Consuming creatures
Animals provide
humans with much more than food. Their bones and sinews can be used
to make tools, their hides and feathers to make clothes. Their
waste products provide fertiliser for crops and, in some parts of
the world, materials for building.
Large animals provide power to drive machines
and transport people and goods. Animals are a source of wealth and
the ownership and control of animals demonstrates power.
Over thousands of years, human misuse of power
through overuse of animal resources or destruction of their
habitats, has led to the extinction of many species of animal.
However, the consumption and use of animals is still an economic
necessity in many parts of the world.
Food
In the ancient Near East, goats and sheep were
among the earliest animals to be domesticated, around 10,000 years
ago. They were an everyday feature of life and were commonly
depicted by artists who lived in agricultural communities in, for
example, ancient Greece and medieval Europe.
Wild goats are sometimes shown as prey in hunting scenes from
the Bronze Age on the island of Crete. They are now nearly extinct
on the island due to hunting, though a small number still live in
the more remote mountain districts.
With its distinctive long curving horns, the goat was a
favourite subject in Minoan art. They were sometimes shown in the
rocky, mountainous terrain that was their natural home. Minoan
religion included worship at mountain-top shrines known as peak
sanctuaries, and the wild goat seems to have been associated with
such high and holy places.
Farming
In ancient Egypt, models showing various stages in the
production of food were placed in wealthy burials of the Middle
Kingdom (about 2040-1750 BC) to guarantee that the deceased would
have food for eternity. These models show how animals were used in
farming.
The first stage was ploughing, which in Egypt took place when
the flood waters of the annual inundation receded, leaving a thick
layer of fertile silt over the whole of the flood plain. The loose
soil required only a simple plough drawn by two cattle to create a
furrow. The main crops were wheat and barley for making bread and
beer, and flax, for linen, rope and matting and they were often
sown in front of the cattle, so they would trample it into the
soil.
Cattle were expensive in Ancient Egypt, so it is unlikely that
beef was an everyday foodstuff, but it was represented as one of
the main components of food offerings for the deceased. Models
showing the slaughter of cattle for this purpose were placed in
tombs, and represented on offering tables in wall
paintings.
Trade and transport
This brown stone seal has a base shaped like a lion's paw, while
the handle is in the form of a small horned animal with eyes inlaid
with lapis lazuli. The design on the base is a pattern of animal
and bird heads.
The seal dates to a period when there was extensive trade
throughout Anatolia. We have good evidence for this. Around 1920
BC, merchants from the city of Ashur on the river Tigris
established a trading colony, or karum, at the foot of the
huge city mound of Kültepe in central Anatolia. Cuneiform tablets
written by these merchants illuminate the political and social
situation in the region. Tin and textiles were carried on donkeys
from Ashur through the mountains into Anatolia where taxes were
paid to the local princes and everything (including the donkeys it
seems) was exchanged for local gold and silver.
Although animals started to be domesticated much earlier,
horse-riding did not begin until around 6000 years ago and probably
started in central Asia. The ability of the horse to cover great
distances at speed transformed warfare and trade
. It also gave
those peoples who had succeeded in capturing and training wild
horses a considerable advantage.
Early horse-riders rode bare-back (without a saddle) but by the
third century BC saddles began to be used.
A Chinese painted clay and wood model of a horse, which dates
from the mid-eighth century AD, has a magnificently embroidered
saddle-blanket and remnants of silk indicate where stirrups would
have hung. The model, found in a tomb, is representative of a
network of communications along the Northern Silk Route in central
Asia.
More information about objects featured here (from
top)