all right welcome to the next lecture on animals and people this is going to really start a whole series of lectures that we will be exploring for most of the rest of the term that you can lump together under one large umbrella called using animals exploring human animal economies this particular lecture is going to look at one component of that animals in the wild versus animals in human societies and why don't we start this lecture with a story a fable there was once a gaunt wolf who was almost dead with Hunger when it happened to meet a dog a house dog that was passing by ah cousin said said the dog to the wolf I knew how it would be your life irregular it will soon be the Rune of you why do you not work steadily as I do and get your food regularly given to you I would have no objection said the wolf if only I could get a place h i will easily arrange that for you said the dog come with me to my master and you shall share my work so the wolf and the dog went towards the town together but on their way the wolf noticed that the hair on the dog's neck was very much worn away and so the wolf asked the dog how that came about oh it's nothing said the dog that is only the place where the collar is put at night to keep me chained up it chafes but you'll get used to it ha is that all is that all said the wolf then goodbye Master dog that was from the fables of asop which you might have heard of and you might have even been told some of those Fables uh these fables dating back to the 6th Century BCE the moral of that tale which has been told now for thousands of years to Children is essentially it's better to starve free than to be a wellfed slave but this is also our class and this fa is also an interesting way to begin talking about the differences that we assign to wild animals versus domesticated animals if you remember we have been talking about the various systems of classification that humans have used to categorize animals and how those categories serve as justification for how we then treat particular animals one of the most important categorical distinctions in the West is between wild and domesticated or tame which itself mirrors the perceived nature culture divide or biological cultural divide in our society as if you can really divide those things but that's a whole another story we touched on briefly how in the Middle Ages and before Europeans were anxious about nature and viewed nature and animals as something that had to be feared and therefore controlled it was really only once Europeans stopped feeling at the mercy of nature that nature and animals began to be viewed in a different way in a modern context today wild animals are viewed more abstractly as a category worth saving which we talked about although thought to individual wild animals is actually very rare it's more of you know something abstract wild animals are seen as an escape or a refuge from our modern lives we visit the wild in the zoo or centers to watch them or we watch them on TV and and that interaction is mostly about us about pleasure we smile we laugh we point we joke we take our families it it's a a more of a happy experience and not a sad experience but that view of wild animals is a very recent thing which we'll look at over the next several lectures let's start by looking at our past and the history of our relationships with animals which is wild animals let's start with the Paleolithic era the Paleolithic Era sometimes referred to as the Stone Age is during the Pline Epoch dates from about 2.5 million years ago to about 15,000 years ago the name coming from all of these tools that we're finding certain organisms are using stone tools and those organisms are our ancestors the early members of our genus and this was the era also of a glacial period the ice age during this period a number of glaciers extended over large portions of the earth's land mass and Water Mass now that caused a lot of cooling and it changed plant and animal life the glacial period which is coming to an end has been separated by these shorter periods of warmer global temperatures called interglacial periods and that means plant and animals have had to adapt to a changing environment constantly I mean the rate at which that environment changed was very slow what we're experiencing today is completely out of the bounds of what we find in any natural variability unless you're talking about meteorite Comet impacts that drastically rapidly change uh the climate but in the past it's changed over very slow long periods of time with each glacial stage the northern regions become too cold they become covered with ice and animals have to move South they have to adapt interglacial periods I ice recedes animals can move north again into new open uh uh habitat and niches adapting to an increasing forest and or a shrinking Forest increasing grasslands or shrinking grasslands all of these changes are putting pressures on animals and Landscapes sometimes that pressure has resulted in Extinction in the late Pine many of the large mammals called megap became extinct animals like mammoths saber-tooth tigers Cave Bears mastadons Etc why well based on the fossil record it appears to be related to a combination of variables climactic change and human hunting or over hunting which stressed already stressed populations of animals these placed extinctions were the first example of that we know of of major human impacts effects on other non-human animals in terms of of you know significant negative impacts what we know about animals in prehistoric times comes from the paleontologic Paleo anthropologic and archaeological records combined it's called Zoo archaeology or one component is called