Around 8,500 in Abu Hureyra (Syria), cultivated walnuts and fruits were added to a basis of cereals and pulse. For this community, the passage from nomadism to sedantarism was realized by progressively integrating cultivated products into the traditional fare of wild plants, before definitively toppling toward an economy of production. It was also at that time that the first traces of animal domestication appeared, game (gazelle) remaining the main source of meat. During the seventh millennium however, wild game did not suffice anymore to feed the two to three thousand inhabitants of Abu Hureyra, and it disappeared from their menus. From that time on, domesticated sheep and goats became the main source of protein.
Many communities have developed the way Abu Hureyra did, sharing two salient aspects: animal domestication was introduced after agriculture was firmly implanted in the daily economy and in the eating habits; hunting provided these communities with meat until game had disappeared.
Too often considered as a byproduct of the agricultural revolution, as being an application of the world of plants to the animal world, animal domestication has had very specific and crucial consequences on our history. First, the animal world was linked to the world of men through hunting on which many shamanic activities were focused, as the site of Göbekli Tepe (Turkey) shows [see Part Two, endnote 8]. Because animal domestication led to a gradual erosion of the shaman’s powers, its introduction in the economy of the community will more often than not be restrained.
A second repercussion of animal domestication will be the discovery of the relationship between sex and procreation. In a short time, two elements founding the world of the spirits, and therefore, the universe of the shaman, disappear: the mystery of procreation that provided one of the main functions to the spirits, and the domestication of the most symbolic animal of the Neolithic era, the bull.
The reasons at the origin of animal domestication are obscure. It is commonly admitted that in some regions, game became rarer, obliging the populations to find alternative sources of meat and protein. However, the fact that animal domestication appeared 1,500 years after the beginning of agriculture suggests that the richness in game made it a long time superfluous. Furthermore, it took another thousand years before domesticated animals were really introduced in the economy of most communities, showing the importance hunt had for these people, and their preference for game. In fact, domesticated animals will only be integrated into the daily fare when game will not suffice anymore to feed the growing populations.
With hunting, men prolonged in a very natural way the ancestral lifestyle to which they were accustomed. The traditional division of labor along gender lines created thus a two-tiered society with women on one side, actively involved in the development of agriculture and building up sedentarized life, and men on the other side, having barely changed their way of life by preserving their profound and almost exclusive attachment to hunting [17]. Logically, due to their knowledge of the animal world, men will play an active role in animal domestication, though it is not until the introduction of pastoralism at the end of the Neolithic era that men will be fully integrated in the economy, when they take care of the flocks in transhumance. Until then, their hunting lifestyle will keep them away from the sedentarization process, with the full support of the shaman whose existence depended on his function as a mediator between the entities making up the natural world: humans, animals and spirits.
The analysis of goat bones excavated at mount Zagros (Iran-Iraq) and dating from around 8,000 shows that only a few male goats reached adult age, being kept alive for procreative purposes. The rest of the males was killed when they were still young. Conversely, almost all females arrived at adult age, presumably used for procreation and for nursing. The same technique is still applied today.
Similar observations made in Beidha (Jordan) by Diana Kirkbride led to conclude that male procreative function was understood during the eighth millennium, at least as far as it concerned the animal world [18].
Passing long hours with their flocks, these people could have observed animal behavior at leisure [19], and would have noticed their procreative cycle, shorter than the human one (about 5 months for sheep and goats). Having linked copulation with pregnancy, they were only one-step away from realizing that the same principles were applicable to human beings as well.
Of course, other hypotheses could be imagined. For example, it would not be the observation of animal but of human sexual behavior that made clear the role nature has assigned to sex. The fact that sedentarization resulted in a more regular menstruating cycle, and that pregnancies were less perilous than at the time of nomadism could have allowed this discovery.
Different scripts may have been used in different places in a multitude of variations that lost their specificity as exchanges between communities developed, the fragmented knowledge becoming more coherent with time. However, whatever the scenario, sedentarization certainly favored the realization of male sexual function.
Although incalculable, the implications of this discovery will very slowly penetrate the social structures and mentalities, filtered and adapted at the beginning to what the traditions could accept. The group that offered the most resistance was that of men, concerned that they would lose the sexual privileges they had granted to themselves [see Part One], without knowing what they would get in return. They were supported by the shaman who had to preserve the customs and traditions of the community to protect his power and status [20].
However, the notion of paternity will gradually impregnate the relationships between men and women, both realizing that it is his seed, once introduced into her body, that triggers the birth of his child after a few months of gestation. Filiation will be one area rapidly affected by this realization, communities transforming their matrilineal structure into a patrilineal one. This will ultimately give rise to ancestor cults.
Finally, a second factor will have a profound repercussion on the beliefs of Neolithic communities: with the domestication of the bull, the last symbol of the world of wild animals on which shamanism thrived disappears.
During the second half of the Neolithic era, the depletion of game resources and animal domestication gradually reduced the importance wild animals occupied in the life of these populations. Furthermore, pastoralism, deprived from any shamanic content, played an increasing role in their economy. But the domestication of the bull, around 6,000, and the introduction of the plow, shortly after, profoundly changed the distribution of the tasks inside the human couple. Bringing an end to an ancestral economic model in which the world of plants was assigned to woman, the work in the fields with plow animals, too heavy for her, passed in the hands of man. The economic role of women was at the eve of a very long period of decline. [See Appendix Lee, table 4]
Fig. 5: Warka Bull, Louvre. Djemdet-Nasr, around 3,000. Warka, ancient Uruk
Another domain in which the bull’s domestication had a decisive influence was the beliefs. It is difficult for us to imagine the role such an animal played in the relationship between the animal world and the human one, more especially that of men. In this region, the bull symbolized physical power, but also sexual vitality and ferocity. While his conquest represented one of men’s greatest victory on nature, and removed a most vital foundation from their beliefs. Indeed, by submitting the bull – and later the horse, the last of the big mammals to be domesticated – man erased from the animal world all the mysteries that founded the universe of shamanic beliefs. With the animal world conquered, the holistic vision of the primitive world collapsed and definitively disappeared.
A long time after his domestication, the bull will continue to fascinate people (fig. 5): he will be present in all the mythologies of Antiquity and beyond [21].