WI: A Domesticating Culture

With my translated copy of "Guns, Germs and Steel" at hand.
Diamond puts the limit for large domesticates at 45 kilograms of adult weight, and only considers non carnivores in this context (thus excluding dogs, the only widely domesticated LARGE carnivores sistematically domesticated).
I would object on his approach on various points. At first reading, it looks really quite compelling, but some inconsistencies occur in his discussion of the "Anna Karenina principle".
He overlooks the economics of hunter-gatherer lifestyle, for example.
Actually, his argument would be more convincing about microlivestock...
 
Moving into a new environment is one reason, if you can start cultivating native stuff it might be better than bringing your imports.

Also this culture would need some "Because we can" and "Let's see if we can tame this."
You are talking about a culture that has reached a level of development that they have a ton of free time on their hands, free time most likely in the summer months when they would be harvesting crops.
It would definitely have to be an industrial society or very close, so it probably would be post-1900. Even then they would be the oddest civilization I have ever seen.
In other words it is almost definitely impossible. There might be some small possibility of it happening in Asia, perhaps in china or a fertile valley of the Himalayas.
 
Well on the one hand, fair enough. I've read a lot of commentary of his work, but only excerpts of the actual book, so I shouldn't presume to argue with an argument I haven't heard. Unalist's summary matched what I have read, so I answered with that in mind. I appreciate the detail.

That said.

On the other hand, no, it explicitly discredits Diamond's view. Yes, the article is broadly speaking about fox domestication, but it is in the context of the study of domestication as a whole. The fact that there was a missed Eurasian species is of interest, but is by far the least significant implication of that article. Namely that domestic potential, at the very least in mammals, is fundamentally the same process in every species.

It is not only a combination of odd factors, including sociability, generation-length, and many others often identified. Those did absolutely determine which species were practical domestics for historic societies using premodern methods. Indeed for OTL cultures, I'd be arguing quite differently. But we aren't talking about an OTL culture. We're querying what a conscious systematic effort could have accomplished, had it taken place in the premodern world.

Given the assumption that Mammalia universally contains these genes, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that there were species that could have been domesticated given the application of large scale, multigenerational, and systematic efforts never brought to bear historically. Even with methods limited by technical capabilities of earlier eras the potential is worth considering.

But then I did just post a link and the word "so," so I suppose you're forgiven for thinking that was my point!

Well put concerning the stock to be domesticated. However for the domesticators the only reasons I really see to domesticate new animals have already been listed. You are in a new land or your society has recently developed or some otherwise inexplicable obsession with one species over another.

I think were splitting hairs (feel free), the main point being the hit parade, the best cannidates were demosticated. I'd even go so far as to say the second rung were domesticated as the above three situations presented themselves.
 
On the other hand, no, it explicitly discredits Diamond's view. Yes, the article is broadly speaking about fox domestication, but it is in the context of the study of domestication as a whole. The fact that there was a missed Eurasian species is of interest, but is by far the least significant implication of that article. Namely that domestic potential, at the very least in mammals, is fundamentally the same process in every species.

I'd agree with that in large part, but with a couple of caveats. What the article shows is that it is very likely that if another large domestic mammal can be domesticated, then the domesticated form will show some universal mammlian characteristics. It doesn't necessarily follow that all large mammals can be domesticated, though - that's the sort of thing which would need to be practically tested on at least a couple of examples.

Diamond's view (as you noted) was that there were a grab-bag of factors which made practical domestication of large mammals very difficult, if not impossible. These included territoriality, long generation size, etc, etc. He referred to various modern attempts which have been made to domesticate new species of large mammals (e.g. eland, IIRC), and which had run into substantial problems for one or more of these reasons.

Personally, I think that Diamond is at least partially wrong, in that there may well have been "missed" large domesticates - the moose is a probable example - but that doesn't follow that all large mammals can be effectively domesticated, even in a culture which has taken up the practice for some reason (religious, presumably, as you state). It depends on whether all of those problem factors can be overcome.

The problem is that the way to test this would be through experiments with several species of large mammals that aren't closely related. Such experiments would be long-term and expensive. Still, without such a demonstration, I don't think that domesticability can be viewed as a universal mammalian trait - though still one which is more widespread than our present domesticates.
 