Zoo archaeology the study of non-human animal remains at these particular sites this tells us a lot about human animal relationships or it can be informative for example in that middle photograph we find dogs buried with humans at about 14,000 years ago uh and we might talk about that particular site later on but that tells us that humans had a certain relationship with dogs at least at this time in this place right at about 1 million years ago uh 2 million years ago we find humans with animals but it's not that type of relationship these are animals that they scavenged or hunted and humans are also prey to animals that hunted or scavenged our ancestors that suggests that food and predatory prey relationships were among the first and very important human animal interactions our family tree is pretty complex and it becomes even more interesting when you get into classes that explore human evolution what you're looking at on this screen is just one representation not a complete representation but one representation of the hominin family tree which is our little branch of of evolution you're looking at all of our an cestors and related uh cousins stretching back to about 8 million years ago now these all of these organisms are more closely related to us some of them are our direct ancestors what you don't see at the bottom is a branching event right at the very bottom there would be a whole another line that goes off in in another Direction and the result of that particular branch of evolution would be chimpanzees and bonobos that have their own rich and complex uh messy branch of evolution as well that stretches all the way back to uh to something around chanth Opus Chad insus which you can see at the very bottom or the base of our tree now we won't have time to cover all of these hominins I just want to give you a few examples and let's focus on our own genus homo the genus that is highlighted in red here is Homo habilis from around they lived from around 2.8 to about 1.5 million years ago and we find these particular hominins our direct ancestors with stone tools for the first time they're using stone tools and it's widespread that particular industry is named after the place where these tools were originally found old Devi Gorge so they're called oldan stone tools now they were not doing a lot of hunting with those stone tools they were eating more meat but it wasn't a result of of hunting always maybe in some circumstances and we can fast forward in time to a a more uh derived hominin of our own genus Homo erectus from around 1.9 to about well it's a bit debated but around 150,000 years ago these hominins were also using a more complex Stone tool one that is significantly harder to make and replicate called The aulian Tool industry there's a number of different types of aulian tools but what you're looking at there is a biface something that that requires the maker to have the image of that three-dimensional object in their mind before they even take strike one from their core from their Hammer to their core Stone so it it's quite difficult to make but aside from that we do find Homo erectus hunting more regularly but they're not only hunting still meat is an important component of that annual diet as I've said a few times already hominins as Hunters is a traditional view of the history of hominin the history of human but is that really an accurate representation based off of what we see in the fossil record and as you may have guessed it is not exactly accurate right of course there are instances where Homo habilis uh hunted there are more instances where Homo erectus would have been the hunter but in many instances we find hominin are the scavenger including Homo sapiens as the scavenger and we can look at the actual cut marks on Bones and we can see that hominins in many cases are in fact Scavenging wild animals animals that have already been killed by a predator rather than hunting wild animals by looking at the cut marks on the body on the bones and the tooth marks of carnivores on the bones if the tooth Mark comes first and the cut Mark comes second you know that hominins were Scavenging also where those cut marks and tooth marks are if the tooth marks are on meat loaded areas of the body and the cut marks are on meat lacking areas of the body it tells you something about when that honin began to process the carcass and if it was hunted or scavenged just to summarize some of those main components of the early part of the P lithic era looking at human animal interactions but not not us not Homo sapiens our ancestors within our genus what did that look like well something like a a typical hunter gatherer tribe but uh but it's not just hunting right we find more Scavenging meat is becoming a more important component of the diet which means that humans or or early homo are are in more regular contact with animals in a particular way but tools are increasing in their sophistication as our hunting techniques so it's moving more from Scavenging to uh to to hunting and not just hunting smaller animals but hunting larger animals which requires some sort of a Cooperative kind of approach and and that brings us to us Homo sapiens the first time that we see Homo sapiens in the fossil record is around 200,000 years ago so we can give ourselves a date from around 200,000 years ago to about present evolving from something like homo heidelbergensis we have our own tool industries that are associated with Homo sapiens called upper Paleolithic tools uh we're commonly working non-traditional kinds of materials not just stone stone as well but not just Stone also using bone and ivory and antler making projectile points alls punches