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Animals as Food
(Re)connecting Production, Processing, Consumption, and Impacts
By Amy J. Fitzgerald Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2015 Amy J. Fitzgerald
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62895-234-6
CHAPTER 1
Prehistory through the Colonization of North America
Did our ancestors consume large amounts of meat? How did the domestication of some species of animals unfold? When did agriculture develop and why? These are some of the questions this chapter addresses. In doing so, it traverses a large span of historical terrain. The chapter examines the relationship between humans and the animals they consume, all the way from our hunting and gathering ancestors through the introduction of domestication and into the development of subsistence animal agriculture. It explores the use of livestock animals not only as sources of food but also as sacred symbols and tools of colonization. Collectively this material provides the historical grounding necessary for the subsequent chapters that explore the more historically proximate production of animals used as food, the processing of these animals into meat, and the consumption of the end products. In order to fully understand the industrial animal agriculture of today it is necessary to first understand how we arrived at this point in history.
HUMAN PREHISTORY
Certainties about what transpired in early human history are hard to come by due to limited evidence. Based on the evidence that is available, we can draw some tentative conclusions about meat consumption and human relationships with animals. Our earliest direct ancestor, the australopithecine (living from one to 4.2 million years ago), apparently consumed very little, if any, meat. This finding runs counter to the common assumption that our early ancestors consumed significant amounts of meat. In particular, it was believed that the first individuals in our genus, Homo, were avid hunters who consumed large amounts of meat. This belief was based on archeological findings of early tools with the remains of large animals from that period, which was interpreted as evidence of hunting. Further examination, however, indicated that the animal bones had been gnawed on by nonhuman animals prior to being cut by the stone tools. The conclusion drawn from this more recent discovery is that early ancestors in our genus were not actually hunting but were scavenging and using tools to do so. Although based on this evidence we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that these ancestors did hunt, it is safe to conclude that "the earliest members of our genus were not great hunters of wild beasts, but largely sneaky scavengers."
The earliest unambiguous evidence of humans hunting to procure meat dates back to between four hundred thousand and five hundred thousand years ago. Space constraints prohibit a detailed discussion of this subsistence hunting period. It is important to note, however, that our ancestors were likely still scavenging for at least some of this time as well. The animal remains found at Homo community sites provide evidence in support of the assertion that our ancestors were still scavenging at this point in time: bones of several different types, ages, and sizes of animals were found in these communities, whereas the remains in caves of predator animals (e.g., lions) are more uniform and come from the young and weak animals who are easier to hunt. The archeological evidence from much of human prehistory therefore points to something quite contrary to the commonly held view that humans have always subsisted on meat and that our ancestors were virulent hunters. Instead the evidence suggests that humans eventually integrated meat into their diets "despite a strongly herbivorous ancestry," not the reverse. The transition from scavenging to hunting certainly precipitated significant changes in the diet of humans and the relationship between humans and animals. However, many more dramatic changes in human-animal relations and human consumptive practices were yet to come. A particularly important shift, and one that is central to the topic of this book, took place hundreds of thousands years later: the move from hunting animals to domesticating them.
DOMESTICATION AND AGRICULTURE
Before delving into a description of how humans domesticated animals and why, it is worth providing a definition of domestication itself, as the term is frequently utilized in an overly restrictive manner. Anthropologist Barbara Noske provides us with an encompassing understanding of domestication as "that situation where humans force changes on the animal's seasonal subsistence cycle." I employ this definition herein because it includes relatively minor and major human intrusions in the lives of animals and makes it possible to appreciate the nuances involved in the process of domestication. This process is very gradual, and as Noske points out, in prehistoric times the distinction between wild and domestic animals was not as dramatic as it is today.
The specifics of when and why the process of animal domestication began are still being debated. Most agree that the process was underway approximately ten thousand to twelve thousand years ago during the Neolithic period and that the first animal to be domesticated was likely the wolf, from whom the domestic dog descends. However, there is also some speculation that the horse may have been domesticated earlier, perhaps during the Upper Paleolithic. Evidence in support of this hypothesis includes the location of horse teeth from this time period that display evidence of having been worn down, presumably from continually chewing on something that was restricting movement, as well as a carving from this period at St. Michel d'Arudy of a horse with lines on his/her face that have the appearance of a harness. While the debate over which animal was domesticated first is interesting, it is predicated on the assumption that domestication is an either/or proposition that abruptly occurs: thus, there can be first- and second-place finishers. Instead of conceptualizing domestication as a discrete event that occurs at a specific point in time, it is more helpful to conceptualize it as a process, consistent with the definition of domestication articulated above, where the degree of domestication occurs along a continuum.