It would definitely have to be an industrial society or very close, so it probably would be post-1900.
What about post-1800s, maybe some colonial powers could see it as part of their civilizing mission?
 
By why? Once they have an animal and plant for every niche, there's no reason to get more things. Like, a culture that has domesticated goats for milk, meat, and wool has no need for llamas. A culture with ratting dogs doesn't need cats. A culture with linen doesn't need hemp.
That's not true for crops. Most cultures that grow hemp also grow flax. The two occupy different functional niches though. However, redundancy is always good in the event of disease or crop failures. It's also why cultures have different breeds/strains of each crop or domesticated animal. Cultures with wheat usually also grow barley, Mediterranean cultures have chickpeas and lentils-both warm season legumes-and much of East Asia used to plant millet as well as rice. Andean farmers plant multiple varieties of potatoes in the same field when it would be more efficient to plant just one because it's a way to hedge your bets and ensure that you will get a crop.
 
Alright I guess we are slectively suspending some of the causes of domestication to see what could have happened.

Sigh. Condescend much?

No, not suspending some of the causes of domestication. Rather, playing with the variables, which is what this thread is all about.

For instance - elephants were independently semi-domesticated by at least four cultures - North Africa, Mesopotamia, India and North China.

In each case, elephants disappeared from the local economy. Why? A couple of reasons. First, although elephants could be tamed and used fairly easily and had major economic significance, the long maturation rates made domestic breeding a doubtful proposition. The preference was to harvest animals from the wild and tame them. When the wild populations were hunted out or displaced by habitat erasure, semi-domesticated elephants disappeared from the population.

There's also a secondary, but equally significant issue, in that elephants were effectively outcompeted as a draft animal by cattle. The working life span of an elephant was vastly longer than cattle, and the amount of work that an elephant could do vastly outstripped a cow. But if you compared the amount of work a number of cattle could do, and compared that with a single elephant, the equation changed... particularly when the feeding costs were the same. Cattle were also much more fluid - they reproduced fast, matured quickly, and you could adjust the working task by hooking cattle up serially to maximize your task to labour ratio.

So, how do you play those variables to get domesticated elephants? Any number of ways. Smaller, faster maturing elephants might have been more competitive (and I've read that the north african elephants were relatively smaller).

Or it may have been as simple as a culture determining that elephants were valuable enough that some deliberate effort goes into breeding.

Or you could have a situation where a local disease or parasite, like the Tse Tse fly prevents cattle from coming into use (as it did in parts of sub-saharan Africa).

Or a situation where an earlier and more consolidated domestication of elephants forecloses on the domestication of rivals.

This site is all about alternate history, or paths not taken.

Cattle, and much, much, much, later horses were domesticated because in one region, early agriculture took a specific path - it focused on domesticating field cereals or grains, in a region where that sort of domestication could spread far. Because we domesticated cereals and grains, grazers became the big domesticates.

But even in our own history, it's not the only agricultural model out there. It's not beyond arguing that had an alternate agricultural model achieved prominence - say a forest wetlands agriculture, a northern equivalent to tropical wetlands agriculture, that you would have seen the big browsers being domesticated - instead of horse and cattle, you'd get elk and moose.

It's not a matter of saying that we're going to suspend some causes of domestication with regard to the domestication of reindeer/caribou. It actually happened one place, and didn't happen another for cultural reasons.

Ostrich were not domesticated until the 19th or early 20th century, at which point there were a number of draft animals already developed and no need for it on that score. But conceivably, they could have been domesticated 3000 years ago, and served as a draft animal for a society which had none, radically changing the course of African civilization.

Hell, one could argue that the Horse could have been the first draft domesticate rather than cattle, and examine how that might have changed things.

Or that the horse was not domesticated at all, but simply hunted to extinction.

It seems to me to be presumptuous to blithely say that all that could have been domesticated have been domesticated. Whether an animal is domesticated at all comes down to a large number of variables.
 