needles needles with eyes beads Fish Hooks Etc tools that you don't find at all in earlier hominins we are sewing clothes if we have needles needles with eyes it means that they're used for a purpose for sewing clothes clothes coming from from animal skins and furs we have long range weapons which can be related to hunting but also interpersonal conflict we have portable art often depicting animals some of the images you see on the bottom of the screen are also Venus figurines but one of the earliest portable art representations we have in the fossil record are animals here you're looking at the Vogal herd horse I have that horse in my office as well as some of the earliest um portable art so if you are interested in this feel free to stop by and I'm happy to show you some of these early representations also cave painting cave paintings typically depicting animals here are just some of the many cave paintings we've found from various places around the world from parts of Europe Australia Africa Etc some of these paintings are quite old um stretching back towards you know 40 50,000 years ago um perhaps in blombo's cave some of the uh art work that we're finding there could push back towards a 100,000 years ago and what is being depicted well it it's across the board but the earliest representations we have the earliest art we have uh in terms of cave paintings and in terms of mobile art are animals here you're looking at at different types of wild animals that people were depicting at 20 30 uh 40,000 years ago and in some of those images you can see like the one in the middle from France where you're looking at all of these wild cats it looks like there's one cat that's painted on top of another and if you look into some of the Paleolithic art or stop by the office and I can show you uh some images it in some cases it looks like there's you know one individual uh cat painted right on top of the next and they're only off by a few inches and the question becomes well you know why did people do that maybe they just kind of painted one over the next uh and that's not the case actually we didn't we didn't understand fully why uh until a few decades back when some of the paleoanthropologists were hosting an event in one of these caves in France and they lit a fire like a fire would have been lit uh you know 20,000 years ago than having flood lights to to light up the cave and look at the cave paintings and fire does something fire dances and it flickers and it moves and as it does that it catches different parts of the Rock and as it does that it highlights different components of the painting so now you have the cat that is moving some of the earliest animation let's Briefly summarize what's going on in the Paleolithic Era with homo Ian prior to domestication well this is this is us right our our immediate ancestors within our own species meat is often valued and we can look at at this in terms of modern hunter gatherer societies even meat is is often valued but it's typically uh a minor contribution to the overall annual diet another way of saying that is for most hunter gatherers meat is something more seasonal or occasional not certainly not something that's eaten with every meal um as as we tend to find in our society today uh in addition to that animals are a part of the environment right people are not raising and controlling animals they're living in an environment with animals so they are coexisting some animals are hunted or scavenged some are eaten some are dangerous to people uh some people hunt some people don't uh some are revered and and respected so humans are part of a system there is mutual trust as as resources are shared um various organisms living together sharing an environment sharing an area sharing those resources our relationship with animals had become increasingly complex in addition to that um looking at what we're finding with Homo habilis and and Homo erectus and so on and so forth uh once we get to homo sapians we're talking about you know art and uh cave paintings and uh and and complex uh clothing and and structures using animal parts right so uh animal representation and and parts in terms of tools or or um hunting and ritual uh all of these morch much more complex forms of of relationship between humans and animals now there was a change which we're going to touch on later uh and and that change is related to the rise of domestication uh human animal relationships um were transformed as a result of that change obviously human domesticated animal relationships were transformed but I mean there was a transformation that impacted human wild animal relationships as well let's take a brief look at some of those changes once again just a heads up the next few slides are going to contain some images of animals that have been hunted or animals that are hunting first let's look at one of the initial changes in terms of why wild animals moving them from subsistence which we see with early Homo sapiens and all hominins in the past right using wild animals or wild plants uh for subsistence so from subsistence to sport with the change to an increasing Reliance on domesticated plants and animals obviously a Reliance on wild animals for subsistence is removed so wild animals become less important at least from a purely subsistence base which impacts the relationship uh in various components of society for example pastoralism and here I've got the definition of pastoralism on there for for you to read hering and raising domesticated animals uh in that system well pastoralists generally do not hunt right they they might hunt but only hunting for certain you know certain foods or only rarely but this is