The Intimate Bond

by Brian Fagan

  “Sturdy, Sound in All Parts”

  Roman donkeys worked hard throughout their lives, both on the farm and in pack trains. Like Greek beasts, they pulled plows on lighter soils, crushed olives, ground grain, and carted manure. Their panniers carried grain, oil, wine, and all kinds of other merchandise. Farmers kept only as many as they needed, while traders assembled their herds depending on the loads to be carried. Heavily laden, straining donkeys caused traffic jams in narrow city streets, polluted the roads, and filled the air with their loud braying. But they were tolerated because they were uncomplaining load carriers that required little maintenance. Donkey breeding was a major industry throughout the empire. Beasts that were “sturdy, sound in all parts, full bodies, and of good stock” served as the best breeding donkeys.11 Pregnant jennies were never worked. The young were weaned only partially after a year and were trained at age three for specific needs. Beasts destined to become pack animals were castrated when two years old, to ensure they were as tractable as possible.

  Mules assumed increasing importance, especially in Roman times. Sumerians were probably the first to breed hybrid equids, perhaps during the third millennium BCE. By Assyrian times, perdum, the mule, was commonplace, ridden by people of status as well as serving as a pack animal. Mules came into their own during Roman times as powerful and resilient pack animals, so much so that they became the primary baggage and draft animal of the Roman army and the cursus publicum, the official courier and road service based on the empire’s network of highways.

  Throughout the Roman Empire both donkeys and mules were essential to the transport of goods and people. Pack trains helped maintain military supply lines, especially over relatively short distances in remote areas without roads and away from rivers, which were the best way of hauling bulk cargos such as grain and wine amphorae. Both beasts hauled wagons wherever the terrain was not too challenging and roads were passable. Over short distances, mules were superior. A string of twenty mules could carry as much as five ox-drawn wagon loads.

  Mules occupied a kind of intermediate role between the humble donkey and the noble horse. Like horses, mules had many personalities. Some were spirited animals that could give an aristocrat a lively ride, while more placid beasts carried common folk. (The best mules were probably the size of small horses, some fourteen to fifteen hands—one hand equals ten centimeters, or four inches—just over a meter [3.2 feet].) Mule breeding was highly profitable. According to the Roman author Columella, mares “should be big and handsome and well able to endure toil.”12 Each mare produced about five foals between the ages of four and ten, and gestation periods were just over a year. This, and the difficulties of breeding, made for expensive mules, which were carefully trained. For example, trainers drove mule foals into the mountains in summer to harden their hooves against their eventual use on rough road surfaces.

  These tough and undemanding animals tackled rugged terrain and mountain landscapes, were surefooted, and carried heavy loads. They crossed into Gaul with legions conquering Celtic and Germanic tribes and served as pack animals and mounts for auxiliary troops defending the Rhine frontier. The remains of at least four mules came from a large garbage dump of 160 CE, at the Biriciana frontier fort near the Bavarian town of Weißenburg.13 Dogs gnawed the bones of the carelessly buried animals. Using serial stable isotope analysis on one of the mule teeth, German researchers were able to show that the mule was probably bred in northern Italy. From its eighth year onward, the beast frequented higher altitudes, probably packing across the Alps, silent testimony to the importance of mules to Roman garrisons.

  Bartholomeus Anglicus and Others

  The Romans introduced donkeys to Europe, but they became more common after the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066. Several appear in the Bayeux Tapestry. According to the thirteenth-century scholar Bartholomeus Anglicus, they were harshly treated. Older asses were “melancholy,” also “unlusty and witless and forgetful.” Their owners beat them and starved them until they died after “vain travails.” They had “no reward after death for the service and travail of their lives.”14 When horses were requisitioned for war during the sixteenth century, donkeys took their places in the field, but by the eighteenth century they worked mainly in expanding industrial cities, where emaciated and neglected animals crowded the streets. Just as they had been in Greece, asses were considered inferior beasts.

