Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

14.
 A painting from an Egyptian grave, c.1200 
BC
: A pair of oxen ploughing a field. In the wild, cattle

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roamed as they pleased in herds with a complex social structure. The castrated and domesticated ox
wasted away his life under the lash and in a narrow pen, labouring alone or in pairs in a way that suited
neither its body nor its social and emotional needs. When an ox could no longer pull the plough, it was
slaughtered. (Note the hunched position of the Egyptian farmer who, much like the ox, spent his life in
hard labour oppressive to his body, his mind and his social relationships.)
In many New Guinean societies, the wealth of a person has traditionally been
determined by the number of pigs he or she owns. To ensure that the pigs can’t
run away, farmers in northern New Guinea slice o a chunk of each pig’s nose.
This causes severe pain whenever the pig tries to sni . Since the pigs cannot nd
food or even nd their way around without sni ng, this mutilation makes them
completely dependent on their human owners. In another area of New Guinea, it
has been customary to gouge out pigs’ eyes, so that they cannot even see where
they’re going.
7
The dairy industry has its own ways of forcing animals to do its will. Cows,
goats and sheep produce milk only after giving birth to calves, kids and lambs,
and only as long as the youngsters are suckling. To continue a supply of animal
milk, a farmer needs to have calves, kids or lambs for suckling, but must prevent
them from monopolising the milk. One common method throughout history was to
simply slaughter the calves and kids shortly after birth, milk the mother for all she
was worth, and then get her pregnant again. This is still a very widespread
technique. In many modern dairy farms a milk cow usually lives for about ve
years before being slaughtered. During these ve years she is almost constantly
pregnant, and is fertilised within 60 to 120 days after giving birth in order to
preserve maximum milk production. Her calves are separated from her shortly
after birth. The females are reared to become the next generation of dairy cows,
whereas the males are handed over to the care of the meat industry.
8
Another method is to keep the calves and kids near their mothers, but prevent
them by various stratagems from suckling too much milk. The simplest way to do
that is to allow the kid or calf to start suckling, but drive it away once the milk
starts owing. This method usually encounters resistance from both kid and
mother. Some shepherd tribes used to kill the o spring, eat its esh, and then stu
the skin. The stu ed o spring was then presented to the mother so that its
presence would encourage her milk production. The Nuer tribe in the Sudan went
so far as to smear stu ed animals with their mother’s urine, to give the counterfeit
calves a familiar, live scent. Another Nuer technique was to tie a ring of thorns
around a calf’s mouth, so that it pricks the mother and causes her to resist
suckling.
9
 Tuareg camel breeders in the Sahara used to puncture or cut o parts of
the nose and upper lip of young camels in order to make suckling painful, thereby
discouraging them from consuming too much milk.
10

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Not all agricultural societies were this cruel to their farm animals. The lives of
some domesticated animals could be quite good. Sheep raised for wool, pet dogs
and cats, war horses and race horses often enjoyed comfortable conditions. The
Roman emperor Caligula allegedly planned to appoint his favourite horse,
Incitatus, to the consulship. Shepherds and farmers throughout history showed
a ection for their animals and have taken great care of them, just as many
slaveholders felt a ection and concern for their slaves. It was no accident that
kings and prophets styled themselves as shepherds and likened the way they and
the gods cared for their people to a shepherd’s care for his flock.