because wild animals are not the primary basis of of subsistence right uh that animal herd is the basis for survival whether that animal herd is being used for uh for actual food or for products which are then traded for food right so wild animals then are seen more as a threat a threat to their livestock certainly and therefore to to livelihoods a threat to life for agricultural subsistence systems the growing of food right which involves livestock as well the growing of livestock uh or can be extended to that these subsistent systems uh you know growing plants um uh growing domesticated animals uh in those systems we have as well stopped relying on wild plants and animals for food hunting them therefore moves from an important part A a critical part of the economy in a hunter gatherer Society to something else sport or entertainment something not important on a day-to-day basis let's briefly look at a few examples of that England during the mideval and Renaissance periods hunting had become an aristocratic tradition commoners for the most part were not allowed to legally hunt and that's because public lands as we understand them in our society today did not exist wealthy land owners their friends their extended family they owned land virtually all the land was owned cities were built on lands owned by the church or the crown by Lords and Ladies by Aristocrats and these peoples then hunted on their land which was private land hunting is is therefore a sign of prosperity and Status it indicates Mastery over animals and in a way also Mastery over lower classes of people and we have a very similar situation here in the United States during the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries which resulted in the working class uh America unionizing and and lobbying uh for for the right to hunt as a result uh sport hunting as we find in in us and in large parts of the world today um comes from from that effort right which differs greatly from subsistence hunting sport hunting is not subsistence hunting right sport hunting is the hunting and often killing because hunting can just be the thrill of the chase but hunting and often killing of animals for recreation not for subsistence related to that is another change in views and uses of wild animals from subsistence to colonialism as a result of a change from subsistence to sport animals were used in colonialism actually used in colonialism and in the subjugation of peoples and cultures now of course animals are used as tools of War which we'll talk about a little later on in the term um such as you know Spanish conquistadors in America using horses and dogs to uh to help conquer and subjugate native peoples here and bringing domesticated animals with them so that they had an economic foothold wherever they went but beyond that European superpowers extended hunting rights what what they felt were were you know these these uh born rights birth rights uh hunting rights and Sport rights to Colonial lands uh around the world hunting focused on generally two types of animals large charismatic dangerous animals that were often then stuffed or kept as a trophy and animals that had certain features skin or hides or tusks or whatever could be sold for a a a profit or used as a symbol of uh of wealth animals like Bengal tigers or elephants you know fit both of these purposes which is partly why they're you know on the verge of Extinction the presence of European hunters in Africa and Asia and other colonies did something else as well there began to be a transformation in how indigenous peoples viewed and used Wildlife moving animals from again more of a subsistence base to exploiting animals as part of the global growing global economy right sucking people into a commodification of their own environment which included wild animals now there are many other components of this shift to colonialism that I would love to talk about but let me just talk about one more and then we'll move on Hunting itself became a means in which to control people Manifest Destiny remember that here in in this country this belief in a in a divine right to expand Westward across the American continent the only issue was that there were indigenous peoples already living here in the mid 19th century the government the US government adopted a policy to uh several policies to remove those people and those policies were to forcibly remove or even kill native indigenous peoples and that extended to actually mandated legal mandated Slaughter of wild animals president Ulisses S Grant saw the destruction of the Buffalo the Bison here as a solution to what was considered at the time quote the Indian problem end quote every dead buffalo is a dead Indian end quote by forc seen indigenous peoples of this land to stop hunting by killing off their subsistence base it allowed for an easier displacement and for easier control eliminate their food source nearly 30 million bison killed in just about 30 years and there you're looking at one of the images is a mountain of Bison skulls once numbering around 30 million individual bison in North America the population of American bison decreased decreased to less than 1,000 from 30 million to less than 1,000 individuals worldwide in 1890 the eradication or the near eradication of Bison also did something else it freed up the land for other animals domesticated animals cattle which then also helped the growing beef industry to become one of the major Food Industries and products of an expanding United States economy we've talked about a movement of the wild to sport from subsistence to colonialism from subsistence we can also talk about conservation and human Wildlife conflict which