Ancient World Review

Fox Hunting & The Culture War In England

Fox hunting in England has a deep history. According to Wikipedia, "many Greek- and Roman- influenced countries have long traditions of hunting with hounds. Hunting with Agassaei hounds was popular in Celtic Britain, even before the Romans arrived, introducing the Castorian and Fulpine hound breeds which they used to hunt. Norman hunting traditions were brought to Britain when William the Conqueror arrived, along with the Gascon and Talbot hounds."

Next video shows the different stages of an English fox hunt. The robotic voice is horrible, but the scenes are beautiful.

"...it is believed that the custom for a fox to be tracked, chased and often killed by trained hunting hounds (generally those with the keenest sense of smell known as ‘scent hounds’) and followed by the Master of the Foxhounds and his team on foot and horseback, originated from a Norfolk farmer’s attempt to catch a fox using farm dogs in 1534." (Historic UK)

"Hunting of wild mammals in the traditional style is banned by the Hunting Act 2004." (Wikipedia) Oddly, the Hunting Act permits the use of dogs to flush out a fox to be shot or killed by a bird of prey. I don't really understand why blowing a fox away with a shotgun or dispatching it with a falcon or hawk is considered to be less brutal than using dogs, but never mind that. The act includes other oddities as well:

"The Act makes it an offence to hunt a mouse with a dog but not a rat, you can legally hunt a rabbit but not a hare. You can flush a fox to guns with two dogs legally but if you use three it's an offence. You can flush a fox to a bird of prey with as many dogs as you like." (Wikipedia)

I'm not sure where these exemptions stand as of 2019. Modern hunts frequently follow previously laid-out scent trails in order to comply with the law (showing that the hunts are about more than just hunting). In drag tracking, an artificial scent is laid down before the hunt begins, but the dogs sometimes come across the scent of an actual fox with inevitable results. This blurs the line between legal and illegal hunts.

I was hardly aware of fox-hunting until recently, but the sight of a pack of trained hunting dogs bounding across the English countryside while the hunters follow on horseback, jumping hedges and stone fences and pausing for refreshments in old rural villages, is incredibly stirring. Maybe it's because I'm half-English and half-Scottish. Who knows? This is an English thing -- a connection to the real England which still survives in the countryside, worlds apart from the decaying multicultural cities of the modern UK. 

Traditional fox hunts followed a ritualized pattern:

"A day’s hunting begins with a meet, at which the followers join the hounds, acknowledge the master, and are frequently offered hospitality by one of their number who acts as host for the occasion. On the command of the master, hounds move off to draw (search) the covert, which may be a woodland, a patch of gorse, or a field in which it is suspected that a fox may be hiding. When the fox is found—the fact being signaled by the cry of hounds, notes of the horn, and the shout “Tally-ho”—the hunt begins and ordinarily proceeds to the stage at which the fox is viewed, a moment signaled by a high-pitched “Holloa.” Traditionally, if a kill follows, the brush (tail), mask (head), and pads (feet) of the fox may be given as trophies by the master to any followers whom he or she considers to deserve the honour. The body of the fox is then thrown to the hounds." (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Fox-hunting, predictably, is a controversial practice in the train-wreck of modern Britain. Here's some video from an idiotic 2017 "save the foxes" protest in London, a city which John Cleese pointed out some time ago is no longer English. Various groups of "hunt saboteurs" have taken it on themselves to monitor and disrupt the hunts, making themselves just as obnoxious as the SJWs and radical animal-rights types in the United States.

There is a sporadic, low-intensity conflict taking place in the English countryside. The fight here isn't really over the welfare of foxes or the culling of pest animals. The hunts are about a lot more than hunting; that's obvious. The protests against fox-hunting are part of the war against traditional culture which has been taking place all over the western world and it warms my heart to see these handwringing hunt saboteurs get a taste of the riding crop when they trespass and interfere with the horses.

This magnificent woman wasn't charged, which is only right and proper.

