Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict

On December 8, 1237, the city of Riazan, some 125 miles southeast of Moscow, came under siege by 120,000 Mongol warriors. Mongol engineers and forced laborers surrounded the fortified city with a wooden palisade to prevent anyone from escaping and to provide cover for archers and artillery. The residents of the city watched in terror as the invaders completed the construction of the fence in nine days. On the tenth day, the bombardment began. On December 21, after five days of catapulting rocks and raining arrows on the populace, the Mongols stormed the city with scaling ladders, battering rams, and firebrands. The invaders set fire to the city and began an indiscriminate slaughter. Riazan’s residents were disemboweled, impaled, drowned, set afire, and flayed alive; young women and nuns were systematically raped before they were killed. A handful of survivors were permitted to escape for the purpose of spreading the word of the Mongol horror.¹

Why did such a terrible incident in Eurasia—and countless others like it in various ways—occur? Such violent and destructive practices cannot simply be written off as being part of human nature. For most of our time on the earth, the members of the human species lived relatively peaceably and survived by sharing resources obtained by foraging and gathering. Early humans, considered by some to be the “earliest affluent society,”² generally had abundant resources and were able to meet their subsistence needs while leaving time for leisure, play, and social activities. The reliance on foraging and the importance of sharing for the welfare of the group resulted in “minimal inequality in power and privilege.”³

This early form of communal, egalitarian human society was undermined by the onset of organized hunting of other animals, which began no earlier than ninety thousand years ago—and probably much later.⁴ The practice of stalking and killing animals increased the propensity for violence among human hunters, and the status of men in society began to be associated largely with their skill and success at hunting other animals. At the same time, the status of women declined; they came to perform more of the daily tasks and child care, while men cultivated their skill at stalking animals.⁵

The course of world history again was altered dramatically roughly ten thousand years ago, when humans living in the Middle Eastern region of Eurasia began to practice rudimentary plant cultivation, an early form of agriculture referred to as horticulture, in which humans used digging sticks to hoe small plots of land. In comparison with the lifestyles of foragers, early agriculturalists faced hard physical labor and increased risks to their welfare. While food production still required the efforts of most members of society, early horticulture generated a small food surplus, allowing a few individuals to live off the labor of the majority. The first such individuals were most likely priests, go-betweens who communicated with the gods who provided the conditions necessary for a good harvest. The priests collected much of the agricultural surplus as offerings to the deities and stored it in temple centers under their control. The priests’ power and control grew as they became early directors and administrators of agricultural production. This form of economic production began to create unequal and increasingly exploitative human relations.

Early agriculture also increased the divide between humans and other animals. In some parts of the world, humans turned from hunting to capturing and controlling the reproduction of several species of other animals in order to exploit them as food and other resources. While foraging had resulted in a varied diet, “agriculture restricted food sources to highly specific crops or animal flesh/milk, the constant supply of which was never guaranteed due to the possibility of drought, crop failure, parasitic infection or infectious disease.”⁶ The practice of animal exploitation was most pronounced in Eurasia, with its populations of several highly social mammals, such as cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and horses. The term widely used to refer to this practice, “domestication,” has come to reflect what is largely regarded as the “providential inevitability,” the much-touted human-animal “partnership.”⁷

Today, based on the growing body of work by ethologists and biologists about the profound mindedness and emotional life of other animals,⁸ we can assume that, for the most part, the other animals’ experience of capture, enslavement, use, and slaying was one of suffering and violence. While much of their treatment unquestionably was in the form of direct physical violence, the animals’ systemic enslavement and oppression also resulted in their inability to meet their basic needs, the loss of self-determination, and the loss of the opportunity to live in a natural way—an indirect form of violence referred to as “structural violence.”⁹ Archaeological findings of the remains of early enslaved other animals provide evidence of their suffering. Generally, examination of the remains of animals held captive thousands of years ago reveals bone pathologies resulting from physical trauma, poor diet, chronic arthritis, gum disease, and high levels of stress.¹⁰ For instance, excavations from 8500 BCE revealed bone deformities in enslaved goats and cows that provided “some indication of stress, presumably due to the conditions in which these early domestic animals were kept.”¹¹ Remains of sheep and goats from the early Bronze Age show a marked decrease in bone thickness, reflecting calcium deficiencies “resulting from the combined effects of poor nutrition and intensive milking.”¹²

While most definitions of “domestication” do not reflect the experiences of these highly sentient beings, the following definition by Pierre Ducos does reflect the objectification of other animals inherent in the term.

Domestication can be said to exist when living animals are integrated as objects into the socio-economic organization of the human group, in the sense that, while living, those animals are objects for ownership, inheritance, exchange, trade, etc., as are other objects … with which human groups have something to do.¹³

This definition, put forth in 1975, attempted to acknowledge the oppression inherent in this form of animal exploitation. However, contemporary representations of the term overwhelmingly reflect hegemonic notions of “domestication” as a benign partnership. In reality, the “domestication” of highly social animals—which developed out of hunting them—was no partnership at all but, rather, a significant extension of systemic violence and exploitation. The emergence and continued practice of capturing, controlling, and genetically manipulating other animals for human use violates the sanctity of life of the sentient beings involved, and their minds and bodies are desecrated to facilitate their exploitation: it can be said that they have been domesecrated. Domesecration is the systemic practice of violence in which social animals are enslaved and biologically manipulated, resulting in their objectification, subordination, and oppression. Through domesecration, many species of animals that lived on the earth for millions of years, including several species of large, sociable Eurasian mammals, came to be regarded as mere objects, their very existence recognized only in relation to their exploitation as “food animals” or similar socially constructed positions reflecting various forms of exploitation.

One of the harms experienced by countless other animals as a result of domesecration was their increased vulnerability to infectious disease. The growing practice of confining ever-larger numbers of domesecrated animals in crowded conditions facilitated the mutation and spread of infectious, multiple-host-species pathogens; these diseases then infected the animals’ captors, whose own permanent settlements and increasing population density furthered the transmission of the infections. Indeed, “most and probably all of the distinctive infectious diseases of civilization transferred to human populations from animal herds.”¹⁴ Diseases that humans contracted from the confinement and exploitation of large groups of other animals included smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, influenza, and malaria. This result of domesecration would have catastrophic consequences for countless humans and other animals as time progressed.

Eventually, early horticultural societies in Eurasia began to exploit the labor of cows and horses for agricultural production, a practice that led to the rise of what is frequently referred to as “true agrarian” societies. The difference between horticulture and agrarian societies was that while the former relied upon human labor for plant cultivation, the latter exploited animals by harnessing them to plows. The use of animals to pull plows facilitated the cultivation of larger areas and increased the number of people available to labor on other projects. This form of exploitation of other animals allowed for the emergence of a professional warrior or military class, which served to protect surplus food and other valuables from raids by outsiders—and to stifle dissent among soil cultivators, laborers, and artisans who were being exploited by the elites.

In sum, for most of human existence we lived in relatively peaceful egalitarian societies. It was only with the emergence of domesecration and agricultural society—the much acclaimed “Neolithic revolution” presented largely as a monumental step forward in human development—that social elites and large-scale violence and warfare came into existence. This transformation created a vastly different world for humans and other animals, a momentous departure from the “original affluent society.”

