Potential African Domestications?

For plants there is a free three volume work on potential domestications (http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309049903), but I'm having a harder time finding solid sources for African animals that could've been domesticated. Which animals on the continent could've been domesticated?

Some ideas:

-More kinds of rats: food micro-livestock in the guinea pig niche.
-African wild dogs: are they similar enough to wolves that they could've been domesticated in much the same way that wolves were? Them having very strong jaws is interesting since them chomping on bones could allow them to eat more human food waste.
-Grey parrots: this one might be a bit out there but it would be damn cool due to their limited language abilities and intelligence. They and other kinds of parrots are pretty commonly tamed and there's plenty of examples in the world of bird domestication, so this might be possible. Maybe they could be used to find certain things (fruit? animals to hunt?) and lead their masters to them? Fly around and squawk loudly when strangers show up?

Never enough agricultural PODs.

Interesting ideas, though I don't know where they'd get something guinea pig like. Maybe something like tamed hyraxes or tamed... what do you call them... those weird African kangaroo-like mammals that look like rodents (but aren't), burrow and have bushy tails (can't remember their proper name right now).

Petike said:

Never enough agricultural PODs.

Interesting ideas, though I don't know where they'd get something guinea pig like. Maybe something like tamed hyraxes or tamed... what do you call them... those weird African kangaroo-like mammals that look like rodents (but aren't), burrow and have bushy tails (can't remember their proper name right now).

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Ah, I meant keep rates as livestock, feed them and eat them. I think that this is done as a sideline in some areas of Africa IOTL but it could've been done earlier and/or more extensively especially if they started agriculture early enough that they didn't have access to livestock from abroad. Basically have rats serve the same niche as guinea pigs did for Andean civilizations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2lSZPTa3ho
Baboons domesticate dogs. Maybe they could do so to cattle?

Technically OTL, but a southern Africa that domesticated the eland and/or guineafowl ahead of schedule would be in a much better position. Lack of the tsetse fly and connection to the Indian Ocean Trade routes could have propelled the region quite far ahead of where it was IOTL by the time of European colonization.

Africa has a plethora of mammals, though by coincidence (or not, depending on who you ask) very few were really domesticable.

Arguably, cattle is an OTL African domesticate-there were aurochs in North Africa.

Perhaps a degree more hierarchical among some antelopes could make them more domesticable. Eland would be a good bet, as wolf brother says there have been recent attempts IOTL to domesticate them. Some orphaned calves from these *Elands could be rescued by pastoralists, raised among their cattle herds, and soon you have a new domesticate that is more sleeping-sickness resistant and better adapted to the tropics.

Ultimately, though, I'd say that plants are more important than animals in advancing African civilization. IOTL Africa had cattle, sheep, goats, and guinea fowl. What it really needs to create greater civilizations earlier are native equivalents to maize, cassava, and cinchona trees (which produce the anti-malarial quinine). IOTL these plants only reached Africa after Europeans had gotten into a position to control much of the world and had an economic interest that ultimately wrecked African societies. Give those plants to Africa much earlier, and you'll get much higher populations much earlier in history capable of creating societies that will be more able to resist colonialism.

I have seen it suggested that dogs were domesticated from African Wild Dogs and not Grey Wolves. It's quite likely the were domesticated from a number of different canines including both of those. So, African Dogs may have been domesticated. They may even be in your house! But the domestication of dogs happened so much earlier than other domestications that I think it really stands apart. Since it probably happened before humans became sedentary, I like to say that it was dogs who domesticated us.

Anyways, how about African Elephants used in a manner similar to Indian ones?

I'm not so sure about that twovultures. Sub-Saharan Africa had sorghum, millet, fonio, tef, taro, yams, ensete, etc. And of course North Africa and the Nile had access to everything the rest of Eurasia had. So its not like Africans were lacking in plant domesticates; the issue was they had no viable livestock.

Well, you have Cane rats, African snails, dormice and jackals as potential domesticates. Dormice were domesticated in antiquity, cane rats and african snails are being farmed all over Africa right now and jackals are the foundation of the Sulimov dog breed in Russia.

Go Big

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=258273

Cape Buffalo & Zebra

maybe the forest subspecies of african buffalo, which live in smaller herds and is smaller could be domesticated easier than Cape buffalo?

PhilippeO said:

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Cape Buffalo & Zebra

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And I'll volunteer to underwrite a life insurance policy for anyone foolish enough to try that with Cape Buffalo. I'd make my money back right quick.

I think we need to differentiate 'domesticate' and 'train/tame'.

Guinea fowl and Cane Rats are tameable and trainable, but they are not domesticable.

Prism said:

Well, you have Cane rats, African snails, dormice and jackals as potential domesticates. Dormice were domesticated in antiquity, cane rats and african snails are being farmed all over Africa right now and jackals are the foundation of the Sulimov dog breed in Russia.

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People farm snails?

The Gray Ostrich of Southern Africa appears to have been domesticated by Europeans in the 19th century.

There are a number of African potential microlivestocks.

GrandpaTanaka said:

I have seen it suggested that dogs were domesticated from African Wild Dogs and not Grey Wolves. It's quite likely the were domesticated from a number of different canines including both of those. So, African Dogs may have been domesticated. They may even be in your house! But the domestication of dogs happened so much earlier than other domestications that I think it really stands apart. Since it probably happened before humans became sedentary, I like to say that it was dogs who domesticated us.
?

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Actually, genetic studies clearly indicate a pure Canis lupus origin for domestic dogs.

JacktheCat said:

Guinea fowl ... are tameable and trainable, but they are not domesticable.

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Boy, that must come as a shock to people who have any of several domestic breeds of guinea fowl.

wolf_brother said:

I'm not so sure about that twovultures. Sub-Saharan Africa had sorghum, millet, fonio, tef, taro, yams, ensete, etc. And of course North Africa and the Nile had access to everything the rest of Eurasia had. So its not like Africans were lacking in plant domesticates; the issue was they had no viable livestock.

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Tef is limited in range, while millet is not a very filling crop. And Eurasian crops-particularly barley and wheat-grow in very limited areas in Africa. Cattle and sheep, on the other hand, did spread throughout Africa in ancient times. Africa had problems absorbing Eurasian livestock, but not as much as absorbing Eurasian plants.

It was tropical New World plants that were the big game changer for the African population, what made slavery demographically sustainable. Maize produces an extremely calorie rich harvest for very little work, while cassava (unlike tef or millet) grows almost anywhere under very harsh conditions.

The New World crop package did wonders for everyone in the Old World - its affects certainly aren't unique to Africa. Saying that maize or cassava spurred along Africa's OTL development doesn't invalidate my earlier statement; Sub-Saharan Africa did and does have its own prodigious crop package that is at least on par with most of Eurasia. Again, the issue isn't in crops, its the fact that, due to the tsetse fly, most of Sub-Saharan Africa didn't have access to livestock. That means no easy meat or milk or fibers, no labor advantage over slavery, and no rapid means of communication or transport. That's why Africa was 'left behind' IOTL. To change that you need to either mitigate or wipe out the fly (which is cliché at this point), or give the Sub-Saharan Africans better domesticates (which is what the OP asked about).

What if people domesticated baboons to be sheep/ cattle dogs?

What about stopping the spread of Islam? Eliminating food taboos (especially on rodents and invertebrates) could go quite a way towards the establishment of several microlivestock species.