Fox-hunting has been called a "barbaric blood-sport," but the same thing could be said about any form of hunting. Still, these hunts in their traditional form are barbaric:

"The iconic ritual of smearing ceremonial blood on the cheeks of a new member of a clan or society which is depicted in many books and films also has its roots in the sport, whose act of ‘Blooding’ was introduced by King James I in the sixteenth century and involved the Huntsmaster rubbing the blood of the prey onto the cheeks of newly initiated member of the hunt." (Historic UK)

This undercurrent of aristocratic barbarism in fox-hunting is one of the things I like about it. The real England has a deep barbaric streak. It can be seen not only in the violent history of the country, but in everything from the dark humor of great English writers like Roald Dahl and Jonathan Swift to modern comedians like Jimmy Carr and Monty Python, not to mention the popularity of shows like Game of Thrones. If this spirit dies, it will mean that England no longer exists. Luckily, though, fox-hunting shows no sign of disappearing:

"... despite the ban, hunts have seen an increase in membership and the Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA) currently represents 176 active foxhound packs in England and Wales and 10 in Scotland." (Historic UK)

DNA Gives Insight Into Prehistoric Bonds Between Dogs And Humans

Video from 2015.

"Domestic dogs come in all shapes and sizes, but the animals we now regard as man's best friend may have originated from just two populations of wolves, research suggests. The findings, along with studies on other domesticated animals, are providing new insights into how our ancestors' lives and movements transformed these creatures forever." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Did The Neanderthals Drive Mammoths Over Cliffs?

Did the Neanderthals actually hunt mammoths by driving them off cliffs? It would be an effective technique and I wouldn't be surprised if it actually happened. Evidence has been uncovered, for instance, that Native Americans killed buffalo this way, so the Neanderthals may have done the same thing. The picture is still pretty murky, though, and in at least one case researchers have been able to show that it probably didn't happen.

"Popular lore has it that skilled Neanderthal hunters once herded mammoths off cliffs to a rocky doom. There is one site in Jersey, a British island off of France's northern coast, where mammoth bones marked with prehistoric stone knife marks were found in broken heaps. Because Neanderthals frequented the area, researchers thought this finding meant that the Neanderthals were systematically driving the animals over the edge of cliffs for an easy kill. And this idea has spread widely, through documentaries and media stories ... Now, new evidence emerges that this was probably not the case." Source: The Smithsonian (2014).

According to The Guardian, "[t]he piles of bones are a major feature at La Cotte de St Brelade on Jersey, one of the most spectacular Neanderthal sites in Europe. But the claim that they mark the remains of mass slaughter has been all but ruled out by a fresh investigation.

"Researchers have found that the plateau that ends at the cliff edge was so rocky and uneven that mammoths and other weighty beasts would never have ventured up there. Even if the creatures had clambered so high, the Neanderthals would have had to chase them down a steep dip and back up the other side long before the animals reached the cliff edge and plunged to their doom."

These findings only relate to the Jersey site, however. I'm not sure if there are other sites with evidence for this kind of Neanderthal hunting activity.

Ritually Sacrificed Guinea Pigs Discovered In Peru

"One hundred ritually sacrificed guinea pigs dressed up in jewellery have been discovered at an Inca archaeological site in Peru. The rodents were found to have been adorned with earrings and necklaces, and some of them wrapped up in tiny rugs—the first time such a find has been made." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Unrelated: Guinea pig meat sees gastronomic boom in Peru.

Mummified Mice Found In "Beautiful Chamber" Inside Egyptian Tomb

"Mummified mice are among the artefacts discovered in a decorated tomb recently unearthed near the Egyptian town of Sohag." Source: BBC.

"The mice and other animals surrounded two mummified human bodies and the burial chamber contains detailed paintings of funeral processions and people working in the fields.

"Experts say the tomb is more than 2,000 years old and is thought to be the resting place of a senior official called Tutu [1] and his wife. It was discovered in October when smugglers were caught illegally digging for artefacts."

[1] I think this is Tutu, "one of pharaoh's officials during the Amarna letters period 1350–1335 BC," according to Wikipedia.

Two Prehistoric Bison Kill Sites In The Great Plains

Bison kill site near Elk City, Oklahoma. Video from 2011.

"Between 200 B.C. and A.D. 500 American Indian hunters killed hundreds of bison in a canyon near present Elk City, Oklahoma. During the 1990s the site became a focus of a major research project by the Oklahoma Archeological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. The people who made the kills were part of the Late Archaic (circa 2500 B.C. to A.D.1) groups that survived through hunting and gathering and did not practice horticulture. The site is in a large canyon, one of the deepest of many in the area. The canyon has a number of side branches, some of which are flushed nearly clean of fill. Others are still largely filled with sediments and are visually undetectable on the surface. These deposit remnants contain bone beds and other evidence of bison kills and butchering." Source: Oklahoma Historical Society.