The violence and suffering associated with domesecration and the exploitation of the human masses by agrarian elites was soon supplemented by another powerful cause of misery. Roughly eight thousand years ago, people migrated to the Eurasian steppes, the semiarid plains that ranged from Eastern Europe to northern China, and began to practice nomadic pastoralism. Unlike agriculturalists, nomadic pastoralists relied almost entirely on domesecrated animals for food and materials, and they routinely migrated in search of fresh pastures and sources of water. These early nomadic pastoralist societies comprised numerous associated patriarchal clans in which a man’s power and status were linked to the number of domesecrated animals under his control.

Individuals in such societies can accumulate wealth in the form of herds. Further, they must defend their property. It’s not easy to swoop down and make off with a horticulturalist’s sweet potatoes, but cattle and horses must be guarded. This is usually the job of armed men (women and children are more likely to be given herding responsibilities for smaller animals, such as poultry, sheep and goats). Given that tending and guarding the herds are male responsibilities, men tend to dominate these societies. In fact, in some herding societies wealthy men acquire harems of women just as they do horses, cattle or camels. Men without herds are left to serve as hired hands, often with little prospect for advancement. In some societies this servant-hood develops into hereditary slavery.¹⁵

Pastoralist elites frequently increased the number of domesecrated animals under their control by raiding the rivals with whom they competed for optimal pasture and water resources. To facilitate raiding and to maintain possession of the other animals under their control, nomadic pastoralists became highly militaristic and eventually came to use horses as instruments of war. The enslavement of large groups of domesecrated animals, such as cows, goats, horses, and sheep, depleted the grasslands, which became desertified after intensive grazing. The migrations of the nomadic pastoralists from the Eurasian steppes—caused by drought, resource depletion, or warfare with other pastoralists—brought them into competition with agriculturalists for land. “The hostile migration of the mounted nomads accompanied by huge flocks of sheep and herds of horses into settled land signaled disaster for the farmers and their crops.”¹⁶

While the enslavement of large groups of domesecrated animals necessitated migration and invasion, there was another motivation for conquest: settled, plant-based societies had manufactured and luxury goods that nomadic groups could not produce. “The greed for luxury or manufactured goods beyond the reach of their simple economy has repeatedly driven the pastoral peoples to ride out of the steppes and plunder the fields and cities of their sedentary and civilized neighbours.”¹⁷ Over the course of military campaigns, “many fields of crops, harvests, and farms were damaged or burned.”¹⁸ Women, especially those taken from conquered societies, were treated as possessions and enslaved as concubines and servants by men with high status. While some invasions were genocidal in nature, in other instances invading pastoralists settled in conquered areas and, as the new ruling elites, imposed their own values and culture.

It is likely that when pastoral nomads in substantial numbers successfully invade an area previously settled only by farmers, heavy interference in the population growth of the latter will result. Areas previously under cultivation will be used for pasture, if necessary acquired by force. A reduction in the number of farmers at saturation and an increase in that of the pastoralists will follow. Further disruptions of the farmers’ political and social system will ensue…. Farmers are now the socially inferior group.¹⁹

A tribe of pastoralists, for instance, may conquer the land of a peasant community. They will leave the peasants on the land, and even protect them from other enemies, on the condition that they pay a tribute of farm produce…. These form a sort of landed “aristocracy,” a class living off the tribute of peasants. The system is familiar … it was widespread in antiquity.²⁰

It was the use of oppressed horses as vehicles of transportation that gave the pastoralists the ability to make “hit-and-run” raids, the capacity to travel great distances, and the power to lay siege to entire cities.

Riding meant that warring groups could strike militarily over vast distances with rapid movements that could be followed up by migrations, or by speedy retreat if more convenient. Nomadic groups were further able to settle in resource-rich niches in otherwise indigenously populated habitats. At the local level raids and looting gained new importance as they could be carried out quickly and efficiently, initiating a new age of warring and shifting territoriality….

The horse gave … [the nomadic pastoralist] speed, range and mobility. He could choose the place and time for battle, ambush his prey, and escape to the steppe in short order…. To develop these advantages the nomad kept not one horse but strings of them, affording him fresh mounts on demand. A string of horses was also an inexpensive addition to the nomad’s equipment, for the horses could freely graze on the open steppe. Thus, as long as there were enough horses and sufficient pasture, the nomadic life promised adventure and wealth to the pastoralist and threatened confiscation and domination to settlers.²³

This exploitation of animals, horses in particular, permitted pastoralists in what is now southern Russia to begin violent incursions into Europe, an area occupied largely by tribal farming communities, as early as six thousand years ago. The cultural symbols of these early pastoralist invaders, generally referred to as Kurgans, were the dagger and battleaxe, and they “glorified the lethal power of the sharp blade.”²⁴ Waves of pastoralist invasions are believed by some to have molded the violent and expansion-prone cultures of the West and increased the role of animal exploitation in the developing European economies.²⁵ Childe referred to the collapse of plant-based communities and the increasing adoption of pastoralist economics and culture as the “late Neolithic crisis.” Some scholars maintain that the development in some areas of Eurasia of transhumant pastoralism (the localized, seasonal transference of domesecrated animals from one grazing area to another) was cultivated in part as a strategy for fleeing from invading armies.²⁶ Marija Gimbutas, a leading scholar on the Kurgan invasions, writes:

This transformation was initiated by the pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe whose success lay in their extraordinary mobility and advantage of weaponry. The stratified patrilinear social structure of these small, agnatically-linked herding units was superimposed over the egalitarian substrate of Old European agriculturalists. The shift to large stock breeding was only one symptom of the Kurganization process. The steppe people brought in new male deities of the sky, war and hunt. Solar signs, weapon-carrying gods, and ritual roles of the horse, boar and dog replaced Old European symbols connected with the mother creator and lunar symbolism.²⁷

There is evidence that several largely egalitarian, women-centered communities in ancient Europe and their cultural and religious practices were destroyed by the steppe pastoralists:

In order to consolidate their economic and political power, Indo-Europeans would have to totally destroy the social structure and culture of older societies; religious, economic and political systems were inextricably tied. The overwhelming tendency towards egalitarianism and community needed to be undone…. If this system were not destroyed, the invaders would have had a much more difficult time securing exclusive rights to power and prestige. Consequently, as the leaders and the property system changed so did religion and the relationship between the sexes. Due to continued contact with the Indo-European invaders, the political, economic and spiritual authority of women was decimated by the 15th century BC.²⁸

Pastoralists related to the Kurgans but located in mid-central Asia expanded southward, invading southern Eurasia about 2,500 years ago, while pastoralists on the eastern steppes menaced China. Over the centuries, such pastoralist peoples as the Scythians, the Huns, the Goths, the Turks, the Mongols, and the Manchus ravaged and terrorized Eurasian cities, stole valuables, and displaced, massacred, or dominated the inhabitants. It was not uncommon for pastoralists to obtain wealth by exacting tributes from threatened cities or extorting payments through their control of trade routes. Nomadic pastoralists’ devaluation of nonpastoralists and people who cultivated the soil was evident in the social stratification they established in the regions they conquered and ruled.

