The forgotten domestication of the Eurasian wild ass

Everyone knows that the Asian wild ass (Equus hemionus) has never been domesticated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onager and https://phys.org/news/2013-03-secret-wild-asses-negev.html). And everyone is probably wrong. Or, more precisely, forgetful.

If the European form, hydruntinus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wild_ass), is included, the Eurasian wild ass had an exceptionally wide natural distribution from Portugal in the west nearly to Beijing in the east.

This distribution included several of the world's original civilisations, making it unlikely that the Eurasian wild ass would have been exempt from domestication.

Perhaps the most important civilisation to remember is that of Mesopotamia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia). Here the Eurasian wild ass was the only species of equid available 5000 years ago, in the form of a subspecies combining exceptionally short ear pinnae with diminutive body size (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_wild_ass and https://web.archive.org/web/20100506003501/http://www.petermaas.nl/extinct/speciesinfo/syrianwildass.htm).

Please see page 18-36 in https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc20.pdf. Bones from Tell Asmar have been identified as Equus hemionus hemippus.

The archaeological depiction of short-eared equids in Mesopotamia 4600 years ago (https://spiritedhorse.wordpress.com/2017/12/23/the-standard-of-ur/) seems to show a domesticated form of the Eurasian wild ass - identified as the 'onager' by F E Zeuner in 1963 (https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-History-of-Domesticated-Animals.-By-F.-E.-Zeuner-Cross/7c57568f42bfb10af5c0ea04ebe4bf2fdaf4f1bc and https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/a-history-of-domesticated-animals-by-f-e-zeuner-london-hutchinson-1963-560-pp-355-figs-4-4s/61201B6CFADCC61957C5779D12DC1118). Zeuner's account was later relayed by Anthony Dent (1972) in his book 'Donkey: the story of the ass from east to west') and by Edward Hyams (1972) in his book 'Animals in the service of man: 10,000 years of domestication'.

The Sumerian cart/chariot had two or four-wheels, was manned by two, and was harnessed to four individuals of the 'onager' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer and http://sumerianshakespeare.com/84201.html).

Note, however, that the subspecies occurring in Mesopotamia was the Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus) - not the onager, indigenous to what is now Iran. These subspecies, the former now extinct, can be distinguished by ear length and body size.

Little more has been written for the last half-century about this instance of domestication. However, it remains possible that the Eurasian wild ass was the ancestor of the first form of domestic equid to work in conjunction with the newly-invented wheel (https://www.newscientist.com/definition/the-wheel/).

What looks like the domestic form of the Eurasian wild ass was later replaced in Mesopotamia by the horse (Equus caballus) from the northeast and the donkey (Equus asinus) from the southwest.

The possible reason for this redundancy is that the Eurasian wild ass, being ecologically and physiologically intermediate between horse and donkey, was not as efficient in the service of humans as the two more specialised species with their division of labour.

However, there were probably attempts to hybridise the two species of asses before the Eurasian species was fully replaced.

Dent (1972) states: "most asses east of the Euphrates must have an infinitesimal amount of onager blood in their ancestry. Unlike the cross between the ass and the horse, that between the domestic African and the Asiatic wild ass is fertile...in Asia Minor, in Persia, and in Mesopotamia there will have been a brief period...perhaps not more than a few centuries (about 3500 years ago)...during which the African ass and the onager were both in use, the one for pack-traffic and the other for driving. These would be crossed, either deliberately or now and again by accident...so that by the time the pure-bred onager ceased to be used in harness - because it was displaced by the horse in the second millennium B.C. - amid the donkey-stock of Asia east of, roughly, the Orontes River there would be a thin trickle of onager blood in the veins".

Can we assume that the Sumerians subjected the Syrian wild ass to enough selective breeding to produce a domestic form? If so, then this may possibly be the only species/subspecies of equid to exist for only a millennium from its origination to its extinction.

One of the reasons why this topic has lapsed is that it is easy to ignore an entity devoid of a name. In the case of the horse, the scientific name caballus is distinct from that of the wild ancestor, ferus. In the case of the donkey, we have asinus vs africanus. What about the hypothetical distinction in the case of the Eurasian form of ass?

To foster a search-image for further scrutiny, perhaps we can give the extinct domestic descendant of the Syrian wild ass the working name 'Sumerian ass (Equus hemionus sumer)'?

Posted on October 21, 2021 04:19 AM by milewski milewski

Comments

Here is perhaps the most remarkable example of forgetfulness of the Syrian wild ass. Equus hemionus does not appear at all in 'The mammals of Arabia' by D L Harrison and P J J Bates (1991, Harrison Zoological Museum Publication). This comprehensive review of all the wild mammals indigenous to the entire Arabian region runs to 354 pages and includes Syria and Iraq, yet makes no mention of any perissodactyl, equid or ass, past or present. And even the reviewer of this work, Gordon Corbet, failed to notice the omission (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0030605300023280).

Posted by milewski over 2 years ago

Edward Hyams (1972) states on pages 12: "It is curious...that, despite the contrary assertion of ancient Roman authorities who knew what they were talking about, the onager has long been supposed to be untameable; it was, and is, nothing of the kind".

Posted by milewski over 2 years ago

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