By domesticating goats, cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry, humans have been able to ensure that food is always available. Horses, mules and camels have been used to carry people and goods over long distances. Pets provide companionship but can also be very useful. Sheepdogs help farmers to round up their flocks. Guide dogs for the blind and hearing dogs for the deaf help their owners to lead full lives. Animals are also used to guard property, perform rescues and carry messages.
The specific economic application of domesticated animals did not appear at once. Dogs probably accompanied hunters and helped them hunt wild animals; they probably also guarded human settlements and warned the inhabitants of possible danger. At the same time, they were eaten by humans, which was probably their main importance during the first stages of domestication. Sheep and goats were also eaten in the initial stages of domestication but later became valuable for producing the commodities of milk and wool.
The principal aim of cattle breeding in ancient times was to obtain meat and skin and to produce work animals, which greatly contributed to the development of agriculture. Cattle, at the initial stages of domestication, produced a small amount of milk, sufficient only to rear their calves. The development of high milk yield in cows with their breeding especially for milk production is a later event in the history of domestication.
The first domesticated horses were also used for meat and skin. Later the horse played an enormous role in the waging of war. Peoples inhabiting the Middle East in the 2nd millennium BCE used horses in chariot battles. With time the horse began to be used as transportation. In the 1st millennium BCE carts appeared, and the horses were harnessed to them; other riding equipment, including the saddle and the bit, seems to have appeared in later centuries.
The donkey and the camel were used only for load transport and as means of conveyance; their unpalatability ruled out their use as a preferred food.
The first domesticated hens perhaps were used for sport. Cockfighting was instrumental in bringing about the selection of these birds for larger size. Cocks later acquired religious significance. In Zoroastrianism the cock was associated with protection of good against evil and was a symbol of light. In ancient Greece it was also an object of sacrifice to gods. It is probable that egg production of the first domesticated hens was no more than five to ten eggs a year; high egg yield and improved meat qualities of hens developed at later stages of domestication.
Early domestication of the cat was probably the result of the pleasure experienced from keeping this animal. The cat’s ability to catch mice and rats was surely another reason that impelled people to keep cats at home. In ancient Egypt the cat was considered a sacred animal.
Some animals were domesticated for utilitarian purposes from the very beginning. Here belongs, first of all, the rabbit, whose real domestication was carried out from the 6th to the 10th century CE by French monks. The monks considered newborn rabbits “fish” and ate them when the church calendar indicated abstinence from meat.
For the sake of honey, the bee was domesticated at the end of the Neolithic Period. Honey has played an enormous role in human nutrition since ancient times; it ceased being the sole sweetening agent only about 200 years ago. Bees also provided wax and bee venom, which was used as medicine. Bees were used also, to a limited extent, in warfare, hives being thrown among enemy troops to rout them.
To obtain silk, the silkworm was domesticated in China no later than 3000 BCE, and by 1000 BCE the technology of silkworm breeding and raising had been thoroughly documented.
Shepherd and nomadic animal breeding, which determined the social and economic organization and the way of life of some peoples to a great extent, appeared at later stages of human development, after the accumulation of a large number of domestic animals. Rudiments of nomadic animal breeding in Eurasia appeared no earlier than 1000 BCE, considerably after the domestication of animals took place.
The process of domestication in the New World took place somewhat later than in the Old World and independently of the latter, since humans first appeared in the New World only during the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (which lasted from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), long after settlement of the Old World.
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