Most pastoral nomads who originated in the Eurasian steppes and expanded from them seem to have shared a tendency to caste formation, as observed historically in Greek, Roman and Indian societies. This may have been a trend already present among the steppe pastoral nomads, or it may simply be a likely development whenever there is confrontation between pastoral-nomadic invaders and previous agricultural settlers. Under such conditions, systems of social stratification are the probable outcome. In extreme cases the fate of previous settlers has been annihilation or enslavement; but less extreme forms of serfdom or other modes of political control are more common. The generation of genetically closed segments of society ordered hierarchically, as bona fide castes are, is one form of societal evolution of which the strict Indian model represents an example.²⁹

In agrarian society, control of the land was an important goal of elites and, similar to nomadic pastoralists, control and ownership of large numbers of domesecrated animals led to wealth and power. However, even the most powerful agrarian societies were vulnerable to nomadic pastoralist invasions—and the Roman Empire was no exception.

Like elite males in nomadic pastoralist society, the wealth and power of elite landowners in Roman agrarian society were linked to their control over large numbers of domesecrated animals and the land and water needed to sustain them. However, elite agrarian landowners raised and sold large groups of other animals for profit, a practice referred to in this book generally as “ranching.” In Rome, “ranching paid off better than any other kind of agriculture,” but to produce great profits it “had to be conducted on a large scale and on large estates.”³⁰ Ranching was a favored investment for members of the Roman Senate because they could function as absentee landowners, delegating the management of their estates while living in Rome. For Roman ranchers, like their pastoralist counterparts, control of land and water was extremely important—and it was frequently acquired at the expense of others. For instance, in the early days of the Republic, many yeoman-soldiers required to participate in long military campaigns were unable to maintain their farms and were forced to sell and join the ranks of the impoverished. Much of their land was converted to pasture.

“As ruined farmers were selling out, the upper classes were in the market for properties on which to establish large estates manned by the slaves that Rome’s conquest had also created in record numbers in order to produce cash crops—principally cattle, wine and olives—for new urban markets like Rome itself.”³¹ “Large tracts of land outside of the city-territories were in the hands of rich men, who kept on them great herds of cattle…. The labour employed for tilling the soil and herding the sheep was probably both slave and free labour (furnished by small tenants) for the fields, almost wholly slave labour for the pastures.”³²

Roman ranchers also used other methods to acquire grazing lands. “They bought up farms cheaply from peasants unable to pay their taxes, or took them over for bad debts, or even by armed force without any legal process.”³³ According to one writer of the period, if a farmer refused to sell his land, the takeover could be accomplished by “sending into his green corn [ancient term for wheat and barley] by night a herd of lean and famished cattle, with wearied necks, who will not come home until they have put the whole crop into their ravenous bellies; no sickle could make a cleaner sweep.”³⁴ The Roman ranchers’ use of these and other illegal and violent methods to acquire land, supported by the state, was devastating for grain cultivators.

The grain growing communities waged a bitter struggle against the cattle entrepreneurs whose herds swept across their land and invaded their common pastures; but they usually had to give in to this speculative economy, backed as it was by money and influence. In Southern Italy, agriculture was thus pushed gradually into the background by an extensive, all-conquering pastoral economy that despoiled the land.³⁵

Wealthy landowners with extensive ranching operations often viciously oppressed enslaved humans, as seen in an ancient account of a Sicilian rancher:

There was a certain Damophilus, a native of Enna, a man of great wealth but arrogant in manner, who, since he had under cultivation a great circuit of land and owned many herds of cattle, emulated not only the luxury affected by Italian landowners in Sicily, but their troops of slaves and their inhumanity and severity towards them. He drove about the countryside with expensive horses, four-wheeled carriages, and a bodyguard of slaves, and prided himself, in addition, on his great train of handsome serving-boys and ill-mannered parasites.

Both in town and at his villas he took pains to provide a veritable exhibition of embossed silver and costly crimson spreads, and had himself served sumptuous and regally lavished dinners, in which he surpassed even the luxury of the Persians in outlay and extravagance, as indeed he outdid them also in arrogance….

Purchasing a large number of slaves, he treated them outrageously, marking with branding irons the bodies of men who in their own countries had been free, but through capture in war had come to know the fate of a slave. Some of these he put in fetters and thrust into slave pens; others he designated to act as his herdsmen, but neglected to provide them with suitable clothing or food.³⁶

Humans occasionally rebelled against the elites who had enslaved them, and domesecrated animals also struggled against their exploitation. The resistance of oxen (mature, castrated cows) to enslavement is seen in the following passage drawn from the works of the Roman writer Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella: “The breaking-in regime is based on severe physical restriction of the animals by tying them to horizontal posts set above a stall ‘in such a way that their ropes give very little play.’ If they are very wild and savage, they must be kept like this for thirty-six hours to expend their fury.”³⁷ To force a cow to pull a plow:

Here again, the animal is broken in by stages, first pulling the plough over tilled ground. Columella points out that this laborious process can be speeded up where you have oxen already trained, and then goes on to describe the system followed by his own farms, where the untrained ox is yoked with a fully trained one; a particularly obstinate animal is put into a triple yoke between a pair of veterans, and is thus forced willy-nilly to obey the orders.³⁸

While the final destination of some cows was the tables of the Roman elite, the fates of many were entwined with the violence perpetrated by the Roman military. Like the nomadic pastoralists, Rome could conquer other peoples because its armies frequently were sustained by eating the domesecrated animals forced to accompany the military expeditions.³⁹ “The armies of the Republic while on campaign were supplied with fresh meat in the form of cattle, which transported itself on the hoof. Ancient armies were generally accompanied by herds of cattle, so much so that the sound of cattle could mislead the enemy into thinking that an army was marching along.”⁴⁰ Sustained occupation of other territories was made possible by the importation of cows or by expropriating captive cows from the vanquished, as the Romans did in Britain.⁴¹

Horses also were exploited as instruments of war by the Roman army. Roman legions were accompanied by mounted archers and a plate-armored “cavalry.” Rome’s reliance on horses to boost its military power increased as the empire was threatened by the nomadic, pastoralist-based Persians, who waged war from atop the back of horses. Besides the cavalries attached to legions, “by the first century A.D., the Roman army also included 80,000 mounted auxiliaries.”⁴² Roman armies also were accompanied by mules, donkeys, and, in desert campaigns, camels, who were exploited as instruments of war and forced into service as “pack animals.” “There are a remarkable number of occasions attested in which all the Roman army’s water needs, and other supplies, were transported overland by pack-animals. In 108 B.C., in order to supply the siege of Thala in Numidia, Caecilius Metellus brought all the army’s provisions and water to the site on pack animals.”⁴³ “The longer a campaign went on the more animals would perish through disease, over-use, or poor treatment, and these were in the main replaced from civilian stocks.”⁴⁴

The exploitation of other animals furthered Roman aggression in other ways as well. The skins of domesecrated animals were used extensively in the body armor of Roman soldiers, and the tents that sheltered soldiers required even more.

Each standard-size tent required about 42 panels, whereas a centurion’s [professional officer’s] tent took up to 168 panels of leather. Two panels would require a calf hide that included the back, neck and belly of the animal. If this is used as a base to calculate the amount of calves required to outfit the western frontier army of approximately 200,000 men, it is estimated that one and a half million calfskin panels cut from the hides of 750,000 calves were required.⁴⁵

During the wars of conquest [the leaders of the Roman Army] increased their wealth. Large numbers of men and cattle fell into their hands. When cities were looted, they had the larger share of the booty. They returned to Italy with their “belts” (or, as we should say, pockets) full of money, and, if they did not dispose of them at once, with gangs of slaves and herds of cattle….

