, cattle and dogs, they seem more on the wild
| side of spectrum than other domestic animals.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Breaking-in is the traditional approach. Horse whisperer style
| is more effective and takes better advantage of the horses
| domestic nature.
|
| It's a spectrum, some cattle breeds are pretty wild. Dogs are
| special.
|
| One good measure of domestication would be to compare with
| zebras which are considered relatively untamable - as in unlike
| horses they'll always maintain a violent streak. Ponies tend to
| be more violent than horses.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Zebras have a tendency to bite the face and not let go.
| Definitely not ideal for domestication.
| usrnm wrote:
| And wolves are ideal?
| fooker wrote:
| Yes, wolves are pretty intelligent and social compared to
| zebras.
|
| They understood the core concept of 'do not bite the hand
| that feeds you' instinctively.
| vintermann wrote:
| Zebras understood the concept that "this guy can out-
| think you. If you behave predictably, you'll regret it.
| If you behave unpredictably, he may regret it too."
|
| There's this theory that's why there are so few
| domesticable animals in Africa: that they co-evolved with
| humans, and the ones who behaved predictably and weren't
| willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at
| their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| > the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to
| randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own
| expense, were eaten by our ancestors.
|
| This doesn't make sense to me. Sure, an an animal that is
| generally a belligerent asshole will discourage humans
| from trying to tame it, but why would it discourage
| hunting? If anything, it would encourage hunting the bad
| animal to extinction, no? Humans successfully hunted
| Mammoths and other large game even in the stone age, so I
| don't see how having a bad temper would help.
| vintermann wrote:
| My guess is that while humans are great hunters, apes
| aren't, and that our distant ancestors would be a lot
| more dependent on prey behaving as expected and not, say,
| suddenly charge at you suicidally.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| There's generally a lot more large wild animals in Africa
| than anywhere else in the world.
| oblio wrote:
| That actually brings up an interesting topic: are they
| (still) there because human populations are comparatively
| lower?
|
| Africa has some very fertile regions but except for some
| like the Nile Valley most of them couldn't really compete
| well with the Yellow River Valley, the Ganges Valley,
| etc.
|
| Just for comparison, the population of Africa around 1900
| was around 100 million, out of which Egypt had 10
| million, Ethiopia 10 million, Nigeria 30 million, and 1-2
| other population centers around 10 million each. So 70
| out 100 million people were bunched up in maybe 5% of the
| territory.
|
| In the meantime, just India had about 300 million people
| in 1900 :-) India within from 1500 to 1900 probably had
| more humans living in it than Africa from the beginning
| of mankind to 1900.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| To be fair the slave trade (both Arabic and Atlantic)
| exerted (possibly) very significant downwards pressure on
| population growth in Africa during multiple centuries
| prior to 1900.
| oblio wrote:
| True, but based on the limited info we have, Africa had a
| much lower population than either India or China even
| 1000 years prior to that.
|
| Just sheer fertility of regions, navigability of rivers,
| etc, as a Civilization of EU4 player would put it, meant
| a "better starting position" for some :-p
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It's essentially the same theory: The large animals in
| Africa coevolved with humans, and so developed the
| ability to survive in their presence.
|
| Half a million years ago, there were large animals pretty
| much everywhere else on Earth too. They very consistently
| disappeared right around when humans showed up.
| wheels wrote:
| This isn't dead reckoning: there have been multiple
| attempts to domesticate zebras and dogs, and it's worked
| twice with dogs and zero times with zebras, thus, yes,
| one can say that wolves are approximately ideal. It just
| turns out that what we think of as necessary qualities
| are potentially wrong. There have been lots of attempts
| to domesticate zebras because they're so similar to
| horses and donkeys.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I wonder if it could be something like horses being
| willing to trade their freedom for hay in the harsh
| winter, whereas zebras can just hang out on the
| grasslands year round.
| dtech wrote:
| Wolves are much more social than zebras, which is
| advantageous in domestication. Zebras live in herds but
| it's much more free for all than a wolf pack.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Wolves are more aggressive than dogs, but can be
| successfully domesticated and kept as pets... can
| actually be quite friendly with humans, especially female
| wolfs as they're a lot less competitive/aggressive than
| males.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| There is more than one breed of dog/wolf (just like there
| are horses). And I think the evidence is pretty clear
| that, yes, they are ideal.
|
| Weird comment.
