Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

13.
 Opposite: The remains of a monumental structure from Göbekli Tepe. Right: One of the decorated
stone pillars (about five metres high)
.
Why would a foraging society build such structures? They had no obvious
utilitarian purpose. They were neither mammoth slaughterhouses nor places to
shelter from rain or hide from lions. That leaves us with the theory that they were
built for some mysterious cultural purpose that archaeologists have a hard time
deciphering. Whatever it was, the foragers thought it worth a huge amount of
e ort and time. The only way to build Göbekli Tepe was for thousands of foragers
belonging to di erent bands and tribes to cooperate over an extended period of
time. Only a sophisticated religious or ideological system could sustain such
efforts.
Göbekli Tepe held another sensational secret. For many years, geneticists have
been tracing the origins of domesticated wheat. Recent discoveries indicate that at
least one domesticated variant, einkorn wheat, originated in the Karaçadag Hills –
about thirty kilometres from Göbekli Tepe.
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This can hardly be a coincidence. It’s likely that the cultural centre of Göbekli
Tepe was somehow connected to the initial domestication of wheat by humankind
and of humankind by wheat. In order to feed the people who built and used the
monumental structures, particularly large quantities of food were required. It may
well be that foragers switched from gathering wild wheat to intense wheat
cultivation, not to increase their normal food supply, but rather to support the
building and running of a temple. In the conventional picture, pioneers rst built
a village, and when it prospered, they set up a temple in the middle. But Göbekli
Tepe suggests that the temple may have been built rst, and that a village later
grew up around it.
Victims of the Revolution
The Faustian bargain between humans and grains was not the only deal our
species made. Another deal was struck concerning the fate of animals such as
sheep, goats, pigs and chickens. Nomadic bands that stalked wild sheep gradually
altered the constitutions of the herds on which they preyed. This process probably
began with selective hunting. Humans learned that it was to their advantage to
hunt only adult rams and old or sick sheep. They spared fertile females and young

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lambs in order to safeguard the long-term vitality of the local herd. The second
step might have been to actively defend the herd against predators, driving away
lions, wolves and rival human bands. The band might next have corralled the herd
into a narrow gorge in order to better control and defend it. Finally, people began
to make a more careful selection among the sheep in order to tailor them to
human needs. The most aggressive rams, those that showed the greatest resistance
to human control, were slaughtered rst. So were the skinniest and most
inquisitive females. (Shepherds are not fond of sheep whose curiosity takes them
far from the herd.) With each passing generation, the sheep became fatter, more
submissive and less curious. 
Voilà
! Mary had a little lamb and everywhere that
Mary went the lamb was sure to go.
Alternatively, hunters may have caught and adopted’ a lamb, fattening it during
the months of plenty and slaughtering it in the leaner season. At some stage they
began keeping a greater number of such lambs. Some of these reached puberty
and began to procreate. The most aggressive and unruly lambs were rst to the
slaughter. The most submissive, most appealing lambs were allowed to live longer
and procreate. The result was a herd of domesticated and submissive sheep.
Such domesticated animals – sheep, chickens, donkeys and others – supplied
food (meat, milk, eggs), raw materials (skins, wool), and muscle power.
Transportation, ploughing, grinding and other tasks, hitherto performed by
human sinew, were increasingly carried out by animals. In most farming societies
people focused on plant cultivation; raising animals was a secondary activity. But
a new kind of society also appeared in some places, based primarily on the
exploitation of animals: tribes of pastoralist herders.
As humans spread around the world, so did their domesticated animals. Ten
thousand years ago, not more than a few million sheep, cattle, goats, boars and
chickens lived in restricted Afro-Asian niches. Today the world contains about a
billion sheep, a billion pigs, more than a billion cattle, and more than 25 billion
chickens. And they are all over the globe. The domesticated chicken is the most
widespread fowl ever. Following 
Homo sapiens
, domesticated cattle, pigs and
sheep are the second, third and fourth most widespread large mammals in the
world. From a narrow evolutionary perspective, which measures success by the
number of DNA copies, the Agricultural Revolution was a wonderful boon for
chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep.
Unfortunately, the evolutionary perspective is an incomplete measure of
success. It judges everything by the criteria of survival and reproduction, with no
regard for individual su ering and happiness. Domesticated chickens and cattle
may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most
miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on
a series of brutal practices that only became crueller with the passing of the

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centuries.
The natural lifespan of wild chickens is about seven to twelve years, and of
cattle about twenty to twenty- ve years. In the wild, most chickens and cattle
died long before that, but they still had a fair chance of living for a respectable
number of years. In contrast, the vast majority of domesticated chickens and cattle
are slaughtered at the age of between a few weeks and a few months, because this
has always been the optimal slaughtering age from an economic perspective.
(Why keep feeding a cock for three years if it has already reached its maximum
weight after three months?)
Egg-laying hens, dairy cows and draught animals are sometimes allowed to live
for many years. But the price is subjugation to a way of life completely alien to
their urges and desires. It’s reasonable to assume, for example, that bulls prefer to
spend their days wandering over open prairies in the company of other bulls and
cows rather than pulling carts and ploughshares under the yoke of a whip-
wielding ape.
In order to turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into obedient draught
animals, their natural instincts and social ties had to be broken, their aggression
and sexuality contained, and their freedom of movement curtailed. Farmers
developed techniques such as locking animals inside pens and cages, bridling them
in harnesses and leashes, training them with whips and cattle prods, and
mutilating them. The process of taming almost always involves the castration of
males. This restrains male aggression and enables humans selectively to control
the herd’s procreation.