CHAPTER XV 
THE UTILIZATION BY DOMESTICATION OF OUR LARGER 
NATIVE RUMINATING MAMMALS 
Au the domesticated animals now in the service of man 
have been derived originally from wild animals which were 
native to the countries in which their domestication was 
first undertaken. Horses, cattle, and dogs have been so 
long associated with man’s development that their origin 
is, in the majority of cases, shrouded by centuries of time, 
and is largely a matter of conjecture. The history of the 
horse is lost in antiquity; Egyptian monuments show us 
that the humped cattle were domesticated at least as early 
as the twelfth dynasty, that is, 2100 B.C. In China the 
domestication of the pig is believed to date back at least 
4,900 years from the present time. And the dog was domes- 
ticated in Europe long before the period of any historical 
record. 
As the cradle of the human race was probably in the sub- 
equatorial regions of the Eastern Hemisphere, the wild 
animals inhabiting more northerly regions would receive the 
attention of man at a later date, and it is not unlikely that 
one of the last animals to be domesticated was the caribou 
or reindeer. The reindeer of northern Europe and Asia 
have long been domesticated, but no attempts appear to 
have been made by the northern natives of the American 
continent to use this animal, and it was not until 1892 that 
domestic reindeer were introduced into North America. 
An account of the history of the reindeer on this continent 
will be given later in this chapter. 
Proposed Domestication of the Musk-ox.—There is still 
another native land mammal of large size which has char- 
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