Sheep and Goats Research Paper

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The first herd animals to be domesticated, originally about 8000 BCE in Anatolia and Iraq, were sheep and goats. They became the focus of entire civilizations, since pastoral people would devote their lives to tending the flocks. The metaphoric significance of both animals in the Bible and Greek myth—Jesus as the Lamb of God; Dionysus fleeing to Egypt as a goat—reflects somewhat their animal natures: sheep as benign, goats as rambunctious.

The ancestor of domestic sheep was the mouflon (Ovis orientalis), which may still be found wild in mountainous regions of Sardinia, Cyprus, and other islands in the Mediterranean or near the Atlantic coast. These sheep, however, may well be feral rather than wild varieties, which escaped human control in remote times. Several varieties of sheep, however, have never been domesticated, primarily because they cannot easily be herded. Among these is the American bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) found in the Rocky Mountains, which, though untamed, provides wool used by the Navajo and other Native American tribes in intricately woven and brightly colored blankets.

Sheep—together with goats (Capra aegargus), their close relatives—became the first herd animals to be domesticated, originally in Anatolia and Iraq, by about 8000 BCE. The domestication of sheep was a gradual process that probably grew out of efforts of hunters to manipulate stampeding herds. By the third millennium BCE, captive herds had become common throughout the Near East, central Europe, and western Asia. These animals became the focus of entire civilizations, since pastoral people would center their entire lives on the task of tending flocks. Tribes would, for example, be inhibited from creating permanent settlements, since it was necessary to move on when vegetation in one area was exhausted.

As human population increased and people were compelled to abandon the lives of hunter-gatherers, a rivalry between herders and agriculturalists became more intense. This rivalry is commemorated in the biblical story of brothers Abel and Cain. Abel was a shepherd and offered a sacrifice of a sheep to Yahweh (God), whereas Cain tilled the soil and offered up fruits and vegetables. When Yahweh looked with favor only on the sacrifice of Abel, Cain became angry and killed his brother (Genesis 4).

Social Organization

One consequence of the domestication of animals for food was that it enabled people to store up considerable amounts of wealth, which led to increased social differentiation. Herds of animals are often mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible and other books of the ancient world as a measure of riches. The earliest coins, from Lydia in the seventh century BCE, were stamped with pictures of food animals, and their value was measured in livestock.

The Hebrews were a nation of herders, especially of sheep, and important biblical figures, including Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David, were shepherds. The relationship of a shepherd to his flock provides an important metaphor for benevolent leadership in many biblical passages. A good example is the psalm known today as “The Lord’s Prayer,” which begins:

Yahweh is my shepherd

I lack nothing

In meadows of green grass he lets me lie.

To the waters of repose he leads me. . . . (Ps. 23:1–4, Jerusalem translation)

The society of the Hebrews, as described in the Bible, did indeed have some organizational resemblance to that of sheep. In both there was generally a single leader, but otherwise membership was comparatively egalitarian. Anthropologists have observed that this pattern is generally characteristic of semi nomadic herders, in contrast to societies of agriculturalists with their complex gradations of status and power.

The metaphorical importance of sheep continues in the New Testament. On seeing Jesus for the first time, John the Baptist says, “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). In the book of Revelation, “the Lamb” is repeatedly used to refer to Christ.

Like other closely related animals—for example, the dog and the wolf—sheep have constantly been contrasted with goats, which are relatively fierce and independent. The Greek god Dionysus took the form of a goat when fleeing to Egypt during the war between the gods and the titans. The festival of Dionysus, out of which Greek tragedy emerged, climaxed with the sacrifice of a goat.

But perhaps because of their association with pagan gods of Greece and Egypt, the Judeo-Christian tradition often viewed goats as diabolical. Jesus speaks of separating the sheep from the goats at the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46), a metaphor for the division of the just from the damned. In medieval Europe, Christ was often depicted as a lamb, while the devil was portrayed with the horns of a goat.

Industrial Society

Large forests throughout the Near East and Europe were cut down to provide grass for sheep and other herd animals. Overgrazing drastically reduced the fertility of the soil in the Mediterranean region, contributing to the decline of ancient civilizations such as those of Greece and Mesopotamia. In a similar way, the forests that once covered most of central Spain were later cut down to make way for the prized merino sheep, a breed introduced to the region by Moors in the twelfth century. Rains then washed the topsoil away, doing enormous damage to Spanish agriculture.

Scholars often consider the beginning of farming during Neolithic times and the Industrial Revolution starting around the eighteenth century as the two great revolutionary changes in human society, and sheep played an important role in both changes. Modern animal husbandry began when the English farmer Robert Bakewell (1725–1795), an expert on sheep, developed scientific methods of breeding. This enabled people to produce sheep that would yield greater amounts and varieties of wool. In 1764, the spinning jenny was invented by the Scotsman James Hargreaves (c. 1720–1778). This machine helped people to exploit the wool, in a mechanized textile industry, which provided a model for mass production that was soon extended to many other kinds of manufacturing.

The new technologies created a demand for wool in unprecedented quantities, which, in turn, led to massive changes in the traditional societies of Britain and continental Europe. To clear the land for herding of sheep, many tenant farmers in Britain were forced off their ancestral lands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in what is often known as the “tragedy of the commons.” This, in turn, led to rapid urbanization, as well as increased emigration to the Americas.

A Romantic Image

Shepherding has always been celebrated by poets for the closeness it provides to nature and the opportunity it allows for contemplation. Around the middle of the eighth century BCE, the Greek poet Hesiod told how the Muses had inspired him as he was tending sheep. In early modern times growing urbanization created a nostalgic longing for rural life, and the shepherd became a favorite figure of poetic literature. At the end of the novel Don Quixote by the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the dreamy hero, disillusioned with the life of chivalry, decides to become a shepherd. The French queen Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) would dress and act the role of a shepherdess on a bucolic farm where she went to escape the intrigues of the French court. But the idealized image of the shepherd or shepherdess cherished by aristocrats was far from the reality of people who depended on sheep for a living.

As synthetic fabrics have become more widely available, the wool industry has become considerably less significant economically. Nevertheless, sheep became an important part of yet another potential upheaval in human society in 1996, when a sheep named Dolly (1996–2003) became the first mammal ever to be successfully cloned.

Bibliography:

Attenborough, D. (1987). The first Eden: The Mediterranean world and man. Boston: Little, Brown.
Caras, R. A. (1996). A perfect harmony: The intertwining lives of animals and humans throughout history. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Clutton-Brock, J. (1999). A natural history of domesticated animals. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fournier, N., & Fournier, J. (1995). In sheep’s clothing: A handspinner’s guide to wool. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press.
Franklin, S. (2007). Dolly mixtures: The remaking of genealogy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sax, B. (2001). The mythical zoo: An encyclopedia of animals in world myth, legend, and literature. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCClio.

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