| fl7305 wrote:
| On that note, 17th century Sweden can report that moose make
| for very poor cavalry steeds.
| shswkna wrote:
| As a counter argument, every mammal born outside of a
| domesticated setting/structure is quite wild. Horses may seem
| wild because they are fast movers.
|
| Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are
| just not fast by nature.
|
| Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not
| domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated;
| they are just not fast by nature._
|
| What does that mean? Do you mean feral animals? Non-
| domesticated cows went extinct hundreds of years ago [1]
|
| _> Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not
| domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day._
|
| What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Extinction
| Cyphase wrote:
| > What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> The term is used to refer to children who have
| suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or
| running away._
| Cyphase wrote:
| For completeness, this is the beginning of the article:
|
| > A feral child (also called wild child) is a young
| individual who has lived isolated from human contact from
| a very young age, with little or no experience of human
| care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack
| the basics of primary and secondary socialization. The
| term is used to refer to children who have suffered
| severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running
| away.
|
| My impression was that it could be written as, "The term
| is _also_ used to refer to ...", but I'm not sure.
| jandrese wrote:
| If you want an idea of what undomesticated cattle look like
| head over to the American midwest and observe the Buffalo.
| Or go to Africa and check out the Sanga.
| graemep wrote:
| If domesticated breeds of cattle live in feral herds they
| will act like similar wild animals. I have seen a wild herd
| myself once, and people familiar with them said they were
| dangerous.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Domestication is pretty poorly defined, but IMO it's more about
| a capacity rather than necessity. A domesticated dog isn't just
| instantly domesticated and raised outside of humans would still
| be wild and quite dangerous, but with training and the right
| environment can be just another family member.
|
| By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no
| matter how you treat them. This is why you'll still have things
| like a cat just randomly attack you in weird circumstances and
| ways, but because they're tiny and relatively harmless it just
| makes them hilarious and weird. But it's also why people who
| miss out on this final nuance, and pick up lynx and similar
| animals as pets, often end up in the hospital.
| epilys wrote:
| You are mixing up two concepts here, that of the domesticated
| species and the domesticated individual animal. The article
| talks about the former. The latter means taming an individual
| of a species. Dogs are by definition domesticated wolves and
| depend on humans for survival in general.
| aorloff wrote:
| Plenty of dogs live wild mostly off the waste stream of
| humans, but they are not domesticated. Lets call them
| coyotes.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Let's not. A feral dog is behaviorally very different
| than a coyote or a wolf.
|
| A wolf pup raised by humans won't be anything like a tame
| dog.
|
| People whose animal experiences are limited to pets and
| zoos have many wrong ideas about how real wild animals
| are.
| jajko wrote:
| What about dingoes? The best guess is they were
| domesticated and then went feral some 5-8k years ago.
| These days, in places like Fraser island in Australia,
| you have big fences for campers to not get eaten by packs
| of those and you need to drive everywhere, they would not
| hesitate for a second if given a chance.
| lukan wrote:
| The aborigines (till they themself were domisticated) had
| dingos as dogs and my interactions with them on Fraser
| Island were in a way like with wild dogs who wanted to
| get BBQ.
|
| So definitely dangerous, but not in a Wolf way.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Wouldn't wolves generally be significantly less dangerous
| because they are generally more skittish and avoid being
| near humans?
|
| One of the main issues with feral/wild dogs (or wolf
| hybrids) is that they are much less afraid of humans and
| therefore are more likely to attack livestock, pets or
| even actual people when given the opportunity. Under
| normal circumstances actual wolf attacks are (and
| probably were historically) and feral/hybrid dogs are
| just attributed to them.
| lukan wrote:
| In general yes. I meant when a wolf attacks, he will not
| toy around and show himself before the attack, like the
| dingos did.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Hmmm.
|
| There used to be a huge population of stray dogs in
| Balkan cities after 1990. (Contraception and culling
| reduced the numbers quite a bit since then.)
|
| Most of the time, they just went out of people's way,
| individually or in loose packs. Attacks on humans did
| happen, but weren't a daily occurrence.
|
| That said, a stray dog in a big city will always find
| food, so they weren't hungry.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > People whose animal experiences are limited to pets and
| zoos have many wrong ideas about how real wild animals
| are.
|
| How are they? Really shy and prefer cermonial fights?
|
| I would guess a stray dog is a bigger threat than a wild
| wolf that have not got its instincts breed away to have
| the fur in a special way.
|
| (Note, I don't mean I'd rather be in room with a wolf
| than a stray dog. But that the wolf would bail 1 mile
| away from me.)
| aorloff wrote:
| Behaviorally very different. In other words, in just a
| few generations the distinctions we make ("dogs"
| "coyotes") are irrelevant.