In addition to dogs and horses, the earliest animals to make their way toward the totally domesticated end of the domestication continuum include goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, and chickens. There is solid evidence of the domestication of goats nine thousand years ago, sheep shortly thereafter, pigs six thousand to eight thousand years ago, and cattle around 6500 BCE. These animals were conducive to domestication because, to varying degrees, they live in groups, can recognize a leader among their group, and have relatively slow responses to potential danger.
The significance of the domestication of these species cannot be overstated. According to Juliet Clutton-Brock, an authority on animal domestication, the shift from humans hunting animals to domesticating them "may be seen as the most important change in social and cultural behavior to have occurred throughout the history of the human species." One of the main reasons why this shift is so significant is that for the first time people had the power to control their own food supply. Although they were still vulnerable to environmental fluctuations, such as climate changes and pest invasions, the increased control they had over their food supply mitigated some of the impact of these fluctuations. The domestication of animals also made it possible to eventually use them for traction. Evidence indicates that animals were first used to pull ploughs in 4500 BCE. This technological development made plant-based agriculture more practicable.
Domestication may have also had negative consequences for people. David Nibert conceptualizes domestication as resulting in the oppression of animals and employs the term domesecration to refer to "the systematic practice of violence in which social animals are enslaved and biologically manipulated, resulting in their objectification, subordination, and oppression." Nibert argues that animal domestication also facilitated the oppression of human groups. He notes that Roman armies were able to be successful in their military endeavors because they brought their cattle with them on military expeditions so that they had a ready supply of food. Prisoners of war were then made to work on cattle ranches. The domestication of animals and human warfare may therefore have been mutually reinforcing.
Although there is some debate regarding the ultimate consequences of domestication, there is general agreement that agriculture is actually more labor intensive than hunting, scavenging, and gathering. Academics have therefore sought to understand why our ancestors undertook these more labor-intensive activities. Numerous reasons for the transition to agriculture have been theorized. To date there is general consensus that three primary factors were involved: climate change, population pressures, and changes in the organization of human societies at the time.
The first evidence of agriculture dates to after the last ice age, when temperatures rose. It is believed that this change in climate made the environment more hospitable to agriculture. During this time there was also an increase in the human population that would have driven up the number of animals being hunted, making hunting more competitive and reducing the populations of hunted animals. This population pressure could have also contributed to the transition to agriculture, which is conducive to higher population densities. There is further evidence of significant changes and growing complexities in human societies at this time. Socially complex groups of hunter-gatherers appear to have transitioned to agriculture before less complex groups. The more complex groups were also more sedentary, which may have made agriculture more attractive to them. Concomitantly, there was a shift in economic organization from the level of the community to the household, which may have facilitated a shift from communal hunting and community-wide sharing of the proceeds to a focus on immediate familial or individual well-being, which could be fulfilled through small-scale agriculture.
Although the exact roles that these factors played in the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture cannot be articulated definitively, it can be unequivocally stated that the transition forever changed human societies and the relationship between humans and animals. For better or worse, it brought humans and animals into closer contact and made each more dependent on the other materially, and in some ways spiritually.
WORSHIPPING AND COMMODIFYING ANIMALS
As our ancestors were in the process of domesticating certain species of animals some groups of people were engaged in worshipping them. Cattle in particular played an important role in some spiritual belief systems. The fact that cattle are the most commonly depicted image in the earliest recovered human drawings, such as in the Lascaux caves in France, points to their spiritual and symbolic importance. Ancient cattle shrines have even been discovered, such as one in present-day Turkey that dates back to approximately 6000 BCE. Linda Kalof asserts that cattle were so culturally important that the bull was the most significant representation in art of the third millennium through most of the world. The bull was revered as a symbol and even facilitator of fertility. This cultural significance did not mean that cattle were protected from harm. Cattle were simultaneously revered and killed: they marched in religious processions and were sacrificed in religious rituals. Rifkin refers to this historic period of worshipping cattle as "the cult of the bovine." These bovine cults extended from Egypt to east and south Africa and could also be found in the pre-Christian era in present-day Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Greece, and Italy.