  Mules fared much better, especially well-bred animals that carried such worthies as fifteenth-century Cardinal Wolsey. He went forth on a white mule richly adorned with gold. Eminent churchmen such as bishops habitually used mules, a tradition going back to biblical times, when King Solomon rode King David’s mule. Fourteenth-century popes residing in Avignon habitually rode well-bred mules. After the Reformation, the horse quickly replaced the mule as the animal of kings and the nobility, partly, perhaps, because their fathers were humble donkeys with no pretensions toward aristocracy. Meanwhile, the donkey carried loads and working folk, just as it had always done, silently, the subject of ridicule and abuse.

  The Golden Ass set the tone. Almost invariably, people transformed into donkeys play comic roles, such as that of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who wears an ass’s head and lusts for a bottle of hay. There’s Robert Louis Stevenson, who beat his overladen donkey, Modestine, and of course A. A. Milne’s Eeyore, with his taste for disagreeable thistles and delight in being miserable. Few have ever credited the donkey with great intelligence, except perhaps Robert Graves, who commented in his introduction to The Golden Ass that “asses are really far more sagacious than horses.”15 All this is over and above the pejorative expressions so common today, of which “you are a silly ass” is one of the milder examples.

  The Beast That Interconnected

  Every domesticated animal transformed human life in some way or other. Goats and sheep were the daily currency of many subsistence farmers. Cattle became powerful symbols of royal power. None of them had such an impact on the course of history as the donkey, with the possible exception of the horse, a creature of the steppes. Horses were faster, but lacked the ability of donkeys to traverse arid landscapes. The ass was hardier, cheaper to maintain, and more reliable in the challenging, work-a-day world of the caravan trade. Tough and easily trained, donkeys have labored alongside people for at least five thousand years, perhaps longer. They were catalysts for change, with an ability to traverse some of the driest terrain on earth that separated Egypt from Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley from what is now Iraq. They carried gold and textiles from Assyria deep into Anatolia, hefted supplies for armies, and transported food and raw materials for cities with an efficiency that linked rulers and states hundreds of kilometers apart. Their repetitive marches created the first truly international commerce throughout the eastern Mediterranean region and far beyond. Tin from Uzbekistan, lead from Turkey, textiles from cities between the Tigris and Euphrates—hundreds of donkeys and their drivers helped merchant ships (a much higher-risk form of transportation) to create a multicultural world that would have been unthinkable without them.

  Donkeys are routine, self-effacing animals, valued by farmers, generals, merchants, and priests for thousands of years, and in many parts of the world to this day. For the most part, but not invariably of course, they carried trade goods rather than people. Civilizations rose and fell; royal dynasties collapsed in the face of conquering armies; kings reigned and were then forgotten. There was often turmoil as armies trod the land, but two eternal verities survived cataclysms of disruption and violence. Subsistence farmers tended their fields in the shadow of great events, as they had always done in an unchanging routine of planting and harvest, life and death. And across remote desert landscapes and arid valleys, donkey caravans plodded along at a measured pace, looking neither to left nor right in another unchanging routine, this time of cultural interconnectedness.

  Xenophon Once Again

  Many of the lessons learned by packers in the past have vanished, but the use of pack animal
s in military campaigns has resumed in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan during the early twenty-first century and helped revive basic skills. U.S. Special Forces units fought alongside Afghan Northern Alliance soldiers using donkeys in 2001. Donkeys and mules have become commonplace in campaigns against Taliban foes since then, for they can operate effectively at high altitudes, where helicopters have difficulty. “Tough, compact, sturdy, and well-formed”—these words describe the qualities sought by U.S. Special Forces for the donkeys and mules they use in Afghanistan to carry loads along narrow trails and across rugged terrain. The military’s Use of Pack Animals manual can be consulted online, and reinforces what we know about the practices of ancient pack animal handlers. The manual “captures some of the expertise and techniques that have been lost in the United States Army over the past 50 years.”16

  The authors stress that the effectiveness and mobility of pack animals depend on their selection and training. Friendly, gentle personalities and comfort with humans are also essential. Handlers must never lose their tempers with their donkeys or use brute force. Confidence and trust between animal and handler leads to task completion. States the manual, “Donkeys have a strong sense of survival. If they deem something as dangerous, they will not do it. It is not stubbornness—it is Mother Nature, and they are smart enough to know when they cannot handle something.” Donkeys will “generally freeze if frightened, or run a little way then stop to look at what startled them.” The manual calls a donkey “a strong, calm, intelligent worker.”