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| It's really interesting topic to discuss
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >Horses may have been domesticated twice
|
| When I read the title, I was thinking I like a horse that's
| been domesticated the whole time :)
|
| Former or latter, I don't want to actually participate in
| the full rodeo experience.
| the-dude wrote:
| Dogs can not be trusted : never leave an infant/toddler alone
| with them.
| vasco wrote:
| If you read this and think "would be fine with my dog", I
| say the same, but remember the kid can mess with the dog
| and the dog will defend itself. Do you know for sure what
| the dog will do if the kid pokes it in the eye? The
| dangerous part is more what the kid will do.
| the-dude wrote:
| From what I understood the dog can go beserk like
| elephants do, no need to blame it on the victim. I mean,
| what can an infant do except make noise?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Infant scratches you. Sometimes in the eyes. Most animals
| seem to understand they are infants and not fighting,
| like puppets biting, but some dogs just have their head
| messed up.
| the-dude wrote:
| You don't have to take my word for it, just read this
| through.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_Un
| ite...
|
| No need to blame the victims.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| It's still extremely unlikely under normal circumstances.
| Serious attacks by non feral/mistreated dogs are still a
| freak incident. You're about as likely to be killed by a
| lightning.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Under normal circumstances, infants spend essentially all
| of their time under the moderate supervision of an adult.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Some dogs might, others are not necessarily much more
| likely to behave that way than some humans.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| It's the same as saying humans can't be trusted. Of course
| you can trust some humans, and of course you can trust some
| dogs. Just first make sure... my dog took so much "torture"
| from my kids, and yet they were inseparable. Would I trust
| some random dog on the street? Of course not...
| Tor3 wrote:
| Dogs have instincts, and that's the problem. Apparently you
| can trigger one of those by approaching a dog from behind
| and put your hand on the dog's shoulder. At least that's
| the explanation I've seen for when a kind dog out of the
| blue attack a child reflexively. Obviously this is not
| something I'm willing to try out myself.
| the-dude wrote:
| From my other comment, quotes from Wikipedia :
|
| _A dog killed an infant as it slept in bed with its
| parents. The baby 's father awoke during the attack, saw
| the injuries to the child, and immediately killed the
| dog._
|
| _The family dog killed two-month-old Julius who was in
| her infant bouncer while her father was sleeping. Julius
| was taken to the hospital where she was declared dead_
|
| _An eight-month-old girl in a bouncy chair was attacked
| by the family pet while in the care of her grandmother.
| Fire and rescue declared her dead at the scene._
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| That doesn't mean that the overwhelming majority of well-
| trained dogs belonging to non-aggressive breeds are not
| almost entirely trustworthy under most circumstances.
|
| Of course unnecessarily risking the life of your child is
| still a horrible idea (especially considering that a dog
| might still hurt it entirely unintentionally).
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I got bit by a dog a few years ago and it was a real wake
| up call. It wasn't that I wasn't aware that a dog will bite
| under the right circumstances - I knew that.
|
| I had believed that I understood when a dog was unhappy.
| The dog that bit me gave zero indication that I could see.
| I walked past it and it attacked. I have no doubt that
| someone very perceptive might have seen it coming but my
| policy now is to treat all dogs as if they're unhappy until
| I get super clear sense that that's not the case.
| jandrese wrote:
| To be fair, the same thing can be said about humans.
| Sometimes one will attack a person for no apparent reason
| and with no warning.
| lukan wrote:
| "By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be,
| no matter how you treat them"
|
| Of course you can. A small tiger won't sleep on your couch
| and remembers not to make a mess in the house. And when a
| small tiger attacks you, it can still be dangerous. There are
| still wild cats around here (in europe) - and they would not
| get that tame so easily.
|
| (Also you can teach cats some commands, it is just way more
| work and the commands won't work all the time)
| Sayrus wrote:
| Pet tigers are actually a thing. Like cats they sometimes
| attack their owner. Unlike cats, the amount of force they
| can use can easily kill a human, even when playing.
