486 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



of European domestic animals in the light of our present knowledge, 

 we find it evident that they came to us from various sources. 



In the first place, we have a large contingent which is of European 

 origm, and this we must designate as having been derived in an 

 autochthonous manner. 



Alfred Nehring furnished the convincing proof about the horse, 

 that the heavy, calm strains, which one designates as occidental 

 horses, are traceable to a diluvial wild-horse ancestor of middle 

 Europe. 



The pigs with the sharp backs, still strongly represented in the 

 northern Alps, especially in Bavaria and northern Germany, were 

 shown by Hermann v. Nathusius and Ludwig Riitimeyer to be de- 

 scendants of the wild pig of Europe; and the short-tailed domestic 

 sheep, which at present have been forced far to the north, appear 

 very probably to have been derived from the south European mouflon. 

 No investigator doubts, since Riitimeyer made his brilliant investi- 

 gations, that the heavy cattle of the steppes of southeastern Europe 

 and the lowland cattle of northwestern Europe have sprung from the 

 aurochs {Bos primigenius) , which persisted as a wild animal down to 

 historic times. In spite of all the remonstrances made to me, I am 

 still forced, even more than ever, by my recent investigations, which 

 will be published in a large monograph in the near future, to con- 

 sider the mainland of Greece as the starting point of the Bos primi- 

 genius domestication in the early Mycenian times. The entire 

 process is clearly represented on the noted gold goblet of Vaphio, 

 which undoubtedly is based upon close observation in nature. One 

 might object, sa.^dng that no osteological finds of the ur (aurochs) have 

 been made in that region. But yet I have recently demonstrated 

 by means of old CVetan ur pictures and undoubted ur bones that Bos 

 primigenius lived in that region up to the early historic ])eriod all 

 objections must vanish. The latest finds tell us that even before the 

 Mjxenic period the domesticating of animals had begun in Crete. 

 The latest efforts to prove that the ur was first domesticated in IVIeso- 

 potamia appear to me to be entirely misplaced. 



To the smaller domesticated animals, Europe has but compara- 

 tively recently — that is, in historic times — added the rabbit, the goose, 

 and the duck. A second category of domestic animals in Europe 

 is surely of Asiatic origin — that is, introduced. This is not sur- 

 prising, for Europe, geographically considered, is only an Asiatic 

 dependency. Nothing seems more natural than that this colossus 

 land should have given us much from its overabundance of domestic 

 animals. I feel certain that the spitz dog, like the peat dog of the 

 Lake Dwellers, came from western Asia. Even of more certain Asiatic 

 origin are the bronze dogs, whose little-altered descendants greet us 

 to-day in the form of the shepherd dog, both of which have sprung 



