MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
Japan, and sacred white elephants in Siam. Sometimes 
early man regarded such an animal both as divinity and as 
victim—as a god dying for the benefit of his people—the 
idea that we found so widespread in connection with early 
agriculture. Such animals were eaten at the sacrificial 
feasts that their qualities might be communicated to the 
worshipers. To omit such sacrifices was ‘regarded as an 
unspeakable calamity, portending terrible things. 
And yet, as cultivation extended and the originally 
plentiful supply of wild animals decreased, it happened 
again and again that the capture of victims as they were 
needed became more and more uncertain, and sacrifices 
sometimes failed. To guard against this danger, man 
probably began to set aside the necessary animals, perhaps 
even in actual inclosures where he could protect them 
and prevent them from wandering, until in time they 
became half domesticated. As their numbers increased 
under these sheltered conditions, their sacred character 
came to have less importance and was finally confined only 
to particular individuals or to certain occasions. By that 
time we might regard the species as to all intents and pur- 
poses fully domesticated, although even then the chief 
uses to which they were put might differ widely from those 
of later times. 
We can see this process of domestication at work among 
the stock-raising peoples of antiquity; and we can also 
detect its various stages actively going on today among 
certain peoples. Thus every one of the great peoples of 
ancient times—the Babylonians, Egyptians, Cretans, 
Greeks, and Romans, to mention but a few—regarded 
cattle as sacred. They are still held holy in India and 
to a less extent in China. Very many superstitious 
beliefs center about the herds of the great cattle-raising 
tribes of East and South Africa. Even the bull fight, now 
the national sport of Spain and her daughter countries, 
clearly had its origin in association with religion and 
especially with rites to insure plentiful harvests. 
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