[Reading Review] Guns, Germs, and Steel: Ch. Zebras and Unhappy Marriages
By: Raymund Ed Dominic Bermejo
Tags: History, Biology, Evolution, Books, Sociology

This chapter in the book draws out the story behind why we ended up with the domesticated animals that we have today. It’s important to understand domestication as these creatures have contributed to human society in terms of food, transportation, clothing, etc. Identifying factors of value (ethics is a separate discussion) will help focus our energies to find solutions for future production of resources.

The book states that there are 14 ancient species of domesticated livestock whose wild ancestors are spread unevenly across the globe. The Major Five being: (a) Sheep; (b) Goat; (c) Cow/Ox/Cattle; (d) Pig; and (e) Horse. We find they are mostly big (over 100 pounds) terrestrial herbivores as we haven’t had a chance to domesticate aquatic animals until recent times. While there are various differences between domesticated animals versus their wilder peers resulting from human selection (of the best contributing animal among other individuals) and evolutionary response to human maintained environments (same as plant domestication) but we will not go into them in detail focusing instead on reviewing the original thesis of the book: why do some nations/regions develop more quickly than others?

In this angle, it’s because the sources of 13 of the 14 ancient species were concentrated in Eurasia. It is the continent with the most big terrestrial wild animal species to start out with (whether ancestral or domesticated) as an effect of having the largest landmass and more diverse ecology than other continents. Now, why did the Eurasian animals become domesticated rather than their peer species in America and Africa, or other continents? It seems that humans have done a lot of filtering throughout the centuries and it really boils down to those 14. Some observations mentioned in the book are: (1) rapid acceptance of Eurasian domesticates by non-Eurasians [upon interacting with Eurasian domesticates], (2) universal penchant for keeping wild animals as pets where only a few got domesticated, (3) rapid focused domestication of the 14 early in history [no new identified domesticate species after 2500 B.C], (4) repeated independent domestication of sub-species in non-Eurasian geographies (I’m not sure if I articulated this right), (5) limited successes of modern efforts at further domesticates apart from the 14.

Pushing the argument: we know there are 148 big wild terrestrial herbivores — why did only 14 pass the domestication test. The book suggests the following reasons: (1) Diet needed to coincide with availability and our agricultural efforts; (2) Growth rate [can’t wait for 15 years for an animal to grow for food]; (3) Some animals in captivity don’t breed well [cheetahs are a peculiar bunch]; (4) Disposition [some of them tend to “kill” humans — imagine domesticating grizzly bears at scale]; (5) tendency to escape; and (6) social structure [herd imprinting on humans as they grow].

In all this, we see Eurasia inherited more species of domesticates than other continents due to geography, biology, and surprisingly — the timing of history.*

*Australia and the Americas lost most of their candidates when their candidates for domesticates (seemingly) encountered humans when our hunting kills were highly developed.

Also published in https://redbermejo.wordpress.com/2019/06/16/readings-guns-germs-and-steel-ch-zebras-and-unhappy-marriages/