  Mules are remarkable for their intelligence, agility, and stamina. They carry 55 percent of their weight on their front legs, which makes them surefooted and well balanced in rough country. Although people sometimes refer to individual people as being “as stubborn as a mule,” in fact these beasts merely have a strong sense of self-preservation. Nothing a packer may do will change a mule’s mind if it senses danger. Fortunately, mules are easy to control, as they will follow a mare. The manual recommends a bell for the lead mare. All a packer has to do is to control the bell mare. The rest of the file will follow. At night, mules can wander freely if the bell mare is picketed. Breaking in young mules requires kindness and patience. The manual has strong echoes of Xenophon’s wise words from over two thousand years ago.

  “Common sense, preparation, and good planning” are the mantras for pack trains operating under war conditions, among enemies who also use donkeys and mules. This raises concerns about safety. When on the move, pack detachments form columns, which present a long, linear target for the enemy. The manual urges the use of scouts and outriders for flank security, just like those used by the Romans to protect marching legions. In hostile territory, a pack detachment has to avoid skylines, stay within the tree line at higher altitudes, contour the terrain, camouflage loads, and avoid open areas as much as possible. If attacked or ambushed, “quickly escape in any feasible direction.” In a modern twist unknown in the past, “dispersal and continuous movements are the keys to survival when attacked from the air.”

  The manual covers every eventuality, from training, to riding and saddles, to loading the animals with a maximum weight of 72 to 77 kilograms (160 to 170 pounds), to watering and feeding the beasts. There are esoterica, too. A handler can lead two animals to drink, but should not withdraw them from the water when they have raised their heads for the first time. “Animal transport systems can greatly increase mission success when hostile elements and conditions require the movement of combat troops and equipment by foot.” Such movements reduce fatigue. According to the manual, a mule or horse can travel thirty-two to forty-eight kilometers (twenty to thirty miles) a day.

  The Beasts That Toppled Emperors

  CHAPTER 10

  Taming Equus

  The Eurasian steppe, early autumn, seventeen thousand years ago. Fur-clad young men lie motionless in the stunted grass near the watering hole, their eyes cast watchfully, narrowed against the constant, dusty wind. A small wild horse herd grazes close upwind, the beasts’ backs to the gusts, mares and their foals, the stallion feeding protectively close by. He tosses his head and mane, flicks his tail. Reassured, he resumes his graze. None of the hunters move, oblivious to the mosquitoes swarming overhead. They know the herd well, have counted the foals, are looking for strays. With stoic patience, they wait and wait. As the shadows lengthen, the herd moves away along a well-used, dung-lined trail. The hunters return empty-handed to camp. Hunting in this arid terrain requires infinite patience and relentless opportunism, the patience of the proverbial Job.

  The steppe was inhospitable country, an endless landscape of open plains and occasional shallow valleys where scrub brush hugged the ground and cold winds from arctic ice sheets raised great clouds of fine glacial dust high above the earth. Summers were short, mosquito-ridden, and sometimes very hot. For nine months of the year, cutting northerly winds lowered temperatures far below zero for weeks on end. Mere handfuls of people hunted in this desolate world, ranging cautiously over the steppe in summer, hunkering down in shallow river valleys during the subzero months, their dome-shaped sod and mammoth bone dwellings dug partially into the ground. They preyed on cold-loving animals such as the mammoth and bison, on saiga antelope, and on a fleet, often dangerous quarry: the wild horse (Equus ferus), ancestor of the domesticated equine of today.

  Tarpans, Przewalski’s, and Larger Beasts

  Wild horses were fast and aggressive, dangerous when cornered. The hunters would have watched stallions fight one another in vicious competitions for mares.1 They also knew that mothers would turn against predators and protect their foals with flailing hooves. But this potentially ferocious animal provided nutritious meat and thongs and hides, and was so profoundly valued that Cro-Magnon artists painted it alongside the aurochs on the walls of Lascaux Cave, Pech Merle, and elsewhere.