| lukan wrote:
| I would argue, with tigers they wanted to kill, when they
| did.
|
| Humans don't die so easily.
|
| Cats can in general play without (seriously) hurting one
| another or a human.
|
| On the other hand, even a small cat could kill a human by
| going to the throat, which they could. But they don't.
| The house cat evolved to manipulate us instead to get
| what they want, instead of eating and killing us. Those
| cats that tried that, like tigers, got allmost extinct.
| And from what I know, there are bigger limits to what a
| tiger will do, instead of a house cat. And yes, they are
| bigger and any bad mood of them allways very dangerous.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I wouldn't anthropomorphize wild animals kept as pets.
| Such animals aren't thinking about killing, per se, nor
| are they attacking things because they're in a bad mood.
| They're driven by instincts and those instincts, which
| are generally involve killing anything they can,
| sometimes just inappropriately click on.
|
| For instance we were introducing one of our cats to a new
| stray kitten we found. We've done this plenty of times
| before and are used to the process including having them
| play footsie under the door for weeks, reading positive
| body language (tail posture, etc) and so on. It was all
| positive. So we let them see each other. Everything was
| going really well until the kitten decided to boldly just
| march up to the cat.
|
| Something just clicked in her at that point. The cat, the
| most docile and friendly cat imaginable, just pounced and
| decided she was going to wreck the kitten. After
| separating her we assumed it was her way of trying to
| roughly assert dominance, reminding the kitten she was
| being a bit too familiar. That was until we were treating
| the kitten and saw the bite marks were in the throat area
| - she would have 100% killed the kitten if we had acted
| half a second more slowly.
|
| After that she was all back to being nice and friendly
| outside the door, but we decided to find the kitten a new
| home instead of risking being a bit too slow the second
| time.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| We shouldn't generalize from house cats to tigers either.
| A tiger's brain is a lot bigger than a cat's, and there
| may be more space for deliberate actions in it.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| I have a random stray living in my yard, in a major
| metropolitan city here in central Europe, who regularly
| displays immense affection for me (of course, I feed her)
| and is playful and engaged and interacts with me in what
| would be perceived, by humans, in a loving manner.
|
| However, she has her limits, and will often give me a hefty
| bite if I do something she considers unacceptable, such as
| stop scratching her ears and instead try to pet her fur or
| clear it of nestles, which she seems to love collecting.
|
| It is me, being domesticated. I wait for my ears to flop.
| fl7305 wrote:
| Isn't it the scientific consensus that humans also show
| signs of domestication?
| Tor3 wrote:
| The article in the post includes a link to exactly that.
| The hypothesis is that groups of humans one way or
| another weeded out the too aggressive ones, and thereby
| made it possible to actually create groups (where
| "aggressive" here means to automatically "bare their
| teeth and hiss" to newcomers, like undomesticated animals
| often do).
| boffinAudio wrote:
| It may well be, but the authority in my garden has
| demonstrated to me time and again that my claims of
| science are entirely irrelevant if the dindins aren't
| deposited in a timely manner, in which case, its war and
| thus bitey bitey time .. she does get pretty familiar
| with the scientific method, howevever, when the time
| comes to chase away the bugs and deposit certain
| necessary fluids in the neighbors rose bed, whatever
| their religion has to say on the subject ...
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Some more than others according to my observations :\
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| I'd love to be domesticated
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| I've just figured out that cats are Semi-Domesticated
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| individual members of a species are individuals, that you can
| have individual cats that are aggressive does no invalidate
| the domestication of the entire species.
|
| also attacking in play is different than attacking, so that
| should be considered.
| gnulinux wrote:
| I really wonder people who say these things ever owned a cat.
| I cannot see how cats are "less capable of living with humans
| albeit they're less dangerous". My anecdotes show:
|
| * Cats absolutely can be obedient with training. I've been
| clicker training my cat for years and he can do any trick a
| dog can do. He also understands his name. I tested this many
| many times by yelling random words, seeing him continue
| sleeping, then yelling his name, causing him to jump and run
| towards me.
|
| * Cats can be trained not to attack at hands like dogs. This
| is called "cat inhibition" and it's standard practice for cat
| owners, all good cat owners must know and practice inhibition
| training.