Captured cows were prominent in the parades featuring successful generals returning to Rome from imperialist adventures. “Hundreds of thousands of people lined the city’s streets, while musicians blew continuously on trumpets and horns. The parade opened with the standards of the victorious legions. Next came the spoils of war: baskets filled with coins and jewels, herds of cattle, and especially prisoners and their weapons.”⁴⁸

While Rome’s might was built on the oppression of other animals, this powerful agrarian society itself eventually was overrun by nomadic pastoralists. These pastoralists, including the Goths, largely were forced into their invasion of Roman-held land by the more powerful Huns, who in turn had been forced by drought to migrate to Gothic territory. “The respect these Gothic tribes had for Roman legions was great, but far greater was the terror with which they viewed the wild fantastic horsemen from the distant plains of Central Asia who had suddenly appeared in their midst. It was this heart-piercing fear that forced them to break through the Roman outposts and sweep over the Roman provinces.”⁴⁹ Weakened by war with the mounted Persian soldiers to the east, by decadence and corruption, and by troubles with food production brought on by significant overgrazing and soil deterioration,⁵⁰ Rome could not withstand the pastoralist invasion.

From Central Asia came the forces that overthrew the Roman Empire…. It was the settlement of the Germanic peoples of the Roman Empire that caused the break-up of the old system. The Goths made the first serious inroads into Italy and Southern France, and into portions of Spain and Africa. The Suevi and Vandals occupied the remaining portions of Spain and Africa. The Burgundi moved into central France, and the Angles and the Saxons took over the portion of Britain which had once been a Roman colony.⁵¹

Invasions by Goths, Alans, Vandals, and other nomadic pastoralist societies facilitated the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, and the replacement of cultivated fields with pasture led to deprivation and displacement. It has been estimated that “in the first five centuries after the fall of Rome the population in the former western Roman Empire fell to half its original numbers,”⁵² and the privileged pastoralists levied tributes on those who remained.

The suffering experienced by domesecrated animals oppressed by nomadic pastoralists and aggressive agrarian societies such as Rome was compounded by disease, which developed and spread because of the animals’ forced groupings. Over the centuries, tens of millions of domesecrated animals, usually kept in crowded conditions, suffered terrible deaths from “animal plagues.” One such disease, rinderpest—a form of measles with symptoms comparable to smallpox—caused the deaths of millions of cows and other animals; the disease frequently was transmitted through military campaigns.

In Europe, as Charlemagne conquered the Scandinavians on the Elbe and Weser c. 800, “So great was the pestilence of oxen in this expedition that scarcely in the whole army did one remain, but all perished; and not only there, but a plague among animals, causing a dreadful mortality, broke out in all the provinces conquered by the Emperor,” following in Italy immediately after his crowning in Rome as Emperor. This clearly seems to have been rinderpest despite the fact that it was accompanied by many human deaths as well…. Spreading to France in 801, it was possibly introduced with plundered cattle from Benevento in Italy.⁵³

Pastoralists terrorized Eurasia for centuries during the Dark Ages. Attila the Hun led an invasion of Europe in 450. His trademark was throat slitting. Tamerlane, a fourteenth-century Turk who invaded much of central and western Asia with Mongol support, had pyramids built from the skulls of his tens of thousands of victims. Torture was the fate of many of the leaders of the societies conquered by pastoralists. For example, Mongol invaders placed Russian princes under wooden platforms, where they were suffocated by the weight of the victory feast. Other victims had boiling liquefied silver poured into their eye sockets until they died. Some pastoralists enjoyed having the skulls of murdered leaders fashioned into drinking cups.⁵⁵

The fierce existence of these pastoral nomads, whose way of life depended on the violent oppression of other animals, also can be seen in their social organization and cultural practices. Some, like the Huns and Scythians, “slit the throats of the chief’s wives and servants on his tomb, such deaths numbering in the hundreds and [even] reaching a thousand.”⁵⁶ Clans frequently fought and raided one another; the strongest would acquire more captive animals and take women as possessions while enslaving young males and putting them to work controlling domesecrated animals. Moreover, nomadic pastoralist societies were more likely to promote hereditary enslavement than any other societal type.⁵⁷ The advantages of hereditary enslavement for the oppressors and its similarity to the enslavement of other animals are noted by David Christian:

To make slaves more amenable to control, they were often separated at birth from their families. And, like domesticated animals, many were deliberately kept in a state of infantile dependence that inflicted a sort of psychic amputation on them—they remained like children, and their helplessness made them easier to control. Both animals and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.⁵⁸

One of the most destructive leaders of pastoralist societies was Chinggis Khan, who was born into a society of nomadic pastoralists in Mongolia in the thirteenth century. Chinggis Khan forged an alliance of Mongolian tribes and set out to conquer the world. In his rampage across northern China and southwestern Asia, he burned hundreds of towns and cities and slaughtered entire populations.⁵⁹ One period observer stated, “They pursue men like game … they slay them and take from them everything.”⁶⁰ Chinggis Khan is reported to have stated: “The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”⁶¹

Chinggis Khan could be merciless; his army massacred many of the inhabitants of the areas he invaded, sparing for enslavement only selected craftsmen, artists, scholars, and women. In campaigns in northern China, for example, prisoners were forced “to fight in the front ranks against their own compatriots”⁶² or face mass executions. The intensity of Chinggis Khan’s aggression is glimpsed in a description of his attack on people resisting Mongol domination in Persia, what is now Iran, in 1220.

The Mongols retaliated by sending in a huge army on a campaign of extermination. The army proceeded systematically to reconquer the country, besieging and taking each city with remarkable speed. The Mongols possessed a sophisticated knowledge of siegecraft and ample equipment, having for one siege 4,000 scaling ladders and 4,000 siege engines, including some adapted to throwing pots of burning naphtha over the walls into the besieged city.

The Mongols overcame their inadequate ratio of force needed to subdue the space and population of the huge country because they never left garrisons in captured towns: they killed or drove away all the population, leaving “neither a cat nor a dog.” The prisoners, artisans and men of military age, which they took with them, increased the strength of the Mongol army in the assaults. The unwilling conscripts cooperated, though they faced serious danger assailing the fortifications, because they knew that certain death awaited them if they failed to fight. These prisoners supplied most of the casualties in the combats and few of them survived.⁶³

While the oppressive treatment of other animals as food, transportation, and weapons both enabled and promoted such invasions, countless free-living animals—some regarded as threats to the domesecrated animals controlled by the pastoralists—were terrorized and killed in the training of pastoralist armies. Perhaps the most terrible method of military training, the type preferred by Chinggis Khan, was the battue. The battue, a form of “hunting” in which free-living animals were boxed in by pastoralist armies and driven to a small area to be massacred, sometimes lasted as long as three months. A massive military exercise covering many miles of territory, the battue also was used as an exercise in discipline by Mongol leaders.

