Domestication Event: Why the donkey and not the zebra?

[Guest guest]

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Monday, Oct. 16 2006

 

Domestication Event: Why the donkey and not the zebra?

By Eric Hand, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

 

A few years ago, Egyptologists found a new Pharaonic burial site more than

5,000 years old. They opened up a tomb.

 

" They're expecting to find nobles, the highest courtiers, " said Washington

University archaeologist Fiona Marshall. " And what do they find? Ten donkey

skeletons.

 

" The ancient Egyptian burial shows how highly valued (donkeys) were for the

world's first nation-state. After the horse came, they became lower status. Of

course, they're the butt of jokes and all the rest of it. That has to do with

the name mostly. "

 

Marshall wants to know how the donkey was domesticated from the Somali

wild ass. By traveling around the world, searching for bones in London museums

and African deserts, she hopes to pinpoint the time and place of this event,

which Marshall says was as revolutionary as the invention of the steam engine.

 

She also hopes to understand why the ass was domesticated and not, say, the

zebra.

 

Animal domestication events are rare in human history. Of 148 land-dwelling

mammals that weigh more than 100 pounds, only 14 were domesticated. These

animals tend to have certain characteristics, like a strong hierarchy. That

allows humans to slip in atop the order. Calm, social and nonterritorial

animals also made good candidates.

 

Yet wild asses - stubborn, territorial, flighty - have none of these

characteristics. " That is the conundrum. By all the rules of domestication,

they're not at all suitable, " Marshall said.

 

Marshall is working with St. Louis Zoo researcher Cheryl Asa to understand how

asses breed and behave in captivity, which could provide clues as to how they

were turned into the domesticated donkey.

 

The St. Louis Zoo has five wild asses. Only a few dozen are kept in North

American zoos, and only a few thousand cling to war-torn lands in Somalia,

Eritrea and Ethiopia, where the Zoo is funding conservation work.

 

While the vicious and flighty zebra has resisted domestication even by modern

biologists, the ass was somehow domesticated in these lands at least 6,000

years ago, according to Marshall.

 

Pinpointing domestication events is a challenge. Marshall looks for subtle

things to distinguish donkey and ass bones, like arthritis in a

shoulder bone - evidence of a pack-laden animal.

 

The events are important to archaeologists because they have major historical

implications. Domesticated plants and animals let farmers stockpile food in a

more predictable way, said Melinda Zeder, an archaeologist at the National

Museum of Natural History.

 

" Domestication around the world has certainly been an incredible lever for

human change, " she said.

 

In one theory, the large number of domesticated plants and animals in the

Fertile Crescent of the ancient Near East spread easily across the east-west

axis of Eurasia. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book " Guns, Germs and Steel, "

 

Jared Diamond credits that for the eventual dominance of European powers.

 

Marshall said, " It helps us understand the trajectory that's been taken to the

modern world. The places that are wealthy and powerful today had good

conditions for domestication long ago. "

 

But in Africa, something different happened, she said. Few plants were

domesticated. Africans did domesticate cattle and donkeys, but that didn't

encourage an intensive, settled agriculture. Instead, a herding culture

thrived. Donkeys were the engines that moved men, women and children from

pasture to pasture with their cattle and belongings.

 

Pastoralism is dying in the modern world as intensive, agricultural societies

prevail economically. But Marshall says donkeys still have an

important role to play.

 

Mules, the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, are used for

agriculture the world over and renowned for their endurance. Miniature mules

are now popular as pets. And donkeys are making a comeback as transportation

for ecotourists in southeastern Europe, Marshall said.

 

" The donkey is a gift that Africa had for the world, " she said.

 

 

--

Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

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