Animal power

By using animals’ muscle power for traction and transport, humans expanded the efficiency of these processes immensely. Animal power, essential for heavy hauling or rapid travel until the mid-1800s, remains important to much of the world’s agriculture.

Background

The dog was the first animal domesticated, tamed and bred from wolf ancestors. Archaeological sites showing this development date back approximately eleven thousand years in both northern Europe and North America. The first dogs may have helped hunters chase and exhaust game. They also may have pulled snow sleds and hauled loads via travois, as they did for Native Americans in later centuries. If dogs were so employed in this era—and it has not been proved that they were—these would be the first intentional uses of animal power as an energy resource. Other important tasks using their senses and group instincts to help humans—tracking, scavenging, and guarding—probably meant that dogs were seldom kept primarily for their muscle power.

The next successfully domesticated animals were sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. This process is shown in remains and artifacts from Jericho that document the origins of agriculture. Centuries after grain was first cultivated, people began to keep livestock. At first the animals were probably loosely controlled and were seen as “walking meat larders” and occasionally providers of milk, fiber, and leather. Once the process was under way, around 8000-7000 BCE, people must have experimented with riding and other ways to use the animals in their farming.

Of these anciently domesticated species, only cattle proved to have the combination of strength and to do useful work under human direction. Shifting from a plow pushed by a man or woman to one pulled by an ox multiplied the traction enormously and enabled much more food to be produced with the same investment of human time. This was a major step in the ongoing “agricultural revolution” that created a growing population, town life, and a material surplus to support specialized trades. Using cattle in the fields also called forth other innovations. Harnesses and/or yokes had to be created to control the animals, implements had to become larger, and castration of young male animals had to be practiced to produce oxen that were both strong and docile. Later (sometime around 3000 B.C.E.), the wheel was invented. Hitching such animals to wheeled carts and wagons, humans could travel farther and more easily and could move bulkier goods. Draft animals (animals used for hauling) thus served not only as a direct resource in agriculture and transportation but also as a source of synergy, expanding their owners’ geographic and trade horizons and inspiring further inventions.

While most of the evidence for this sequence of events exists in the ancient Near East, some of the same steps took place independently, perhaps several times, elsewhere in Eurasia. For example, the working cattle native to Asia—water buffaloes and yaks—were bred from wild species different from European domestic cattle’s ancestors.

Horses and Related Species

Horses and their kin, the most versatile of hauling and riding animals, were domesticated later. Wild horses roamed much of the world during the last ice age but had become extinct in the Americas by 10,000 BCE and rare in Western Europe and the Mediterranean region about the same time. How much this disappearance was due to change and how much to humans’ overhunting is uncertain.

Many prehistorians believe that horses were first tamed and trained for riding north of the Black Sea, where they survived in large numbers. Hence, they were reintroduced into Europe and western Asia, between 3000 and 2000 BCE, by successive invasions of mounted tribesmen from the central Asian steppes. However, as with much of prehistory, the evidence is unclear. Horses never disappeared completely in Europe, and they may have been domesticated in several places from local stock.

The donkey, which is native to North Africa, was brought into use in the same millennium. Donkeys loaded with packs or wearing saddlecloths are shown in Egyptian friezes from 2500 BCE; they also appear in early Sumerian and Assyrian records. Horses and donkeys were already being interbred at this time to produce vigorous offspring, notably the mule, with the traits of both species. From then until the end of the nineteenth century, the equids were the most widely used animals in the world for transporting people and goods. They also became immensely important in agricultural processes.

Because of their gait, donkeys cannot be ridden at high speeds, but their adaptability to harsh conditions makes them good pack animals and beasts-of-all-trades on small farms. Mules, hybrids from mare mothers and donkey sires, combine the horse’s strength with the donkey’s stamina. Mules have been known to carry 450 kilograms each, going as far as 80 kilometers between water stops.

Horses’ special qualities include speed, herd hierarchical instincts that dispose them to follow human leadership, and relative intelligence. Horses have been bred to strengthen various traits: the Arabian and the modern thoroughbred for speed; the medieval war horse and the modern shire and Clydesdale for strength and stamina; the Shetland pony for multiple tasks in damp and ferocious weather. As an example of the speed gained from using horses, over short distances (up to 5 kilometers) a horse can travel in the range of 48 kilometers per hour. A horse carrying a rider and saddle might make a trip of 480 kilometers in sixty hours, and the time can be shortened by frequent changes of mount. A person in top condition—for example, a soldier accustomed to long marches—typically can walk around 65 kilometers a day.

Horse-related technology also developed continuously over time, adding to the effectiveness of horse and rider and horse and vehicle. Bit and reins, stirrups (not adopted in Europe until the early Middle Ages), horseshoes, saddle and carriage designs, and modern veterinary medicine, all brought new capacities to the horsepower on which humankind relied.

Not only was the horse an essential energy resource, but its presence also repeatedly changed history and society. The rise of cavalry as a mobile force in warfare and the change to a horse-based economy and culture by North American Plains Indians when horses were reintroduced by Spanish invaders are only two of the many transformations wrought by horsepower.

Other Animals as Energy Sources

Humans have attempted to put many kinds of large animals to work, but only a few other species have proved useful. Of these, the most important have been those already adapted to extreme climates and terrains.

The camel is called the “ship of the desert” because of its ability to travel for long distances between water holes. Some desert nomad tribes organize their way of life around the use of camels. Normally employed as pack and riding animals, camels were also occasionally used in war in the ancient world, partly to frighten the enemy’s men and horses. Llamas, members of the camelid family native to South America, serve as pack animals in the Andes mountain region.

Reindeer, adapted to living in an Arctic environment, can find forage on the barren tundra and survive temperatures of -50° Celsius. Laplanders who live in far northern areas have used them in the roles filled by cattle and horses in warmer climates, including riding, pulling carts, and carrying loads as pack animals.

Elephants, native to the Indian subcontinent and to Africa, have been trained in both regions to lift and carry extremely heavy objects, although their use as riding beasts has been largely confined to ceremonial occasions and entertainment.

Animal Power Today

From prehistory through the nineteenth century, much of the work of civilization depended upon animal power. With the coming of steam power and the internal combustion engine, animals gradually became less essential for transport and traction, at least in the developed world. Yet as late as the 1930s, horses or mule teams, rather than tractors, were used by many American farmers.

In Asia and Africa, most of the farmland is still worked with draft animals. For a small farmer of limited means or in an isolated area, animal power has several advantages. Unlike machines, animals do not need complex networks to supply their fuel or parts for repair. They produce their own replacements, and their malfunctions sometimes heal themselves without special knowledge or tools on the owner’s part. Their by-products can be recycled into agricultural use.

For these reasons, and because they bring less devastation to land and air, some members of “back to the Earth” movements in the United States choose animal power. Heavy horses are also used in selected logging operations to avoid the clear-cutting and other environmental damage that machines bring.

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