On the last day of the drive, the Mongol army became a huge human amphitheatre with thousands of terrified animals crowded into its arena. Throughout the drive it was forbidden to kill, but it was more than just a point of honor that none of the animals should escape; if any man allowed even the smallest of them to pass through the line, both he and his officer were severely punished. At first it would have been hares and deer that tested the soldiers’ agility, but as the numbers of animals grew and the predators in their midst became as terrifying as the army, it would have been the wild boar and the wolf packs that tried their courage.⁶⁴

Although almost no one chronicled the experiences of other animals during this era, the fear and resistance of those trapped by the Mongol hunts is evidenced by their daring efforts to break free of the contracting Mongol enclosure. A Persian historian who witnessed one such spectacle did make a point of noting the “cries and commotion” that came from the other animals that were trapped.⁶⁵

The protocol for the murdering of the other animals that were trapped reinforced the stratified nature of the pastoral society. The first kill was made by Chinggis Khan, in the presence of his “wives” and “concubines.” Khan’s generals followed, and the carnage continued until the men with the lowest status had their opportunity to kill. The entangled oppression of the human and animal victims of Mongol invasions was noted implicitly by William H. McNeill: “The Mongols came as a horde of fierce and barbarian warriors, prepared to treat their human victims as they treated animals rounded up in their great annual hunts; domesticating or slaughtering them as circumstances might dictate.”⁶⁶

In another example of how the fates of humans and other animals were entangled with pastoralist violence, Alexander Monro writes of Chinggis Khan’s conquest of northern China:

At Wulahai the Mongols offered the city’s mayor a deal, say the annals. If he would hand over every cat and bird inside the walls, the invaders would end their siege. The animals were rounded up and handed over to the Mongols, who attached flammable material to their tails and set them alight. Terrified, the cats and birds fled home. In the flames and confusion that ensued, the Mongols stormed in.⁶⁷

In Chinggis Khan’s violent sweep through Central Asia, millions of humans were brutally murdered. For example, in what is now Turkmenistan and northern Afghanistan an estimated seven hundred thousand people were killed. A million were slain on the Afghanistan-Persia border and yet another million in the conquest of Persia.⁶⁸ Preoccupied with increasing the number of domesecrated animals and the land needed to sustain them, Chinggis Khan was convinced only with difficulty not to convert all of northern China into pastureland. The importance of domesecrated animals in enabling and promoting the Mongols’ invasion and violence is punctuated by the Central Asian specialist Denis Sinor, who writes: “it would appear to me that Chinggis Khan’s often quoted intention to raze the cities of north China and transform the land into pasture was dictated by an accurate assessment of the military needs rather than by sheer destructive barbarism.”⁶⁹ The enormous level of Mongol violence continued under the rule of Chinggis Khan’s sons and grandsons, including Batu Khan, who led the massacre of Riazan described at the beginning of this chapter. After conquering Russia, the Mongol army turned to Eastern Europe, laying waste to Polish villages and towns and destroying Kraków. Their invasion of Hungary was equally devastating; approximately sixty thousand Hungarian soldiers died trying to defend their land. Subsequent Mongol armies brought terror and suffering as they swept from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean and from Siberia to the steppes of Mesopotamia.

In some cases, the invading nomadic pastoralists, including some Mongols, settled in conquered areas and encouraged the expansion of agriculture. “This made them the mortal enemies of their distant cousins … who retained their nomadic habits accompanied by a passion for raiding and looting.”⁷⁰ Nomadic pastoralists who became heads of state viewed themselves as superior to the people who worked the land. They retained aspects of their former nomadic identities and cultivated associations with those with whom they identified.

The heads of states in many instances were themselves of distant nomadic origin. The memory and the social relations of the steppe and the desert were kept alive by a constant stream of aristocratic migrants seeking employment as military officers and administrators from the centralized states which derived their huge tax-revenue from the labour of peasant agriculturalists. Without a defined relationship with the rest of Asia, nomads cease to be nomads.⁷¹

Tensions between pastoralists who dominated empires and those who survived by raiding and looting were sometimes settled by policies that exploited others to the mutual benefit of the aggressors. For example, Ghazan Khan (1271–1304) put the issue to nomadic warriors in the following way:

I am not on the side of the Tazik [Iranian]. If there is a purpose in pillaging them all, there is no one with more power to do this than I. Let us rob them together. But if you wish to be certain of collecting grain and food for your tables in the future, I must be harsh with you. You must be taught reason. If you insult the … [Iranian], take their oxen and seed, and trample their crops to the ground, what will you do in the future?⁷²

Not all nomadic pastoralists over the past six thousand years were as destructive of plant-based societies as the invading khans. However, conflict was still the inevitable result of the pastoralist invasions, as food and water had to be provided to large numbers of domesecrated animals.

The Bible contains numerous examples of conflict situations that are directly attributable to the practice of raising livestock, including contested water rights, bitter competition for grazing lands, and friction between agriculturalists and nomadic herdsmen. The more settled agricultural communities deeply resented the intrusion of nomadic tribes with their large herds of cattle, sheep and goats…. Aside from the threat to the crops themselves, large herds of livestock caused much damage to the general quality of the land as a result of overgrazing. It was ostensibly for this reason that the Philistines, whose primary agricultural pursuits were corn and orchards, sought to discourage nomadic herdsmen from using their territory by filling in many of the wells in the surrounding area.⁷³

It was not only direct pastoralist violence that took the lives of so many humans and other animals but also infectious diseases, derived from domesecration, that spread throughout Eurasia. One such illness, smallpox, emerged as one of the ancient world’s most dreaded plagues; it took countless lives from Britain to Africa to Japan. Nomadic pastoralists and the armies of large agrarian states frequently were transmitters of infectious disease. For example, it is believed that Hun nomadic pastoralists brought smallpox to China during a devastating invasion around 250 BCE; Roman soldiers returning from Asia are believed to have brought the disease back with them to Rome, where it took millions of lives between 180 and 165 CE.⁷⁴ And the Mongols are thought to have been primarily responsible for the spread of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century. Reflecting on fourteenth-century China, William H. Mc-Neill writes:

The combination of war and pestilence wreaked havoc on China’s population. The best estimates show a decrease from 123 million in about 1200 (before the Mongol invasions began) to a mere 65 million in 1393, a generation after the final expulsion of the Mongols from China. Even Mongol ferocity cannot account for such a drastic decrease. Disease assuredly played a big part in cutting Chinese numbers in half; and bubonic plague, recurring after its initial ravages at relatively frequent intervals, just as in Europe, is by all odds the most likely candidate for such a role.⁷⁵

The leading explanation for the pandemic that struck Eurasia in the mid-fourteenth century was that Möngke Khan, a grandson of Chinggis Khan, sent his armies through the desolate Gobi Desert, where they came into contact with other animals that carried fleas harboring the deadly microbe Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that manifested in the form of the bubonic plague. The disease was spread by the Mongols, who killed marmots and used their skin and hair for garments. Infected fleas that survived on these garments and on the stocks of marmot skin and hair that were bundled and sent along trade routes for exchange were likely carriers of the deadly microbes. In 1346, the Mongol leader Kipchak Khan Janibeg was trying to drive disfavored Italian traders from the town of Caffa, on the Crimean Peninsula, when his army began to collapse because of disease. Refusing to leave the city intact, the Mongols began catapulting the corpses of their dead into the city. With the residents of Caffa weakened and hungry from the siege, the disease quickly spread. Several ships thought to be free of the disease set sail for Italy, but the plague traveled with them and soon spread to northern and western Europe. The Black Death, as the disease came to be known, is believed to have killed more than two hundred million people by the end of the fourteenth century, and more perished from intermittent outbreaks up through the 1800s.⁷⁶ Although infected fleas on European rats actually spread the disease, Jews and cats were blamed for the outbreak, and many were displaced or killed.