|
| * Cats clearly prefer sitting next to humans and sleep close
| to them. If you never experienced this you never lived with a
| cat long term. It's actually fascinating, when a cat is
| "sleeping" they're actually not sleeping in a human sense,
| it's a particularly light sleep. They're still ready to hunt.
| What most cat owners will see is that when your cat is
| sleeping next to you, and you suddenly change the room to
| clean dishes or use the bathroom, your cat will get up and
| sleep somewhere close to you. Although a human interprets
| this as cat being lazy, they're exhibiting hypersocial
| behavior for their species.
|
| * Cats are not weak. Have you ever fought a cat? I did. I'm a
| full sized human male who weight trains regularly and my cat
| can barely overpower me if he puts all his power. Go watch
| some feral cat vet videos, you'll see cats require a
| strongman sized vet to be fully seized (and rarely some
| _still_ get away). An adult cat will have no problem
| overpowering a human female. If you think "cats are
| attacking their owners" you seriously have no idea how
| incredibly powerful these creatures are. When a cat slaps you
| or whatever they're merely warning you in a "polite" way
| (and, as explained before this is a sort of behavior that can
| usually be curbed with training)
| QuantumGood wrote:
| I pay attention to my cats. They don't bite me without me
| knowing in advance. Even people who've had cats for decades
| get bit more than I do. I don't understand why people don't
| pay that much attention to other people or pets. There's a
| lot going on that you can be aware of if you make an effort.
| vidarh wrote:
| I find it easier to read cats than people most of the time.
| Cats are obvious. But I think a lot of people get surprises
| simply because they don't care about whether an animal
| consents to their treatment or not, and a cat has a short
| fuse if you overstep.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The countless people that have been mauled and killed by
| their pet chimps, big cats, and so on also felt the exact
| same, or obviously they would not have had those sorts of
| animals as pets.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| If you ever wrangle camels (or, for that matter, even
| shetties!) you may start to appreciate how domesticated horses
| are.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| You can tell by their pointed ears. Further domestication might
| make their ears floppy.
|
| Here's a nice article about the biological basis of
| domestication:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/
| markb139 wrote:
| I know very little about horses, but find myself surrounded by
| them thanks to my wife's interests. We have a horse who is
| quiet natured and well behaved. But, the fight or flight
| instinct wakes up very quickly and he's 600kg.
| ETH_start wrote:
| I'm not very educated on the topic, but my understanding is
| that many domesticated animals possessed traits in their
| natural state that lent to living in a domesticated setting,
| like having a natural herding instinct. The animals that didn't
| have said traits were simply never integrated into human
| agriculture, and thus never came to be considered
| "domesticated".
|
| But that doesn't address your point about horses seeming to be
| happy to live in the wild, which would indicate that horses
| have seen less change from their pre-domestication state than
| other domestic animals have.
|
| Maybe their role in human societies, as transportation and
| draft animals, didn't require them to lose as many of the
| traits of their wild ancestors, as other domestic animals did?
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Well no one ever organized a horse fights, but bull fights were
| quite popular through-out the Europe. And even goats are far
| from friendly, unless they're accustomed to having a lot of
| people around. Pretty much any farm animal that's used to being
| handled by one or two people max, will be very shy and
| sometimes aggressive (especially when they have babies) about
| any new face. Smaller animals reaction will be to run away form
| you, but large ones will stand and fight. And when a cow lowers
| its head to show you the horns, it can get pretty tense,
| believe me :)
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Another interesting tidbit, cows may have domesticated
| themselves. We can see here in Europe where the wulfes are
| returning a phenomenon, were deer starts to hug civilization, to
| have one predator (us) scare away another. Deer self domesticated
| long enough may as we'll be called cows.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I believe the prevailing theory is that dogs are self-
| domesticated as well.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I've heard cats couldn't be bothered so they made humans
| serve them instead /s
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Cats are credited with domesticating humans.
