how the yoke came to be…

[bivol]

hi!

here’s a subject a bit theoretical, and there’s guesswork involved. hope you find it interesting!

yoke is a basic tool for working cattle.

but have you ever asked yourself how it came to be?

rather, how was the idea of using cattle for work born?

well, i have developed a theory on what i red in dr. rolf minhorst’s manual.

dr. minhorst: the first yokes were head yokes. they were used to restrain cattle. the idea came from the idea of transporting live captured animals like transporting captured war prisoners. they were transported by tying slaves to long saplings they carried around their necks. the prisoners were likely to escape on their territory, so the captives attached young forked sapplings to their captives linking them to each other.

so far so good. but i’d like to go at it more in detail.

me:people at the point of domestication of cattle were formed in tribal communities and were often engaged in skirmishes with neighbouring tribes, for looting the food supplies and abduction of women and children.

people who domesticated cattle had to have some animals to begin with. this means they had to capture them. Cezar, in his writings about Gaul, said that the celts living there used to capture the auerochs in pits. auerochs, or noe extinct wild cattle, is the predecessor of all modern cattle.

say you have a few animals, cows, in a pit, but you don’t want to kill them just jet, rather you want to feed them and kill’ them in winter when the food is scarce, or grow a bull for sacrifice in captivity.
at this point people would know of domestic animals, sheep ,goats and pigs, as cattle were domesticated later, and probably had some basic idea about care for the animals, food, water,… they probably concluded that cows and heifers would be the choice stock for meat supply, since they were not as powerful as bulls, and therefore, although still dangerous, not as dangerous as the bulls.

but why capture and tame cattle in the first place? why engage in such dangerous enterprise? auerochs, or ur was often depicted in cave paintings, confirming the status the animal had in religion and spiritual as well as a food source. the strenght of the bull auerochs was both feared and admired.

…brief digression…. mayans, who had only dogs and poultry, kept captive mountain lions and wolves to be sacrificed (or worshiped?).

…from that motives for domestication of cattle can be seen. the domestication effort was probably driven by ceremonial as well as practical motives. ceremonial being sacrifice, adoration, and milk, and economic being meat consumption.
on milk: there are examples in greek myths of heroes nursed by wild animals, and recieving the strenght of the animal. so the idea was to, through milk, give the future warriors strength of the auerochs.

today such relationship of overlapping ritual and economic significance can be seen in cattle-based cultures in africa.

they probably had a corral built in the village to contain them. how did they know of a corral? they probably invented it to provide the smaller livestock protection from predators at night.

but how to get cattle from the pit (it probably had a door and a slope through which the animals could be led out) to the corral? they threw ropes of animal hide around the horns and tied them until the animal was tired and wasn’t resisting. or they starved them to weaken them. then they tied a trunk of a sappling to the horns of two animals, like in modern team. tied animals were easier to control and to point with spears (beginning of goad?) to the village.
the obvious solution was to tie only two animals together, since three were unlikely to pass through the door of the corral. they would tie the pairs up and transported them to the village. since the still wild animals wanted to get away and run forward, logically people would tie stones or something heavy and attach it to the middle of the trunk so the animals would pull slower and tire, and so become easier to manage.

from that point it didn’t take a genius to figure out cattle could be employed to pull heavy loads that previously had to be managed by people.
to my opinion, a sled, and not a plow, was the first animal powered implement.

after a few months, years, generations, the docile animals (logically, easier to control) were picked and tied to the sled to pull various loads for humans. with time the trunk was carved to fit the head, and people learned that the animals can be directed by spears and voice. commands were invented.

but if the working animals were cows or bulls, how did an ox, a male castrated animal, came to be?
it is reasonable to suggest that castration and its affects were known because of male fertility cult (represented in greek myths about Zeus castrating his father and so denying him strenght). also, from the african cultures it can be seen that some traits that were desired were enhanced (color, horn shape, docility). the bulls having those traits were left intact, and others were castrated. soon the people noticed that castrated animals were docile, stronger than cows and easier to manage than bulls, the more suitable combination.

the common mistake, i think, is coupling working cattle phenomena to pulling a plow. rather, i think the use of cattle for work developed independent (and before) the need of plowing. if the people needed power to pull the plow, how did they know the concept of using animals for work?! how did they know cattle could be driven?

but if the first yoke was the head yoke, how did the neck yoke came to be?
well, i think sometimes these yokes were tied with a rope around the neck instead of the horns. as the animals pulled the pole went back and it became the neck yoke.

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