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Travel, Teach, Live in Asia

Ancient Roots to Cattle (and Pig) Domestication
By:Robin Day B.Sc. MSc. B.Ed. <cowboy4444@hotmail.com>

This article touches on many parts of the world but especially east and SE Asia. It may be published in Rural Delivery magazine (Canada) later this year.

THE VERY ANCIENT ROOTS TO CATTLE (and Pig) DOMESTICATION

Introduction
This article is the natural twin to The Very Ancient Roots to Tropical Agriculture printed in the Jan./Feb. 2006 issue of Rural Delivery magazine, and Sarracenia wildflower magazine, Canada.

Various types of cattle have been independently domesticated throughout the world. Readers are familiar with the common cattle breeds of Europe, all domesticated from the wild Auroch. These were painted on the limestone caves of Spain and France by Stone Age hunters and on the minotar fresco of the palace of Crete. The last died in 1627 on a forest reserve in Poland. Since then the species has been recreated by back breeding primitive types of cattle.

The Cattle Species

From television readers have seen shaggy Yak domesticated on the Tibet and Nepal plateau, Zebu or Brahman cattle domesticated, presumably, in the Indus River region of present day Pakistan. Few outside the islands of Java, Lombok, Bali and Sumatra have seen the sweet-face, deer-like cattle native to Indonesia. Cattle were also domesticated in N Africa and in the region of Mongolia-Korea. Many of these cattle are interfertile to various degrees. In addition to the true cattle we bring to mind the related water buffalo used nowadays in rice culture.

Bonding: the Herding Cultures

Cattle and buffalo have been used by humans for all they have, meat, fat, blood, skins, bone and blood meal, horn, milk and of course the dung is spread on the land to fertilize, dried to use as fuel or mixed with mud to plaster homes especially in rural Africa. For thousands of years, at least 8.5 thousand, cattle have been closely associated with some human societies. The Dinka tribes of Sudan and north Kenya show the very intimate relation that can exist. Cattle are truly loved by the Dinka maybe more than we love our dogs. They ride them and pet them, groom them daily for ticks, fly larvae and other skin irritations, protect them from predators and human thieves, paint designs on them and even compose and sing them songs.

Domestication Grew out of Hunting/Sacrifice/Feasting/Religion

In this article I will not go into the genetics and relation between the different cattle breeds as there are books and many papers written about these. In this short note I want to suggest the very beginning of the domestication process of water buffalo and I believe it will apply to most other cattle types: Wild buffalo, like deer and pig, were hunted and provided periodic feasts to the village. These feast were important sources of protein and fats to be sure but also important for the status of the hunter individuals who brought such largesse to the village. The feast was a boost to the prestige of the individuals and to the clans that gave the feast. This we still see today in much of Indonesia, S. China, Assam India and parts of Indo-China where the horns and skull of the butchered buffalo was tied or nailed to the outside of clan houses as a memorial or token of a clan's generosity. Essentially they are/were like badges of honor and were hung in vertical columns. Canadians, Americans, Europeans do the same especially in rural and northern communities where they fix deer horns to outside buildings or inside walls. Pig skulls and teeth are often displayed, especially in Papua-New Guinea. What very ancient customs! Stacked buffalo horns can be seen as far afield as Madagascar, settled in about 800 AD by courageous navigators from Borneo. Although not widely known these Malagassey are unique, the only country of Africa settled by rice-eating Asians.

Aside: An earlier group of SE Asians may have invaded the Middle East (Persian Gulf) in the Neolithic when massive sea flooding covered much of the great Sundaland continental platform, now just the remnants of Indonesia-Borneo-Philippines-Malaya. This is very controversial and links between SE Asian culture and those of the Middle East are discussed in Stephen Oppenheimer’s book Eden in the East and the following article: Adams, R. L. 2005. Ethnoarchaeology in Indonesia illuminating the ancient past at Catalhoyuk [Turkey]. American Antiquity. Vol. 70(3) p.181-188. I found another clue in a most unusual place, the on-line Book of Enoch also in the Bible. In it Enoch reports he was transported to and from SE Asia aboard a “flying machine” and this can only have been a large sailing ship perhaps an outrigger. To understanding the clues readers need knowledge of tree spices unique to SE Asia and the frequency of volcanoes in the region, the likely inspiration for the fiery gates of hell. Brazilian scientist Arysio Santos (2005) has another provocative book Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found [the flooded SE Asian Eden].