From this historical vantage point, the idyllic-sounding, romanticized term “pastoralism” should actually be seen as “a subsistence strategy often associated with territorial expansion, social stratification, and military aggressiveness.”⁷⁷ The course of world history for both humans and other animals was shaped indelibly by the violence, trauma, and sharply stratified human societies that bore the imprint of domesecration, especially as it was practiced by nomadic pastoralists. Much of human history has been forged out of this predatory subsistence strategy, which was well “adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of military life.”⁷⁸ The violence and oppression experienced by humans and other animals was closely intertwined. The enslavement of large numbers of domesecrated animals compelled the expropriation of land and water used by other humans, driving large-scale invasions and warfare.

The Mongol pastoralists, like many nomadic pastoralists before and after them, “altered the course of history and left it scarred.”⁷⁹ Reflecting on the devastation wrought by the Mongols in just the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, James Chambers writes:

Russia was torn away from Europe, and when the Mongols abandoned it after two hundred years it was feudal and backward. Poland and Hungary were so devastated that they never emerged to play a part in the renaissance that followed in the west. Bulgaria, like Russia, was isolated and then fell to the Ottoman Turks, whom the Mongols had driven out of Khwarizm and who were one day to stand on the banks of the Danube as the Mongols had done. The lands that once nurtured the great civilizations of the Persians were returned to the desert and they have never recovered. Wherever the Mongols rode they left an irretrievably ruined economy and wherever they ruled they left a petty, self-important aristocracy and an exploited peasantry.⁸⁰

China suffered terrible casualties from the Mongol invasions, with “over 60 million people dying or failing to be replaced.”⁸¹ In the seventeenth century, the human population of China dropped by twenty-five million after the invasion of the Manchu pastoralists.⁸² Virtually all of Eurasia “felt the influence of this patrilineal, sexually punishing, male-dominated, warlike, and essentially wasteful cultural tradition.”⁸³

Perhaps the greatest significance for the early Middle Ages of the commitment to use animals and especially to use horses in warfare was the huge cost to the society…. Each horse consumed on average the wheat equivalent that could sustain four fully active agricultural or construction workers. In light of these data it must be concluded that economic development in the highly labor intensive economy of pre-Crusade Europe was severely retarded by the apparent willingness to use horses in warfare.⁸⁴

Medieval rulers devoted considerable land to raising and pasturing horses. The kings of the Franks frequently used slaves to work on “royal stud farms,” while mules and “oxen” continued to be used “to draw carts and wagons for the use of royal forces.”⁸⁵ The entangled nature of the oppression of devalued humans and other animals is also seen during this period in the practice of medieval rulers requiring “serfs” and “peasants” to serve as mounted soldiers.⁸⁶

Even the Vikings, whose raids terrorized much of Europe, relied heavily on horses beginning in the tenth century. Before they began to use horses, Viking assaults were largely hit-and-run raids by ships on coastal communities. However, their increased use of horses as laborers and instruments of war, load bearers, and mounts permitted incursions deeper inland and even periods of domination. In many instances, Vikings raided the populations of horses controlled by those they attacked, and their cargo ships were constructed to carry not only horses but also expropriated cows and sheep.⁸⁷

As did “peasants” who occasionally rebelled against their exploitation, over the centuries domesecrated animals continued to chafe against their oppressive conditions and treatment at the hands of humans. This defiant behavior, often ignored by historians, did not escape the notice of every human observer over the course of history. For instance, writing of the Romans’ use of cows to facilitate their domination of the British, the historians Towne and Wentworth note: “Roman domination of England lasted from the first to the fifth centuries. During this time, and for centuries after, ‘rugged individuals’ of the bovine species continued to fend for themselves in field and forest. They were … foraging for themselves and defying sporadic attempts at domestication.”⁸⁸ “As the forests were cleared and humans multiplied, wild cattle became increasingly scarce,”⁸⁹ and pasture used for domesecrated animals became more degraded. For example, during the Middle Ages Spain “was seriously overgrazed, Spanish forests had been wantonly cut and burned, and vast areas of the nation were reduced to desert and semi desert.”⁹⁰ Continued grazing of domesecrated animals “damaged arable interests and led to shortages of food,”⁹¹ and farmers struggled against the rapacious practices of the sheep ranchers.

This situation was aggravated by the fact that sheep posed an even greater threat to the land than cattle because they clipped grass closer to the ground, sometimes tearing it out by the roots. The Spanish sheep owners’ guild known as the Mesta dominated Spain’s political affairs for several centuries (A.D. 1200—A.D. 1500) and was the source of much internal strife within that country. The Mesta’s sheep not only destroyed pastureland by overgrazing but were also allowed to rampage through cultivated fields. The peasant farmers could hardly expect the monarchy to rectify this injustice since sheep raising dominated medieval Spanish commerce and was the government’s principal source of revenue during this period.⁹²

Over the course of several hundred years (700–1500), the Spanish forced the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula, land that the Moors were using in part to graze sheep and cows. After this reconquista, the Spanish monarchy awarded large estates in the reclaimed areas to military officers, who began large ranching operations for themselves. The skin of cows was in heavy demand both in Spain and in other parts of Europe, and many of the soldier-entrepreneurs found ranching cows to be very profitable.

In addition to the harms that accompanied nomadic pastoralism, ranching, and the reliance on domesecrated animals for sustained and successful military campaigns, other less direct but equally devastating forms of violence resulted from domesecration: human hunger and malnutrition. For example, during the dominance of Rome and continuing after its collapse, the eating of other animals was largely confined to the affluent and the military, and such consumption was viewed as a luxury and sign of elevated social status. “The gluttony of the rich provided a marked contrast to the restricted dietaries [sic] of the poor.”⁹³ Interestingly, because the European population was significantly decreased by the Mongol-spread plague of the fourteenth century, historians expected to see an increase in the overall quality of life as wages increased because of labor shortages and a surplus of plant-based foods. However, the economic historian Karl F. Helleiner suggests that an increase in pastoralist and ranching practices during this period instead brought greater hunger and susceptibility to disease. The shift to greater pastoralism led to

a partial “decerealization” of Europe in favour of animal husbandry. However, given a certain level of agrarian technology, five or six times as much land is required for the raising of one calorie of animal food as is needed for the production of one calorie of vegetable food. It follows that whatever relief from pressure of population on land was afforded by the initial demographic slump must have been partly offset by that change in the pattern of consumption and production. This hypothesis helps to explain an otherwise puzzling fact, namely that the later Middle Ages should have suffered scarcely less than previous centuries from dearth and famine, even though man’s per capita supply of fertile land was undoubtedly much higher in this period. These subsistence-crises invariably engendered epidemic outbreaks, and may thus have been among the chief factors responsible for the high mortality rates of late-medieval times.⁹⁴

One contemporary observer noted the relationship between the feasts of animal flesh and the scarcity that resulted. “[People] dissolutely abandoned themselves to the sin of gluttony, with feasts and taverns and delight of delicate viands…. Everything came to unwonted scarcity and remained long thus…. There were grievous and unwonted famines.”⁹⁵

With domesecration and enslavement of large mammals being a primary factor in much of the widespread, large-scale violence in Eurasia, it might be expected that there would be less violence in a region of the world that did not have populations of large, domesecrated animals: the pre-Columbian Americas. With the exception of llamas and alpaca in some parts of South America, there were no large, social mammals in the Americas for many thousands of years. In the absence of other animals who were large and controllable and whose exploitation would enable and promote massive wars, invasions, and death from infectious disease, what then was the level of warfare and disease among people in the Americas?