Hudson-Meng bison kill site in Nebraska.(2017)

"Bill Hudson and Albert Meng were local [Nebraska] ranchers who are credited with discovering the bonebed in 1954 while digging for a pond. Originally excavated by Dr. Larry Agenbroad in the 1970s, the dig was over 400 square meters and was considered the largest Alberta Culture [1] bison kill site ever discovered. The bison found are not the same species as the bison that currently live in the United States (Bison bison), but are an animal transitional in evolution between the extinct Bison antiquus and the modern species." (Wikipedia)

[1] I might be wrong about this, but I think "Alberta Culture" refers to an Archaic Period paleo-indian culture which was located in the general area of Alberta, Canada and the northern Great Plains in the US.

Note: "For approximately 6,000 years, between about 8,000 and 2,000 years ago, the Archaic period in the Great Plains was a time of human adjustment to changing ecological conditions. Paleo-Indian bison hunting decreased markedly after about 9,000 years ago, due to a steady deterioration of ecological conditions. Subsequently there were several late Paleo- Indian groups ... which were beginning to shift toward the use of small animal and plant resources. By about 8,000 years ago, both bison and human populations in the Great Plains had decreased significantly. Some groups may have moved into the foothills and mountains to the west and others into the prairies on the east. The Plains was not abandoned during the Archaic period, but ecological conditions made it a much less desirable place." (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains)

Centuries Old Pemmican Making Camp Discovered In Montana

"In a landscape known for its history of prodigious bison hunting, researchers have uncovered traces of a unique aspect of native hunting tradition — a camp dedicated to making the dried meat-and-fat product known as pemmican." Source: Western Digs (2017)

"The camp is just part of a large bison-hunting site in north-central Montana called Kutoyis, which includes more than 3,500 stone features dating from to the 14th to 17th centuries, a heyday for bison hunting among the ancestors of the modern Blackfoot peoples."

Note: "Pemmican was widely adopted as a high-energy food by Europeans involved in the fur trade and later by Arctic and Antarctic explorers, such as Ernest Shackleton, Richard E. Byrd, Fridtjof Nansen, Robert Falcon Scott, George W. DeLong and Roald Amundsen." (Wikipedia)

Related: How to Make Pemmican: A Survival Superfood That Can Last 50 Years.

Comment:  Pemmican was invented by the Metis tribe in Canada, according to various sources I've seen (I'm not sure how that was determined). The Metis trace their descent to the First Nations peoples, so it's possible that the paleo-indians learned how to make pemmican when they first encountered the bison in the New World. This is all pure speculation, though.

Domestication & The Neolithic Revolution

"The dog was the first domesticated vertebrate, and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication of other animals. The archaeological and genetic data suggest that long-term bidirectional gene flow between wild and domestic stocks – including donkeys, horses, New and Old World camelids, goats, sheeps, and pigs – was common." Source: Wikipedia.

"...The domestication of plants began at least 12,000 years ago with cereals in the Middle East, and the bottle gourd in Asia. Agriculture developed in at least 11 different centres around the world, domesticating different crops and animals."

Animal and plant domestication -- two of the key features of the Neolithic revolution -- made the development of settled communities possible:

"Before the Neolithic revolution, it's likely you would have lived with your extended family as a nomad, never staying anywhere for more than a few months, always living in temporary shelters, always searching for food and never owning anything you couldn’t easily pack in a pocket or a sack. The change to the Neolithic way of life was huge and led to many of the pleasures (lots of food, friends and a comfortable home) that we still enjoy today." Source: The Khan Academy.

Some people -- the anarcho-primitivists, in particular --  believe that the Neolithic Revolution, aka the Agricultural Revolution, was a disaster because it led to the rise of civilization, warfare, property ownership, social hierarchy, overpopulation and the organized domination or domestication of the masses and the natural world:

"Anarcho-primitivists, such as John Zerzan, define domestication as 'the will to dominate animals and plants', claiming that domestication is 'civilization's defining basis.'" (Wikipedia)

I don't want to get off on a long tangent about the anarcho-primitivists since I've already written about them elsewhere, but even if you think they're right it should be obvious that it doesn't matter. Plant and animal domestication, and the Neolithic Revolution that followed, had a huge impact on human history and there's no turning back now.

