cattle

• hunted by Neanderthalers

64:4.2800,000 years ago game was abun­dant; many species of deer, as well as ele­phants and hip­popota­muses, roamed over Eu­rope. Cat­tle were plen­ti­ful; horses and wolves were ev­ery­where. The Ne­an­derthalers were great hunters, and the tribes in France were the first to adopt the prac­tice of giv­ing the most suc­cess­ful hunters the choice of women for wives.

• Prince’s staff helped improve

66:5.5Sev­eral types of use­ful an­i­mals, now ex­tinct, were tamed, to­gether with some that have con­tin­ued as do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals to the pres­ent day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had al­ready been suc­cess­ful in tam­ing the ele­phant. The cow was so im­proved by care­ful breed­ing as to be­come a valu­able source of food; but­ter and cheese be­came com­mon ar­ti­cles of hu­man diet. Men were taught to use oxen for bur­den bear­ing, but the horse was not do­mes­ti­cated un­til a later date. The mem­bers of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of trac­tion.

• primitive men loved c. more their wives

68:5.8Prepas­toral so­ci­ety was one of sex co-op­er­a­tion, but the spread of an­i­mal hus­bandry re­duced women to the depths of so­cial slav­ery. In ear­lier times it was man’s duty to se­cure the an­i­mal food, woman’s busi­ness to pro­vide the veg­etable ed­i­bles. There­fore, when man en­tered the pas­toral era of his ex­is­tence, woman’s dig­nity fell greatly. She must still toil to pro­duce the veg­etable ne­ces­si­ties of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to pro­vide an abun­dance of an­i­mal food. Man thus be­came rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dent of woman; through­out the en­tire pas­toral age woman’s sta­tus steadily de­clined. By the close of this era she had be­come scarcely more than a hu­man an­i­mal, con­signed to work and to bear hu­man off­spring, much as the an­i­mals of the herd were ex­pected to la­bor and bring forth young. The men of the pas­toral ages had great love for their cat­tle; all the more pity they could not have de­vel­oped a deeper af­fec­tion for their wives.

• early units of barter

69:4.5The first weights were grains of wheat and other ce­re­als. The first medium of ex­change was a fish or a goat. Later the cow be­came a unit of barter.

• stealing c. universally punished by summary death

70:10.15Trea­son—the “sell­ing out” or be­trayal of one’s tribal as­so­ciates—was the first cap­i­tal crime. Cat­tle steal­ing was uni­ver­sally pun­ished by sum­mary death, and even re­cently horse steal­ing has been sim­i­larly pun­ished. But as time passed, it was learned that the sever­ity of the pun­ish­ment was not so valu­able a de­ter­rent to crime as was its cer­tainty and swift­ness.

• Nodites imported

80:1.2In the east­ern trough of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean the Nod­ites had es­tab­lished one of their most ex­ten­sive cul­tures and from these cen­ters had pen­e­trated some­what into south­ern Eu­rope but more es­pe­cially into north­ern Africa. The broad-headed Nod­ite-An­don­ite Syr­i­ans very early in­tro­duced pot­tery and agri­cul­ture in con­nec­tion with their set­tle­ments on the slowly ris­ing Nile delta. They also im­ported sheep, goats, cat­tle, and other do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals and brought in greatly im­proved meth­ods of met­al­work­ing, Syria then be­ing the cen­ter of that in­dus­try.

• domesticated by 5000 B.C.

81:2.12The And­ites of Tur­kes­tan were the first peo­ples to ex­ten­sively do­mes­ti­cate the horse, and this is an­other rea­son why their cul­ture was for so long pre­dom­i­nant. By 5000 B.C. the Mes­o­po­ta­mian, Tur­kes­tan, and Chi­nese farm­ers had be­gun the rais­ing of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and ele­phants. They em­ployed as beasts of bur­den the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was him­self at one time the beast of bur­den. One ruler of the blue race once had one hun­dred thou­sand men in his colony of bur­den bear­ers.