That's not true for crops. Most cultures that grow hemp also grow flax. The two occupy different functional niches though. However, redundancy is always good in the event of disease or crop failures. It's also why cultures have different breeds/strains of each crop or domesticated animal. Cultures with wheat usually also grow barley, Mediterranean cultures have chickpeas and lentils-both warm season legumes-and much of East Asia used to plant millet as well as rice. Andean farmers plant multiple varieties of potatoes in the same field when it would be more efficient to plant just one because it's a way to hedge your bets and ensure that you will get a crop.

This is a yes and no proposition.

Generally, early agricultural societies seem to develop a narrow suite of plants, not necessarily a single domestication. Mostly, there seems to be one or two plants as the key founder crop, which gives everyone a strong motive to stay in one place, and secondary crops come in because.... well, you're stuck in one place, and there's only so much time or proper growing space to devote to your key crop. So you fill in the space with a few others.

Left to itself, an agricultural society might expand its repertoire as it expands its territory, a grain based agricultural society might add a new grain, barley as well as millet, or wheat, things like that.

But where you get your real masala, is when two agricultural societies with their own unique packages meet up. Then there's often an exchange or interchange of crops.

Those sorts of masala meetings have been going on for a long time. Go down to the fruits and vegetables section of the supermarket, and you will find an amazing international blend. Carrots from central asia, potatoes and sweet potatoes from South America, corn from North America, rice from southeast asia. Not just stuff from all over the world, but stuff originating from a hundred different cultures independent invention all over the world, now poured into one big pot.
 
I'd agree with that in large part, but with a couple of caveats. What the article shows is that it is very likely that if another large domestic mammal can be domesticated, then the domesticated form will show some universal mammlian characteristics. It doesn't necessarily follow that all large mammals can be domesticated, though - that's the sort of thing which would need to be practically tested on at least a couple of examples.

Diamond's view (as you noted) was that there were a grab-bag of factors which made practical domestication of large mammals very difficult, if not impossible. These included territoriality, long generation size, etc, etc. He referred to various modern attempts which have been made to domesticate new species of large mammals (e.g. eland, IIRC), and which had run into substantial problems for one or more of these reasons.

Personally, I think that Diamond is at least partially wrong, in that there may well have been "missed" large domesticates - the moose is a probable example - but that doesn't follow that all large mammals can be effectively domesticated, even in a culture which has taken up the practice for some reason (religious, presumably, as you state). It depends on whether all of those problem factors can be overcome.

I do agree with most of that, myself. To me though, it's not a matter of asking whether those problem factors can be overcome, but instead whether they can be given the resources available. I strongly suspect that were (for example) the US to put a trillion dollars a year into it over a period of a century or three, the only mammals they'd really have trouble with would be whales.

The problem is that the way to test this would be through experiments with several species of large mammals that aren't closely related. Such experiments would be long-term and expensive. Still, without such a demonstration, I don't think that domesticability can be viewed as a universal mammalian trait - though still one which is more widespread than our present domesticates.

If a trait is shared by members of different clades, it's generally practice to assume the trait is one held generally by their supraclade. That's the reasoning for assuming theropods were feathered even in cases where only bones have been found, for example.

Domestics exist in multiple mammalian orders, and share an extraordinary number of traits with their fellow domestics, including many that are never expressed in wild-types of their own species. To me that suggests that everything "in between" shares the same set of domestication/infantilism genes. In turn this supports the idea that, in a "perfect world" scenario, all the intervening species would be domesticable.

So if in Laurasiatheria, you have - Carnivora (dogs, cats, foxes); Perissodactyla (horses, donkeys); and Artiodactyla (pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, camels) - that suggests that many or all Laurasiatheres share the genes that make that possible. And if they do, everything from bats, to anteaters, to hippos must not be ruled out. If there are so many domesticates in that superorder, and the same can be said of both Lagomorpha (rabbits) and Rodentia (rats, mice, guinea pigs) in superorder Euarchontoglires, then by implication the genes for domestication at one time were present throughout magnorder Boreoeutheria, which includes both. So there is then an argument for adding lemurs, baboons, and ourselves to the list. And given that elephants may have "come close," despite being by many factors the very definition of a difficult domesticate, I wouldn't rule out Afrotheres (e.g. manatees) either.

I admit my argument is to biology what a frictionless vacuum is to physics, but as a general principle it seems clear to me that placentals, if not all mammals, share or shared a common set of genes that humans are able to activate via selective breeding.
 
Top