The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History

by Brian Fagan

Overview

Animals, and our ever-changing relationship with them, have left an indelible mark on human history. From the dawn of our existence, animals and humans have been constantly redefining their relationship with one another, and entire civilizations have risen and fallen upon this curious bond we share with our fellow fauna. Brian Fagan unfolds this fascinating story from the first wolf who wandered into our prehistoric ancestors' camp and found companionship, to empires built on the backs of horses, donkeys, and camels, to the industrial age when some animals became commodities, often brutally exploited, and others became pets, nurtured and pampered, sometimes to absurd extremes.

Through an in-depth analysis of six truly transformative human-animal relationships, Fagan shows how our habits and our very way of life were considerably and irreversibly altered by our intimate bond with animals. Among other stories, Fagan explores how herding changed human behavior; how the humble donkey helped launch the process of globalization; and how the horse carried a hearty band of nomads across the world and toppled the emperor of China.

With characteristic care and penetrating insight, Fagan reveals the profound influence that animals have exercised on human history and how, in fact, they often drove it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620405741
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/14/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	310,795
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Beyond the Blue Horizon, Elixir, the Los Angeles Times bestseller Cro-Magnon, the New York Times bestseller The Great Warming, and The Attacking Ocean, among others. He has decades of experience at sea and is the author of several titles for sailors, including the widely praised The Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Brian Fagan was born in England and spent several years doing fieldwork in Africa. He is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of New York Times bestseller The Great Warming and many other books, including Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World, and several books on climate history, including The Little Ice Age and The Long Summer.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Author's Note xix

Maps xx

Part 1 Hunters and the Hunted

1 Partnership 5

Part 2 Wolves and People

2 Curious Neighbors and Wolf-dogs 21

3 Cherished Companions 32

Part 3 The Farming Revolution

4 Down on the First Farms 43

5 Working Landscapes 57

6 Corralling the Aurochs 71

7 "Wild Bull on the Rampage" 85

Part 4 How the Donkey Started Globalization

8 "Average Joes" 103

9 The Pickup Trucks of History 115

Part 5 The Beasts That Toppled Emperors

10 Taming Equus 133

11 The Horse Masters' Legacies 148

12 Deposing Sons of Heaven 163

Part 6 Ships of the Desert

13 "Animals Designed by God" 181

Part 7 "Mild, Patient, Enduring"

14 Dominion over Beasts? 199

15 "The Hell for Dumb Animals" 212

16 Victims of Military Insanity 225

17 Cruelty to the Indispensable 239

18 To Kill, to Display, and to Love 253

Acknowledgments 269

Notes 273

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

02/16/2015
Fagan (The Attacking Ocean), emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, delivers on the promise of his title by focusing on the domestication of eight species: the dog, goat, sheep, pig, cattle, donkey, horse, and camel. In each case he blends his anthropological and historical skills to explore how the process of domestication took place and affected both humans and animals. The dog was domesticated first, according to Fagan, and as with all the animals he discusses, there were significant benefits to both parties. Wolves, dogs’ ancestors, gained by having a more reliable food supply, and humans benefited from the protection offered by wolves and their “matchless sense of smell and silent tracking abilities.” The shift from hunting to herding yielded dramatic changes that completely remade human society: populations became sedentary and the twin concepts of wealth and inheritance began to appear. The domestication of donkeys from wild asses somewhere around 5000 B.C.E. helped “globalize much of the eastern Mediterranean world.” He also examines the more recent shift in perspective that turned animals into industrial commodities, leading to industrial-scale abuse and cruelty. Throughout, Fagan presents well documented and fascinating stories that illuminate an important facet of human cultural evolution. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Through stories spanning all of recorded history, anthropologist and popular-science writer Fagan skillfully recounts how many civilization-advancing innovations before the Industrial Revolution involved human management of animals.” —Booklist

“Fagan (Emeritus, Anthropology/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels, 2013, etc.) brings consummate skill to this frequently horrifying study of humanity's interaction with animals . . . His analysis, however, is sound, the product of an accomplished archaeological and anthropological background. Though reminding us of the cruelties still visited upon animals and insisting that we respect them anew—not merely as pets or idealized creatures of the wild—Fagan offers no resolutions to our conflicting attitudes toward them, but his compelling, cohesive book calls for further enlightenment.” —starred review, Kirkus

“The result of Fagan's exhaustive research is thought provoking and at times heartrending. The author skillfully traces the arc of human-animal relationships from ancient partners in survival to the master-servant dynamic we still see today despite the efforts of animal-rights activists . . . History, anthropology, and cultural studies enthusiasts will enjoy this excellent, intelligent book, as will animal lovers of all stripes.” —starred review, Library Journal

From the Publisher

★ 02/15/2015
Prolific writer and scholar Fagan (emeritus, anthropology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Beyond the Blue Horizon) takes the reader on a journey from the prehistoric era to Victorian England to reveal the ever-shifting dynamic between animals and humans. He focuses on humankind's relationship with eight animals in particular: dogs, goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, donkeys, horses, and camels (with plenty of fascinating anecdotes and sidebars about other types of creatures, such as cats, included). The result of Fagan's exhaustive research is thought provoking and at times heartrending. The author skillfully traces the arc of human-animal relationships from ancient partners in survival to the master-servant dynamic we still see today despite the efforts of animal-rights activists. In later chapters, he points out that at certain times and places in history, social class played a role in how animals were viewed. For example, the pampered purebred dogs of the higher classes were treated as beloved pets, while the mongrels of the lower classes were considered dirty and dangerous. VERDICT History, anthropology, and cultural studies enthusiasts will enjoy this excellent, intelligent book, as will animal lovers of all stripes.—Jennifer Stout, Virginia Commonwealth Univ. Lib., Richmond

Library Journal

★ 2015-01-19
Fagan (Emeritus, Anthropology/Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara; The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels, 2013, etc.) brings consummate skill to this frequently horrifying study of humanity's interaction with animals.The author considers his book a purely historical inquiry, not simply an account of how our relationships to Earth's other inhabitants have changed over 2.5 million years, but how our interdependent relationships with eight mammals—dogs, goats, sheep, donkeys, pigs, cattle, camels and horses—have profoundly shaped human history. Fagan notes that the very word "animal" has roots in the Latin term anima, or "soul." He then reveals how early humans defined their world in terms of the animals that were potent ritual partners and discusses how animals went from being respected as individuals to the modern commodification of select species as work animals and food. Eventually, traditional hunting, subsistence farming and husbandry yielded to systematic agriculture, large-scale herding, permanent settlements, cities and the Industrial Revolution. But the story is subtler and more involved than a partnership-to-exploitation narrative, involving not only Western concepts of animals as human possessions, but also a fundamental, distancing shift in humankind's relationship to the natural environment. Fagan ably explains the various mentalities and contradictions inherent in that story, and he studies a priceless archive of memory, embodied in legend and folklore, regarding associations between animals and people before wholesale domestication became subjugation. Still, our understanding of the factors that transformed wild creatures into domestic beasts owes much to conjecture and interpretation, something Fagan is keen to point out. His analysis, however, is sound, the product of an accomplished archaeological and anthropological background. Though reminding us of the cruelties still visited upon animals and insisting that we respect them anew—not merely as pets or idealized creatures of the wild—Fagan offers no resolutions to our conflicting attitudes toward them, but his compelling, cohesive book calls for further enlightenment.

Kirkus Review