Initial accounts by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europeans of large-scale warfare among the peoples of pre-Columbian North America were exaggerated; these reports were based on the recorded observations of conquistadors and colonizers who sought an ideological justification for invasion and genocide. More reliable evidence comes from physical anthropologists who have studied settlement artifacts and burial sites. In North America, although there is evidence of conflict among indigenous peoples and a few examples of a village’s destruction have been found, the archeological evidence largely suggests that pre-Columbian warfare was limited to small-scale raiding, sniping, and ambush. The numbers of deaths by violence were relatively low, and evidence of total devastation of an enemy population is rare.⁹⁶ A common explanation for the warfare that did exist in pre-Columbian North America is competition for resources.

Instead of fighting over ownership, which really did not exist in native mentality, the most common form of conflict was raiding activity. Raiding helped accumulate wealth, material resources, and goods for a tribe. Raiding helped provide new tribal members as well; when people were captured in a raid, they were often adopted into the tribe. There was also a more subtle function. By obtaining goods from other tribes, those who participated could share those rewards with others who were less fortunate in their own tribe. That helped raise the standing of the less fortunate and often made it possible for them to continue to spread the wealth by having enough resources to participate in future raids. Without disrupting tribes’ traditional places on the land, warfare helped ensure tribal success, gave men in the community chances to prove their bravery, raised their status, and contributed to tribal health and wealth, while simultaneously preserving a balance between local native powers….

The primary subsistence pattern of most pre-Columbian North American societies was horticulture, combined with the hunting of free-living animals. The violence involved in the hunting and killing of other animals most likely exacerbated intersocietal violence and the elevated status of hunter-warriors. While the status of a man in a nomadic pastoralist society was tied to the number of domesecrated animals in his possession, the status of a pre-Columbian male was based on his reputation as a successful hunter and combatant. Still, in the absence of large and sociable other animals to exploit, the level and magnitude of warfare in pre-Columbian North America were nothing like the massive destruction and enormous loss of life seen in Eurasia.

One might suggest that the absence of large-scale violence and destruction may have been the result of a smaller human population rather than the absence of large, domesecrated animals. It is true that pre-Columbian North America did not have the large human populations generated by animal exploitation in the agrarian systems that existed in Eurasia. However, sophisticated horticulture did give rise to sizeable population centers and extensive trade networks. A number of scholars suggest the pre-Columbian human population was much larger than once thought. For example, Gary Nash notes:

It is now believed that the pre-contact population north of Mexico may have been as high as 10 million, of whom perhaps 500,000 lived along the coastal plain and in the piedmont region accessible to the early European colonizers. Even if the most liberal recent estimates are scaled down by half, we are left with the startling realization that Europeans were not coming to a “virgin wilderness,” as some called it, but were invading a land which in some areas was as densely populated as their homelands.⁹⁸

The three most studied pre-Columbian empires from Mexico through South America are the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Incas. These horticultural societies “achieved a level of technological advance comparable to that of early agrarian Mesopotamia and Egypt,”⁹⁹ largely without having to rely on large, domesecrated animals. The Mayan civilization stretched from what is today the Yucatán region of southern Mexico to Guatemala. It is estimated that at one time the Mayan population in southern Mexico alone was between eight and thirteen million, most living in grand cities with elaborate architecture and fine works of art.¹⁰⁰ The Mayan city of Tikal was designed with wooded groves and gardens that separated residences, and a sophisticated system of irrigated food gardens permitted population concentrations comparable to midsize cities in the United States today. The Maya made impressive astrological observations, developed sophisticated calendars, and created a complex system of hieroglyphic writing.

Politically, Mayan society was fragmented and characterized by numerous rivalries. While there is some evidence of infrequent, all-out destruction of rival cities, “for the most part, however, the Maya probably waged war for economic gain through tribute and the control of trade routes.”¹⁰¹ Thanks to the reliance on advanced horticulture, most wars were waged only after harvest, during the dry seasons. Because of the high status accorded to combatants, armies were disproportionately made up of elite males and reinforced by conscripted militias. In the absence of other animals to exploit as instruments of war or as “meat on the hoof,” Mayan armies usually were forced to carry their own provisions, severely limiting the “duration and spatial extent of Maya campaigns,” which most likely lasted “two weeks or less.”¹⁰² Warfare among the Maya provided captives for religious sacrifice and forced military alliances and in later periods was motivated by economic need exacerbated by climatic and agricultural downturns.

Following the decline of the Maya, in pre-Columbian Mexico the Aztec Empire emerged. The Aztec city Tenochtitlán was magnificent and larger than any city in Europe. Almost all of the more than sixty thousand houses had large rooms and gardens and were decorated with flowers. Although densely populated, the city’s streets and arboretums were neat, clean, and maintained by public workers. Fresh spring water was provided by a complex aqueduct system. Beneath towering, ornate pyramids, tens of thousands of buyers and sellers came daily to a central gathering and marketplace, where officials “enforced laws of fairness regarding weights and measures and the quantity of goods purveyed.”¹⁰³

It’s gone now, drained and desiccated in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest, but once there was an interconnected complex of lakes high up in the Valley of Mexico that was as long and as wide as the city of London is today. Surrounding these waters, known collectively as the Lake of the Moon, were scores of towns and cities whose population, combined with that of the outlying communities of Central Mexico, totaled about 25,000,000 men, women and children. On any given day as many as 200,000 small boats moved back and forth on the Lake of the Moon, pursuing the interests of commerce, political intrigue, and simple pleasure.¹⁰⁴

The grandness of the Aztec cities was built in part on military expeditions that focused on territorial acquisition and tribute and were “justified at least theoretically by the need for supplying the gods with an adequate diet of human hearts.”¹⁰⁵ “The Aztecs made war for defense, revenge and economic motives, which were inextricably confused with the needs for sacrificial victims requisite for proper adoration of their gods. Thus in warfare the great aim was to take captives, but behind this religious goal lurked the less holy urges of political and economic expediency.”¹⁰⁶

However, these militaristic incursions were limited. Like the peoples of North America and the Maya, the Aztecs did not have large numbers of domesecrated animals, whose need for pasture and water would have promoted massive warfare and in turn made it more viable. Also like the Mayans, because of the requirements of food production the Aztecs waged war only after the harvest, when food supplies for campaigns were available and when the spoils of war would be greatest. The movement of an invading force was a difficult exercise, and Aztec “military campaigns were short-term, logistical nightmares. Most culminated in a single battle before the supplies ran out.”¹⁰⁷

Having no beasts of burden, the warriors had to carry their own food with them. Due to the governmental system, wherein each town was independent, the armies did not dare live off the country for fear of inciting revolt and also because most communities lacked the food to sustain a large body of men. Thus, prior to a war, negotiations had to be made where supplies could be concentrated and allies brought together at a point as near as possible to the zone of attack. Usually a single battle decided the issue, since the attacking force could not maintain itself in the field for more than a very few days.¹⁰⁸

Open fighting, the difficulty of keeping up extended campaigns, and the informal character of the military force were factors that stultified the development of tactics or strategy. In battle, the howling mob that represented the collective strength of one group tried to rout the yelling horde of their adversary, and the first to run lost the battle. Captives were taken, tribute imposed, the temple burned, and the defeated group was then left alone again.¹¹⁰

The Aztecs rarely sought to destroy local tribes or city-states but instead aimed to develop the conquered region as a source of tribute. In some instances, ritualistic warfare was pursued to obtain captives and to hone or demonstrate the warriors’ skill.