The Neolithic Revolution was such a major change that it even effected our DNA:

"The agricultural revolution was one of the most profound events in human history, leading to the rise of modern civilization. Now, in the first study of its kind, an international team of scientists has found that after agriculture arrived in Europe 8,500 years ago, people’s DNA underwent widespread changes, altering their height, digestion, immune system and skin color." Source: New York Times (2015).

Animal domestication started thousands of years ago, perhaps when wild wolves began to hang around encampments of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, eating the leftovers from their kills. That scenario is mostly speculative, but it makes sense. One way or another, the association between humans and wolves was beneficial to both species:

"Wolves, and their dog descendants, likely derived significant benefits from living in human camps – more safety, more reliable food, lesser caloric needs, and more chance to breed. They would have benefited from humans' upright gait that gives them larger range over which to see potential predators and prey, as well as better color vision that, at least by day, gives humans better visual discrimination. Camp dogs would also have benefited from human tool use, as in bringing down larger prey and controlling fire for a range of purposes." (Wikipedia)

^"Humans would also have derived enormous benefit from the dogs associated with their camps. For instance, dogs would have improved sanitation by cleaning up food scraps. Dogs may have provided warmth, as referred to in the Australian Aboriginal expression 'three dog night' (an exceptionally cold night), and they would have alerted the camp to the presence of predators or strangers, using their acute hearing to provide an early warning."

The domestication of the wolf was one of the critical factors in the long process that led to the birth of civilization and everything, good and bad, that has happened since. The result, on balance, has been hugely beneficial. This can be seen in the population growth that occurred following the Neolithic Revolution. 

Personally, I'm glad the revolution happened. I'm no fan of the decaying modern civilizations we live in now, but given a choice between civilization and returning to the Stone Age, I'll take civilization. It's easy to romanticize prehistoric hunter-gatherers and the pristine wilderness they lived in, but I've reached the age where I'd rather buy my food in a grocery store than have to hunt a woolly mammoth with a spear to keep from starving. When the snow starts falling and a polar vortex moves in, I'll take electricity, central heating and a warm bed over a campfire in a cave anytime.

Humans Domesticated Foxes In The Bronze Age

Video from 2014. Lecture on fox domestication starts at 20:39.

"In the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, between the third and second millennium BC, a widespread funeral practice consisted in burying humans with animals. Scientists have discovered that both foxes and dogs were domesticated, as their diet was similar to that of their owners. " Source: Science Daily.

European Hunter-Gatherers Owned Pigs As Early As 4600 BC

"European hunter-gatherers acquired domesticated pigs from nearby farmers as early as 4600 BC ... The international team of scientists showed there was interaction between the hunter-gatherer and farming communities and a 'sharing' of animals and knowledge. The interaction between the two groups eventually led to the hunter-gatherers incorporating farming and breeding of livestock into their culture, say the scientists." Source: Science Daily.

Notes: "Farmers may have domesticated pigs 9000 years ago," according to Science (2015). Researchers speculate that the farmers "corralled a few wild boars and—by separating them from their fellows and breeding them for favorable traits like tameness, size, and meatiness—they developed the domesticated oinkers that we see all over the world today."

Something like that must've happened, but the history is complicated. "For one, archaeological evidence now indicates that pigs were domesticated at least twice, once in China’s Mekong valley and once in Anatolia, the region in modern-day Turkey between the Black, Mediterranean, and Aegean seas. For another, a 2007 study of genetic material from 323 modern and 221 ancient pigs from western Eurasia suggests that pigs first came to Europe from the Near East, but that Europeans subsequently domesticated local wild boar, which seemed to replace those original pigs."

Comment: Domesticating wild pigs must've been hazardous. Some of these beasts are dangerous. And wild boars and feral hogs are nothing compared to the piglike Archaeotherium, a real monster that wreaked havoc in North America "during the Eocene and Oligocene epochs (38—24.8 mya)," according to Wikipedia.

Related: The Origin of the Domestic Pig. Genetics. org (2000).