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| I'm guessing it was the second attempt that really stuck.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| The rapid expansion of the Yamnaya across much of the Eurasian
| continent in the millennia leading up to the historic era is
| still not fully understood, or has at least not reached
| consensus. If horses were not the reason, what then? The reasons
| are probably several, but the evidence is mounting that the
| causes were primarily cultural: a warring people with conquest
| engrained in their cultural DNA, a glimpse of which we still have
| in the cultural practices and documented beliefs of the Vikings,
| among other Indo-European peoples. Incidentally, they were
| largely the "race" that the Nazis identified with as the "master
| race" which has probably complicated this type of research to
| some extent.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| bull carts
| never_inline wrote:
| It's all of them - horse, war chariot, aggression, lactose
| tolerance.
|
| Even the oldest books of Rigveda [1] mention "Two bay steeds of
| Indra". That would be 3500 years old - and they had crossed the
| Indus by then (if steppe theory is to be believed).
| hoseja wrote:
| >For instance, ancient people from southwest Asia known as the
| Yamnaya...
|
| They really hate saying it, don't they.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| we can't technically call them that. Some of their successors,
| sure.
| randomtoast wrote:
| The domestication of horses was not a single event, but a long,
| drawn-out process that took place over several thousand years.
| According to Occam's razor, it is very unlikely that it happened
| twice in history. I do not question the stated DNA method, but I
| do question the conclusion drawn here. There might be a link
| between the two domestications (if two or more have actually
| occurred) that hasn't been discovered yet.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I don't believe that. How hard is it to capture baby horses, it
| would happen naturally hunting their parents. Horses bond
| decently with people and if captured and socialized heavily by
| the tribe from a young age I have no doubt first generation
| wild horses would be rideable and could be bred.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Yes, but the _ability_ to bond decently with people may be a
| trait that was bred into them during the early domestication
| process.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Wild horses run in herds, I think they're naturally social.
| If anything, it takes less work now - ranchers can ride
| horses that get very limited human contact, but the I image
| first generation tamed horses must have required a lot of
| socialization.
| oblio wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that not only are they social, their
| society is hierarchical, which would make it easier for
| them to accept humans as "top horses".
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| Feral horses run in herds. They are descended from
| animals that were already bred for domestication. You are
| confusing cause and effect.
|
| Wild horses are extinct.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_horse
|
| Social structure just like feral horses. Maybe do some
| research before you tell people they're confused.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| The post I was responding to was clearly talking about
| ranchers training feral horses.
|
| Przewalski's isn't relevant.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > According to Occam's razor, it is very unlikely that it
| happened twice in history
|
| Is it? Sure, if you start with "we have domesticated horses,
| how did we get here" then "one event happened" are less
| assumptions than "two events happened". But if you start the
| other way around with "humans lived in vicinity of a species
| that lends itself to domestication" then "they only
| domesticated it once" sounds like the wild speculation.
|
| Even if you assume exchange between the two civilizations,
| spreading the idea that horses can be domesticated is much
| easier and lower friction than spreading actual domesticated
| horses. Especially with a mountain range involved and early
| generations of barely-domesticated horses.
| rthnbgrredf wrote:
| I think think the statement "humans lived in vicinity of a
| species that lends itself to domestication" is wrong. Horses
| do not lend itself to domestication, as stated earlier this
| process took thousands of years. No one would say, oh it just
| took humans a couple of thousands years todo X, well that was
| quiet easy.
| kibwen wrote:
| A pet peeve of mine, but this is a misapplication of Occam's
| razor.
|
| Occam's razor is not to be used to say "this explanation sounds
| complex, there must be a simpler explanation."
|
| Rather, the point of Occam's razor is to say "here I have two
| competing explanations, and they both amount to the same thing,
| and we don't have any evidence of one over the other, so let's
| just pick the simpler one because it doesn't make a
| difference."
|
| So, for example, if we had absolutely zero evidence as to the
| domestication of horses, and one person said "they were
| domesticated once" and another person said "they were
| domesticated twice", then it all amounts to the same thing
| (horses were domesticated) and we have no evidence either way,
| so we would use Occam's razor to favor the first explanation.
|
| But in this case, it appears we do have evidence, so rather
| than relying on Occam's razor, we should just argue about the
| evidence instead.
| rthnbgrredf wrote:
| From Wikipedia "This philosophical razor advocates that when
| presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction
| and both theories have equal explanatory power one should
| prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions"
|
| Both hypotheses make the same prediction and have equal
| explanatory power. I think just one article where they say
| "may have been" in the title is not enough evidence to
| overrule occams principle in this case.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| It all seems so unfathomable to me. Even plants! Wild almonds
| will kill you with cyanide. Even domesticated horses are scary as
| hell -- what would they have been like before that? Domestic
| goats can kill big men -- my uncle (huge, muscly, outdoorsy blue
| collar guy) almost got rammed to death by one.
|
| The only instance of donestication I really get are cats.
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