DeLong & Rationing

Chris Doss itschris13 at hotmail.com
Mon Jun 19 14:08:05 PDT 2000


Being efficient hunters
> > they caused the extinction of all large mamals suitable for
>domestication.
>
>I still never understand this assertion. There sure were a lot of turkeys
>and buffalo left when the Europeans got here. What made them by nature
>unsuitable for domestication? They're domesticated now.

Turkeys are hardly large mammals.

This has always bothered me too. Where are the North American camels, native horses, mammoth, mastodons, giant ground sloths, etc.? Don't know whether you could have realistically domesticated a ground sloth (actually weren't the South American? I forget my Pleistocene paleontology) but you can sure as hell domesticate a camel or horse and, assuming mammoth and mastodon were behaviorally similar to elephants, you can domesticate them as wel..


>
>It would neaten things up if culture were entirely determined by
>environment, broadly defined. But it just isn't so. Every culture makes
>choices.
>
>Michael
>
>
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
>

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