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Since ancient times, buffalo has played a very important role in agricultural production on the mainland. Our ancestors have a very long history of domesticating buffalo, and the remains of water buffalo were unearthed in the Hemudu site 5,000 years ago, which is considered to be the world's earliest domestic buffalo.
Buffalo is found on both continents, Asia and Africa, but the difference is that the African buffalo has not been domesticated by the locals as a farming tool.
Domestication of the buffalo
The domestication of the buffalo has a lot to do with the cultivation of rice by humans. In the primitive society of slash-and-burn farming, after humans domesticated wild rice into cultivated rice, in order to save physical strength and increase the yield of crops, they thought of driving animals to replace human farming.
After many attempts, humans finally chose the buffalo, which has more strength and a milder temperament. The domestication of buffalo by humans was a long process. An adult male buffalo is about 1.2-1.3 meters tall and can weigh 300-500 kilograms.
The huge buffalo also has a pair of sharp horns on its head, and the lethality brought by its impact should not be underestimated, even tigers and lions dare not fight the buffalo head-on. But buffaloes are not beasts of prey after all, they are herbivores and rarely attack humans, and this gives humans the opportunity to domesticate them.
Our ancestors discovered that buffaloes used to feed half the day and were very poor at fighting hunger. So, the first step in domesticating buffaloes is to drive them to a place and lock them up and starve them for a few days.
Wait until the buffalo is too hungry to stand it, then give him some food, and they will become obedient. Repeat this process, and over time, the buffalo will build trust and dependence with humans.
Humans then put a nose ring around the buffalo's nose to pull and drive them. The buffalo has rough skin and thick flesh on its whole body, but only the nose is the most fragile and the most afraid of pain. When the buffalo is put on a nose ring, they obediently let the humans pull it. This may be the origin of the proverb "lead by the nose".
The final step in domestication is breeding. In the process of long-term breeding, human beings will select those buffaloes that are more docile and hard-working, and over time will select and breed excellent breeds that can be driven.
If buffalo can be domesticated, why did Africans not think of domesticating buffalo instead of farming?
The fierce African buffalo
The buffalo that lives in Africa is not the same species as the buffalo that is driven to work in Asia. The buffalo in Asia is mainly divided into river buffalo and swamp buffalo, and the buffalo used for farming is mostly domesticated by the swamp buffalo, which is mainly distributed in the south of the continent, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
The African buffalo is a steppe buffalo with a larger body, with an average height of about 1.4-1.7 meters and a weight of 425-900 kilograms, mainly distributed in parts of East and Central Africa.
Compared to the Asian buffalo, the African buffalo is stronger, more irritable and ferocious, and has a strong sense of alertness. They often appear in herds, and there are often hundreds of buffalo in a herd, and it is spectacular to run together.
African buffaloes are good at fighting in groups, and although they are herbivores, they are no less dangerous than beasts like lions. In the face of an invasion, they will form a dense formation under the leadership of the "lead cow" and charge at the invaders, and even the strongest male lions will be trampled into flesh by them.
Even if it was a single buffalo, the lion did not dare to provoke it. When the lions hunt, they often only pick out the lone injured or sick cattle or the elderly cattle to start, even so, the lion has to do his best in every fight, and the slightest mistake will be injured and killed.
It is a surprising fact that the buffalo is the most dangerous animal on the continent compared to predators such as lions and crocodiles, with an average of 200 people dying under their horns every year.
The African buffalo is also a very grudge-loving animal. There used to be a herd of buffalo in South Africa, which repeatedly attacked only white people, and had a very strong purpose.
After investigating, the scientists found that the group of buffaloes had been captured by scientists for research, and that the blood drawn and injected was all white scientists, so they remembered the feud.
African buffaloes are so fierce that it is difficult for humans to catch them, let alone domesticate and control them. In Africa, provoking a herd of buffalo is tantamount to self-defeating.
Environmental and agricultural factors
Africans did not domesticate buffaloes, and in addition to species reasons, environmental differences and the level of agricultural development were also important factors.
Most of Africa has a hot, dry climate, poor soils, poor agricultural development, and low food production. While East Asia had already entered an agrarian civilization, many Africans were still living primitive lives of gathering and hunting.
With this historical background, Africans did not have the need to domesticate animals as domestic animals. In addition, the African buffalo has a violent personality and often faces great dangers when domesticated, so many Africans do not regard the buffalo as a domestic animal worthy of domestication, but as a fierce beast.
On the mainland, buffalo is widely used for paddy fields and wetlands, but most of Africa's farmland is arid. Even if there were fully domesticated buffaloes, they were not suitable for farming on African farmland.
Leaving the buffalo aside, Africans could have chosen a more domesticated animal. The African continent has a rich ecosystem with many other animals suitable for domestication, such as camels, goats, pigeons, etc.
According to archaeological evidence in parts of Egypt, Nubian and Somali wild asses were domesticated by humans in northeastern Africa about 6,500 years ago.
end
The African buffalo was irritable, dangerous, and unsuitable for African agriculture, so Africans did not domesticate the buffalo as a domestic animal.
The Asian buffalo is docile and more adapted to the farming environment of the southern part of the continent, and our ancestors turned the wild buffalo into a good helper in farming through generations.
People in different regions will choose species suitable for domestication according to their living environment and needs. The domestication of animals is inseparable from the development of human civilization.
In the process of domesticating animals, human civilization continued to develop, and the way of life gradually changed, and finally formed a harmonious symbiotic relationship between man and nature.
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