Beasts of Burden

Today in class, we continued to watch the video on Guns, Germs, and Steel. The main point in the video today was domesticated animals and the best ones to use for farming. The beasts of burden were the most powerful "machines" of the time before to Industrial Revolution. In New Guniea, the only big animals that they had were pigs, and they couldn't be used for hides or used to pull plows. Almost all farm work is done by hand in NG. The best animals to use for farming are large, plant eating animals. It is also beneficial when they have a hierarchy which means that they have one animal in charge and once humans take control of that head animal, they have control of the group. It is also important that they get along with humans. There are 14 large, plant eating animals that can be domesticated. They are goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, Bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalo, llamas, reindeer, yaks, mithans, and Bali cattle. The ancestors of these ideal domestic animals came from South America, which had only the llama, and the other 13 came from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. None of them came from Subsaharan Africa, North America, Australia, or NG. The area were the very best animals and crops were in the Middle East is known as the Fertile Crescent, which gave them a huge head start. There was a 9,000 year old town that had rows of houses. It changed from having a just a place to sleep to having a house where you lived. People started to develop new skills and technologies when they didn't need everyone to farm. The use of steel transformed the world. NG never developed advanced technologies because they had no specialists considering farming took so long. After awhile, the Fertile Crescent lost its head start from its climate and the people destroyed the environment.