page_title: Timeline of zoology
section_title: Ancient world
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of zoology / Ancient world
caption_attribution_description: English: Photography of Lascaux animal paintingFrançais&#160;: Photographie de peintures d'animaux dans la grotte de Lascaux Object location45°&#160;03′&#160;14″&#160;N, 1°&#160;10′&#160;15″&#160;E&#160;View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth
context_page_description: A timeline of the history of zoology.
context_section_description: 28000 BC. Cave painting (e.g. Chauvet Cave) in but, especially Spain, depict animals in a stylized fashion. Mammoths (the same species later to be seen thawing from ice in Siberia) were depicted in these European cave paintings.
  10000 BC. Man (Homo sapiens) domesticated dogs, pigs, sheep, goats, fowl, and other animals in Europe, northern Africa and the Near East.
  6500 BC. The aurochs, ancestor of domestic cattle, would be domesticated in the next two centuries if not earlier (Obre I, Yugoslavia). This fierce beast was the last major food animal to be tamed for use as a source of milk, meat, power, and leather in the Old World.
  3500 BC. Sumerian animal-drawn wheeled vehicles and plows are developed in Mesopotamia, the region called the "Fertile Crescent" by U.S. archaeologist James Henry Breasted (1865–1935). Irrigation may also have used animal power. By increasing the area under cultivation and reducing the number of people required to raise food, society will permit a few people to become priests, artisans, scholars, and merchants. Since Sumeria had no natural defenses, armies with mounted cavalry and chariots became imperative and were a scourge upon the land they purported to protect. Civilization was thus built on the backs of equines (horses and asses).
  2000 BC. Domestication of the silkworm in China.
  1100 BC. Won Chang (China), first of the Chou emperors, stocked his imperial zoological garden with deer, goats, birds and fish from many parts of the world. Like zoos today, the animals may have been seen as exotic, alien, and possibly threatening. The emperor also enjoyed sporting events with the use of animals.
  850 BC. Homer (Greek), reputedly a blind poet, wrote the epics Iliad and Odyssey. Both contain animals as monsters and metaphors (gross soldiers turned into pigs by the witch Circe), but also some correct observations on bees and fly maggots. Both epics make reference to mules. The ancient Greeks considered horses so highly that they "hybridized" them with humans, to form boisterous centaurs. At any rate, animals are used as metaphors and moral symbols by Homer to make a timeless story.
  610 BC. Anaximander (Greek, 610 BC–545 BC) was a student of Thales of Miletus. The first life, he taught, was formed by spontaneous generation in the mud. Later animals came into being by transmutations, left the water, and reached dry land. Man was derived from lower animals, probably aquatic. His writings, especially his poem On Nature, were read and cited by Aristotle and other later philosophers, but are lost.
  563? BC. Buddha (Indian, 563?–483 BC) had gentle ideas on the treatment of animals. Animals are held to have intrinsic worth, not just the values they derive from their usefulness to man.
  500 BC. Empedocles of Agrigentum (Greek, 504–433 BC) reportedly rid a town of malaria by draining nearby swamps. He proposed the theory of the four humors and a natural origin of living things.
  500 BC. Alcmaeon (Greek, c. 500 BC) performed human dissections. He identified the optic nerve, distinguished between veins and arteries, and showed that the nose was not connected to the brain. He made much of the tongue and explained how it functioned. He also gave an explanation for semen and for sleep.
  500 BC. Xenophanes (Greek, 576–460 BC), a disciple of Pythagoras (?–497 BC), first recognized fossils as animal remains and inferred that their presence on mountains indicated the latter had once been beneath the sea. "If horses or oxen had hands and could draw or make statues, horses would represent the forms of gods as horses, oxen as oxen." Galen (130?–201?) revived interest in fossils that had been rejected by Aristotle, and the speculations of Xenophanes were again viewed with favor.
  470 BC. Democritus of Abdera (Greek, 470–370 BC) made dissections of many animals and humans. He was the first Greek philosopher-scientist to propose a classification of animals, dividing them into blooded animals (Vertebrata) and bloodless animals (Evertebrata). He also held that lower animals had perfected organs and that the brain was the seat of thou
caption: Lascaux aurochs, Stone Age[2]
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