Domestication of the water buffalo grew out of hunting and this was a very dangerous animal. In a book by Hose and McDougall (1912) The Pagan tribes of Borneo Vol. 1, Hose describes how local people would sometimes persue a wild buffalo into the water where is could not use its horns and was much safer to spear. Our Inuit did the same in the past, hunting caribou from kayak while the animals crossed water bodies. Sometime in the distant past in SE Asia a weaned calf was captured and brought back to a village. I say weaned calf as the people had no milk to rear a younger calf. The calf was kept in the village and quickly became tamed, accustomed to the attentions of people, especially children. Someone had the idea that when the calf grew to adult size it would be butchered for a major event, especially a funeral. The animal would be tethered to a tree to immobilize its head and horns and the hamstrings or hind leg tendons cut with a parang or sword to bring down the beast. From there the throat would be cut and butchering completed. The same was done to pigs and a slave or enemy head was sometimes essential to provide a companion for a dead relative. This was common practice in SE Asia. I’ve seen tall, bamboo, ceremonial balawing poles all over Bali although the island is now largely Hindu. From them a smoked human head used to hang, covered with shredded palm leaf. Cultural remnants like these balawing poles, minus the smoked heads, can still be found from Indonesia to some of the ethnic groups of S. China, the Miao, Dai, Bai Hue, Shui, Lee of Hunan, etc. Salted pig heads are common on altars in China and Korea with symbolic flesh and blood on most Christian altars worldwide. Few realize that these disturbing clues link back to early cattle and even human decapitation.

SE Asian Jewelry/Art/Religion

The tribal or ethnic women of SE China and Indo-China frequently wear large crescent-shaped silver jewelry in their headdress or around their neck. This is described as the crescent moon but it is also the crescent of the buffalo horns. The crescent moon and the horns of buffalo and other cattle are closely associated in Middle East, Crete and Egyptian religion. Recall the bull image of Amun with a solar disc between the horns. Sumerian/Babylonian gods usually wore a crown of stacked cattle horns.

Controlling the Beasts

From this it can be seen that the domestication of buffalo had absolutely nothing to do with crop farming, either rice or the root crop taro. It was an animal for sacrifice and feasting. Eventually more buffalo calves were captured and a breeding herd kept near the village for sacrificial feasts and these became fully domestic. If you reflect on it keeping large herbivores around was not a good thing near field crops which might be eaten and trampled. Traveling through the Philippines this year I could see the continuation of this tradition. Rice fields, orchards and vegetable patches all around the homes and a buffalo tethered to a stake in pasture behind the home. Locals say the stake is not always necessary and some animals know to keep out of the rice paddy. Many animals are tethered by a rope around the neck but larger and more dangerous individuals had a sharpened bamboo stick thrust through the septum of the nose to tie to a rope. Nowadays a metal nose ring can be purchased from hardware sores. The use of a stick through the nose may well have been a simple transfer from the same practice of human nose piercing performed in the past.

Milking
So when did buffalo play a larger role in agriculture? Cow buffalo were first milked when some children pushing aside the calf and helping themselves mouth first. This is still done in parts of Africa where herding is central. I mentioned the African Dinka people earlier and it is a natural thing for a hungry person to do so. Its origin must be quite old. Some day milk residue will be found in ancient pots in a dry cave and we can put an early date to the practice of milking. Wine residue has been discovered in a similar way. Interestingly, pigs were never milked (so we believe) but lactating women in a small group in the New Guinea region would sometimes adopt a favorite piglet and nurse it at the breast. This has been filmed many times.

No Ploughs

The Hose book (1912) notes that most rice farmers in Borneo did not use the buffalo to plough. In fact they did not have ploughs and so did not plough at all but walked the animals around and around in the wet paddy to mix and soften the mud prior to planting the seed or seedlings. Buffalo may have been used in the same way in earlier times to prepare plots for taro long before domestication of wild rice. A plough was never used in the Pre-Columbian Americas, instead the Inca used a digging stick, much like a shovel-spear, that was pushed in the soil with one foot, and the Mexicans use a planting stick to stab a hole in the soil before dropping in seeds.
Prior to domesticating the buffalo, agriculture was much more difficult for the people of SE Asia. The people of nearby Papua-New Guinea had the pig but never obtained buffalo, which are not native to their land, part of Australasia, east of Wallace's Line. They still do all the back breaking clearing and weeding by hand*.

*Aside: Their main crop in the highlands is the sweet potato which somehow was brought across the Pacific from Mexico prior to Columbus in 1492. This is one of the greatest mysteries of plant migration. Who did bring the sweet potato across the Pacific? It is found on all the inhabited Pacific islands, New Zealand too, and north to the Philippines. Did the Ming Dynasty Chinese make their way to Mexico, as some believe (Gavin Menzies book 1421: The Chinese Discovery of America ,and others), or did the Polynesians frequent the American shores in their great sea canoes or did the Peruvians venture west on their giant sea rafts? I would put my money on the Polynesians. The sweet potato was grown on Easter Island, pretty close to South America. Thor Heyerdahl’s expedition found old ceramics on the Galapagos Islands, even closer to Ecuador, but little is known about them. Another mystery.

Conclusion

From all this background we can see that the role of cattle on farms today has been transformed, almost by accident, from beginnings as an animal of sacrifice, feasting and religion.

Thanks: to Spruce Fraser, librarian at the St. Louis Public Library and to journalist Paul Manansala for his many notes on the web groups austronesian@yahoogroups.com and austric@yahoogroups.com

Copyright 2006 Robin Tim Day
Changsha city, Hunan Province, South China






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