  Both large beasts with upright manes, (up to 142 centimeters, or 56 inches, at the shoulder) and smaller horses coexisted in Europe and Eurasia during the last cold snap of the Ice Age.2 The smaller horses, collectively known as tarpans, were up to fifty-seven centimeters (twenty-two inches) at the shoulder, survived after the ice retreated and temperatures rose. They flourished in large numbers across a broad swathe of the north, from southwest Europe deep into North and Central Asia. Unfortunately, they are now extinct. Hunters killed the last tarpans in the Ukraine in 1851. The only surviving zoo-based individual died in 1919. Tarpans had dun coats, black limbs, and short tails, very similar in appearance to the famous Przewalski’s horse of Siberia, which is grayer. Judging from what we know about modern wild horse behavior, tarpans probably lived in small herds: harem groups of five or six mares, their stallion, and their foals. Male offspring reaching sexual maturity left the herd and lived alone or formed small bachelor groups. As they gained strength, the young stallions would have tried to steal young mares and form their own harems. Each herd had its own limited home range, which it traveled through along well-defined trails. They would have returned to reliable water sources virtually every day. The dominant mare invariably led the herd, including the stallion, which followed in single file. When frightened by a predator (or humans), they would take flight with the foals in the middle, the stallion staying on the side of greatest danger.

  The tarpan, with its flailing hooves, was more dangerous prey than medium-size ungulates such as reindeer. Ancient hunters may have focused on harem groups, whose movements were easier to predict and, because of their young, slower than those of bachelors. They would ambush well-used trails or lie in wait for the beasts at watering holes, especially in early fall, when herds congregated in the same sheltered locales. Sometimes, as was the case at the famous horse kill site at Solutré, in France, the hunters would drive the herd into a natural cul-de-sac, kill the stallion, and then kill the mares.3 Solutré was a strategic kill site for thousands of years. More than eighty thousand horses perished there before 16,000 BCE. Large-scale hunts produced enormous quantities of meat, much of which must have been dried for lat
er use. In many cases, the hides and tendons may have been more important than the flesh, there being other plentiful sources of meat on the hoof.

  As the climate warmed up after fifteen thousand years ago, forage became more plentiful and water more abundant. Horse hunting may have intensified, as other Ice Age game either moved far northward or became extinct. Tarpan abounded in the transitional zone of southern Eurasia, where forests gave way to open country, the so-called Pontic-Caspian Steppe. Wild horses were, above all, steppe animals, accustomed to long, frigid winters. They could survive subzero cold by virtue of their tough hooves, which enabled them to scrape snow away to obtain feed or to break through ice for water. Cattle and sheep have difficulty pushing their noses through snow and ice, and are soon incapacitated, making it necessary to maintain them with fodder. Thus, horses were an important meat source, especially for hunters who needed to consume copious amounts of fat. Horseflesh is high in polyunsaturated fats, amino acids, minerals, and vitamins, which may be why people attributed unusual medicinal and nutritional properties to it and to horse’s milk.

  Prelude to Domestication

  Warmer conditions brought newcomers and profound changes to Eurasian life.4 Around 5600 BCE, cereal farmers and cattle herders spread eastward from the fertile Lower Danube Valley. They brought with them both cattle and small stock, and also copper metallurgy. Soon local hunting groups adopted the new economies, but both agriculture and herding were risky propositions in these borderlands. Intensive hunting, especially of horses, served as a form of risk management.

  Despite the challenges of a hostile environment, the newcomers prospered over the next seven centuries. More elaborate farming societies thrived over a wide area from the Carpathian Mountains in eastern Europe to the Dnieper River in the Ukraine. Their wealth came from trade in copper and gold, which passed from hand to hand over long distances. By 4500 BCE, farming populations had risen sharply in the river valleys north of the Black Sea. The following centuries were the moment of truth as far as the horse was concerned. Horse hunting intensified still further. Wild herds must have become scarcer. The stage was set for a new partnership with the most abundant of wild prey.