• became fetish animals

88:1.5When an­i­mals be­came fe­tishes, there en­sued the taboos on eat­ing the flesh of the fe­tish an­i­mal. Apes and mon­keys, be­cause of re­sem­blance to man, early be­came fe­tish an­i­mals; later, snakes, birds, and swine were also sim­i­larly re­garded. At one time the cow was a fe­tish, the milk be­ing taboo while the exc­reta were highly es­teemed. The ser­pent was revered in Pales­tine, es­pe­cially by the Phoeni­cians, who, along with the Jews, con­sid­ered it to be the mouth­piece of evil spir­its. Even many mod­erns be­lieve in the charm pow­ers of rep­tiles. From Ara­bia on through In­dia to the snake dance of the Mo­qui tribe of red men the ser­pent has been revered.

• Jesus’ home had 3 cows

123:5.15Be­fore he was eight years of age, he was known to all the moth­ers and young women of Naz­a­reth, who had met him and talked with him at the spring, which was not far from his home, and which was one of the so­cial cen­ters of con­tact and gos­sip for the en­tire town. This year Je­sus learned to milk the fam­ily cow and care for the other an­i­mals. Dur­ing this and the fol­low­ing year he also learned to make cheese and to weave. When he was ten years of age, he was an ex­pert loom op­er­a­tor. It was about this time that Je­sus and the neigh­bor boy Ja­cob be­came great friends of the pot­ter who worked near the flow­ing spring; and as they watched Nathan’s deft fin­gers mold the clay on the pot­ter’s wheel, many times both of them de­ter­mined to be pot­ters when they grew up. Nathan was very fond of the lads and of­ten gave them clay to play with, seek­ing to stim­u­late their cre­ative imag­i­na­tions by sug­gest­ing com­pet­i­tive ef­forts in mod­el­ing var­i­ous ob­jects and an­i­mals.

• Jesus’ home had 3 cows

126:3.12Be­fore the end of this year Mary saw the fam­ily funds di­min­ish­ing. She turned the sale of doves over to James. Pres­ently they bought a sec­ond cow, and with the aid of Miriam they be­gan the sale of milk to their Naz­a­reth neigh­bors.

• Jesus’ home had 3 cows

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

• prodigal son given fatted calf

169:1.10“And then, af­ter the happy fa­ther had led the foot­sore and weary lad into the house, he called to his ser­vants: ‘Bring on the fat­ted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they all gath­ered about the fa­ther to re­joice with him over the restora­tion of his son.

• used in animal sacrifice

173:1.6As Je­sus was about to be­gin his ad­dress, two things hap­pened to ar­rest his at­ten­tion. At the money ta­ble of a near-by ex­changer a vi­o­lent and heated ar­gu­ment had arisen over the al­leged over­charg­ing of a Jew from Alexan­dria, while at the same mo­ment the air was rent by the bel­low­ing of a drove of some one hun­dred bul­locks which was be­ing driven from one sec­tion of the an­i­mal pens to an­other. As Je­sus paused, silently but thought­fully con­tem­plat­ing this scene of com­merce and con­fu­sion, close by he be­held a sim­ple-minded Galilean, a man he had once talked with in Iron, be­ing ridiculed and jos­tled about by su­per­cil­ious and would-be su­pe­rior Judeans; and all of this com­bined to pro­duce one of those strange and pe­ri­odic up­ris­ings of in­dig­nant emo­tion in the soul of Je­sus.

173:1.7To the amaze­ment of his apos­tles, stand­ing near at hand, who re­frained from par­tic­i­pa­tion in what so soon fol­lowed, Je­sus stepped down from the teach­ing plat­form and, go­ing over to the lad who was driv­ing the cat­tle through the court, took from him his whip of cords and swiftly drove the an­i­mals from the tem­ple. But that was not all; he strode ma­jes­ti­cally be­fore the won­der­ing gaze of the thou­sands as­sem­bled in the tem­ple court to the far­thest cat­tle pen and pro­ceeded to open the gates of ev­ery stall and to drive out the im­pris­oned an­i­mals. By this time the as­sem­bled pil­grims were elec­tri­fied, and with up­roar­i­ous shout­ing they moved to­ward the bazaars and be­gan to over­turn the ta­bles of the money-chang­ers. In less than five min­utes all com­merce had been swept from the tem­ple. By the time the near-by Ro­man guards had ap­peared on the scene, all was quiet, and the crowds had be­come or­derly; Je­sus, re­turn­ing to the speaker’s stand, spoke to the mul­ti­tude: “You have this day wit­nessed that which is writ­ten in the Scrip­tures: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all na­tions, but you have made it a den of rob­bers.’”