I'll come back to in Shades at the very end of the term as well so this will be another component of that uh full C Circle that we'll try to do in the class today most people in this country don't have much interaction with wild animals I mean I'm sure that some people go camping and hiking and maybe there's some interaction or with the expansion of some cities many cities into wild lands people might see wildlife in their yards on the roads right a and people might not even think about those animals as Wildlife more as pests in some cases but there is a small and actually decreasing number of people in the US that are hunting in 2008 only about 6.1% of the US population hunted wild animals as reported by the US fish and wildlife uh service or about 18.5 million people that hunted in 2007 about 10 years later there were only 5.2% of people in the that hunted right uh which was down to about 16 million so it's still a lot of people but it's it's decreasing uh somewhat and for the more traditional Hunters hunting is not about a trophy uh it's not about uh subsistence uh people are are really passionate about hunting uh it's about a tradition really um involving Notions of family uh parents and grandparents and great-grandparents uh a history in terms of a family heritage uh about connecting with nature um and we find this more common often in in Rural America uh where people evoke this traditional American Hunter now that's not really representative of hunting culture today but that does form the base is of these conservation and human Wildlife conflict approaches a brief history of conservation and hunting in this country the history of conservation in the US is very closely tied with hunting game management policies and protection for wildlife and wild habitats Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 that was the first national park in the world and what that led to was Theodore Roosevelt and other prominent peoples of American society political society that were Sports Hunters to form a club that became the first conservation organization in the United States called The Boon and Crockett Club in 1887 when Theodore Roosevelt became involved in politics later he traveled to Yellowstone he saw the beauty of the place the animals and he wanted to provide greater protection why for the purposes of hunting and protecting uh those animals so they could be hunted so he created the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve later renamed the shushi National Forest in 1891 before his presidency Roosevelt did something else he succeeded in convincing seen Congress to pass the Forest Reserve Act which gave the president of the United States at the time power to set aside Forest lands for protection then President Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt um he's credited with the institutionalization of the conservation movement in the United States for Roosevelt himself that conservation movement was not about preserving nature and animals simply because they are beautiful and they there is a place for them in life and Society Roosevelt was a hunter and he was convinced of quote the need for measures to protect the game species from further destruction destruction and eventual Extinction end quote President Roosevelt recognized the necessity of carefully managing what is essentially another resource America's natural resources he passed several laws to help manage and reg regulate those resources and as a result wild animals in 1905 he created the United States forest service and one more time the next slide does contain a few images of animals that have been killed via poaching or hunting again we'll come back and talk about how the conservation movement has evolved since the 19th century but another component of this change from subsistence is to human Wildlife conflict I should say first that not all Hunters are the same and that traditional hunting uh culture isn't really found much anymore in small Pockets uh perhaps but most of the hunters from the US are strictly Trophy Hunters not traditional hunters in fact the US is the largest market for animal trophies all of the these animals you see on the screen here and I know it can be distressing are are are hunted or killed for trophies that is something different than that hunting Heritage uh that we talked about and some of this hunting that will come back and we'll look at again towards the end of the term is a result of human Wildlife conflict Bears or Wolves or Gower or groundhogs or even horses feral pigs some Wildlife is now viewed as strictly as pests or as something that impacts negatively impacts human economy and therefore it needs to be controlled removed killed all right anth 274 that's it for this lecture on animals in the wild I hope that there was something here that you found interesting or engaging and certainly there's a lot here that we can take with us moving forward in this class I can't wait till the next lectures but that's next week so just as a way to conclude this lecture and this week to remind you of the weekly schedule of events again you can always follow that schedule in the syllabus at the bottom of the syllabus this week we wrapped up the social construct and we Dove down the rabbit hole of animals in the wild a handful of readings and our first quiz assignment make sure that you watch these lectures and you pause and give yourself time to really write down the information and then you study your notes your lecture notes and your reading notes before you go to take that quiz and if you really study your notes that quiz is going to be pretty simple okay I hope you have a nice week and I'll see you next week