In repudiation of the bovine cults, Christianity modified some of the rituals and framed the bull god as a symbol of evil. In 447 CE, the church gave a first official description of the devil as "a large black monstrous apparition with horns on his head, cloven hoofs — or one cloven hoof — ass's ears, hair, claws, fiery eyes, terrible teeth, and immense phallus, and a sulphurous smell." This description certainly evokes the image of something at least similar to the bull.
Although being sacrificed in religious rituals and depicted by the Christian church as the devil were not positive for the well-being of cattle, it is the later association with economic value that I argue would become the most dangerous for cattle and their kin. Rifkin points to the Kurgan warriors as a driving force in the shift from revering cattle to commodifying them. The Kurgan people inhabited the Eurasian steppes (a region surrounded by present-day eastern Europe, the Ukraine, Mongolia, and Manchuria) and are known for being the first group to breed horses to carry people. Capitalizing on this technological development, they were able to begin invading Europe, India, Iran, and Scandinavia around 4400 BCE. They invaded to secure grazing land for their cattle and horses, and while they were there they expropriated cattle from local populations. This took place over a period of three thousand years. In the process of expropriating cattle, the Kurgans commodified and morphed them into a form of transferable capital. This commodification contributed to a significant rift between the warrior and priestly classes because among the Kurgan people the warrior class had come to attribute an exchange value to cattle, whereas the priestly class still saw them as sacred. The warrior class prevailed, and over the span of a few thousand years cattle widely went from being divine to being a commodity. The eventual fixture of this status is illustrated by the fact that the word capital originated in reference to a head of cattle.
This is an infrequently told history, yet it is significant. Although few people today are likely aware of the invasions and expropriations undertaken by the Kurgan people thousands of years ago, the impacts are still felt today. They turned cattle into a transferable form of capital, and in doing so "helped prepare the economic ground for modern capitalism and the colonial era in world history." Rifkin goes even further than asserting that they laid the foundation for modern capitalism and argues that these Eurasian herdsmen were actually the first protocapitalists.
Rifkin is not alone in suggesting that the origin of capitalism is rooted in the keeping of livestock and farming more generally. Others have suggested a connection between the development of agriculture, capitalism, and social inequality. In her book The Origin of Capitalism, Ellen Wood asserts that the development of agriculture laid the groundwork for the division of labor and the ensuing dependence on others for the provision of food. Tasks became more specialized, and people no longer produced their own food. As this process unfolded, property ownership became concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and many of the propertyless, often referred to as tenant farmers, turned to working the land for property owners, producing food in exchange for a wage. The property owners then sold the food on the market, from which the workers used their wage to purchase their sustenance.
According to Wood, capitalism emerged in the midst of this process because food production became governed by market imperatives instead of subsistence needs. This transition to producing based on market demands was augmented by urbanization, as fewer people lived on the land and produced their own food, and therefore purchased it from the market. As evidence of her assertion that capitalism was born out of the development of agriculture, Wood contrasts the development of the Dutch Republic and England. The Dutch Republic was positioned to be the first nation to make the transition to capitalism; however, it was stymied by national disinvestment in agriculture during the seventeenth century. In contrast, England continued to invest in agriculture, and Wood argues that, as a result, the nation surpassed the Dutch Republic and began the transition to capitalism. Not only did landownership become increasingly concentrated in England, but productivity among tenant farmers increased because those who produced more had better access to land and paid more favorable rents. Less productive tenant farmers lost access to property and had to sell their labor. The result was that agriculture in England became increasingly productive, and it became possible to feed a large population that was not directly involved in food production. This freed people up to work for a wage elsewhere and to become consumers. Wood's focus on the countryside as the birthplace of capitalism is somewhat unique. There is not agreement among historians regarding the birth of capitalism; however, much of the focus in the literature has been on urban areas, and many argue that merchants and manufacturers were the driving force behind the transition to capitalism.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Animals as Food by Amy J. Fitzgerald. Copyright © 2015 Amy J. Fitzgerald. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
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