The War of Flowers was undertaken to satisfy this yearning when no active campaign was in progress. In this incongruously named ceremonial combat the best warriors from several states met in a very real battle, so that feats of arms could be accomplished and captives taken to satisfy the hunger of the gods…. If a warrior were captured he met the most glorious of deaths in direct sacrifice to the Sun. If he lived he gained renown. If he were slain, he was cremated, an honor reserved only for fighting men, and passed on to the special heaven where warriors dwell.¹¹¹

In pre-Columbian South America, the Inca Empire, the largest of the American empires, was preceded by complex civilizations that had existed in the Andean highlands and western coastal regions four thousand years before the Inca reign. The Incas relied heavily on cotton for clothing and other textiles and grew beans and squash. These ancient peoples lived in highly populated areas, shared multistory residences, and “lived under remarkably egalitarian political conditions.”¹¹²

However, the Inca Empire of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries came to be ruled by a small group of elites who oversaw the construction of impressive cities such as Machu Picchu and Cuzco, which housed sophisticated monuments and were built with stone masonry. Cuzco’s central plaza accommodated up to one hundred thousand people, and clear streams running through the city were used for bathing and recreation.

Like the Maya and Aztecs, the Inca campaigns of territorial acquisition were conducted in the agricultural off-season; large numbers of farmer conscripts were mobilized to present a show of overwhelming force to potential adversaries. “Messengers sent by the Inca commander would offer favorable terms of surrender: compliant subject elites received gifts and could expect to retain or enhance their status, while communities were allowed to keep many of their resources…. The general principle was to be generous with those who capitulated, and to punish those who resisted harshly.”¹¹³

Overall, “the Incas negotiated dominion over many societies while shedding little blood”; however, “a few especially redoubtable societies fiercely resisted Inca rule for many years.”¹¹⁴ The Inca elite’s establishment of the most extensive empire in the pre-Columbian Americas was attributable in part to its exploitation of enslaved llamas and alpacas—the only large, social animal species in the Americas. “Llamas played a crucial role in the Incan imperial system,”¹¹⁵ and large numbers were forced to accompany military campaigns. As in Eurasia, struggles over grazing land and water resources by those who controlled domesecrated llamas and alpacas contributed to long-running “quarrels and even wars over pastures,” and these conflicts between numerous South American groups “were utilized by the Inca to advance their dominion.”¹¹⁶

While llamas and, to a lesser extent, alpacas were not exploitable as instruments of war, their enslavement enabled warfare by their use as “pack animals” and rations. “The [Incan] state owned hundreds of thousands of llamas and on occasion individual pack trains could include thousands of animals.”¹¹⁷ However, the empire’s cultivated populations of llamas were incapable of carrying heavy weights long distances, and llamas would “refuse to budge when tired.”¹¹⁸ When llamas were no longer needed as porters or no longer able to function as such, they were killed and used as food by armies traveling long distances. The Incan state stored llama and alpaca flesh as dried and salted charqui in state warehouses in the cold Andes ranges, providing provisions for military campaigns. As in other parts of the world where domesecrated animals have been exploited as food, in South America—with the exception of the Incan army—the flesh of llamas was consumed disproportionately by the elites.¹¹⁹ Similar to the Roman distribution of booty, Incan elites distributed llamas captured during military campaigns to high-ranking soldiers. By the fifteenth century, in part because of the exploitation of llamas and alpacas, the Inca Empire covered much of the coastal area of South America and included an estimated twelve million people, many of whom lived in large urban areas.

In sum, the peoples of the pre-Columbian Americas were capable of creating sophisticated social, economic, and political systems without the enormous reliance on domesecrated animals seen in Eurasia. Because of the relative absence of large, sociable other animals, the Americas did not experience large-scale and turbulent invasions comparable to those of the “great hordes” from the steppes that ravaged Eurasia. Moreover, epidemics of infectious disease such as those that took millions of lives in Eurasia appear to have been rare events in the pre-Columbian Americas.

This brief examination of the use of domesecrated animals in Eurasian history and a comparison with the pre-Columbian Americas reveals that the exploitation of other animals by both nomadic pastoralists and large agrarian societies contributed substantially to extensive violence and destruction—for example, the Mongol massacre at Riazan in the thirteenth century. For thousands of years, nomadic pastoralists used domesecrated animals as instruments of war, as laborers, and as food and other resources—exploitation that enabled mobile, stratified, militaristic societies to invade and conquer sedentary peoples. Moreover, the exploitation of large numbers of domesecrated animals promoted large-scale violence between humans, because of the need for fresh grazing land and water sources to sustain them. Such exploitation also facilitated the acquisition and concentration of power and wealth that accrued from both conquest and the trading or selling of domesecrated animals.

The reliance on large numbers of domesecrated animals also made possible the rise of powerful agrarian societies such as Rome, where other animals not only were exploited as agricultural laborers and as a source of food but also enabled and promoted warfare waged to increase the power of Roman elites. Successful military campaigns were made possible through an enormous level of violence against domesecrated animals, who were exploited as instruments of war and as laborers or killed to provide rations, shelters, and apparel for soldiers.

The violence and trauma experienced by domesecrated animals in Eurasia were deeply entangled with large-scale human displacement, enslavement, genocide, subjugation, sexual exploitation, and, frequently, hunger—all during a highly formative period in the history of the region. In addition to the extensive violence enabled and promoted by the oppression of other animals, the confinement of growing numbers of domesecrated animals near human population centers led to the mutation and spread of infectious diseases that took tens of millions of lives.

With the wealth and power that resulted from the ownership of domesecrated animals, it was, by definition, largely elites who held control over and ownership of large numbers of other animals. From the high-ranking soldiers in the Mongol armies to the wealthy members of the Roman Senate, elites used their power to establish the state policy necessary to ensure their continued disproportionate hold over the sources of wealth, including domesecrated animals.

Certainly not all organized violence, warfare, disease, and human subjugation in early Eurasia were attributable to domesecration. There were other factors that promoted the violence and conflict that plagued Eurasia for thousands of years. Competing religions, quests for political or economic dominance, principles of honor, and revenge all certainly contributed. However, it is unlikely that the extensive and deadly destruction and disease that occurred over thousands of years there could or would have taken place without domesecration. The actual history of domesecration and its effects thus is far different from the traditional representations, such as Blackmar’s assertion that “the domestication of animals led to a great improvement in the race.” While Roman and other agrarian elites and nomadic pastoralists such as the Mongols of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are credited with creating trade routes and with some impressive cultural development, these achievements came at an incredibly high cost for the inhabitants of the earth. (And the possible social and cultural achievements that could have taken place in the absence of the widespread violence and brutality linked to domesecration can only be imagined.)

In Europe during the Middle Ages, elites’ exploitation of domesecrated animals led to continual warfare and the disproportionate use of arable land for grazing and feed production instead of for the cultivation of plant-based food, a “decerealization” that contributed to hunger, malnutrition, and the spread of disease. The increasingly precarious feudal society in Europe desperately needed an influx of wealth and resources, and many elites—including Spanish ranchers—looked to the Americas. And as the Europeans, well schooled in the violent use of domesecrated animals, invaded the “new” hemisphere, the continents that previously had experienced a comparatively lower level of violence and disease would soon see unprecedented conflict and devastation.