How would zebra cavalry and draught animals have effected the political and military development of sub-saharan Africa?
Zebra Cavalry
Cameron Reyes
Julian Taylor
According to Guns Germs and Steel, zebras are actually pretty terrible candidates for domestication. They're social herd animals, but aren't responsive to instruction like horses can be. Jared Diamond is kind of controversial, but he was probably right on that front.
Easton Cooper
But we *know* the Germans domesticated hundreds of them to ride and haul military equipment in East Africa in a short timeframe. That's irreconcilable, and I'll take hard evidence in the historical record of its possibility over baseless assertions that it isn't.
John Moore
even reddit historians debunks that book
Nolan Carter
There were lots of attempts to domesticate zebras, by locals and European settlers. But almost all of them failed and even when they did "succeed" they were panicky under any kind of stress, unruly even when not, violent to everyone even their handlers and just generally hard to control. Exactly what you don't want for a mount during a battle, or in general really.
These are animals who key to survival is running at any sign of trouble and kicking lions and crocodiles to death when they can't, and they don't have the same type hierarchy as horses for you to insert yourself into.
This is why the most successful attempts 1) used zebroids rather than purebred zebras and 2) used them exclusively for transport work not as combat mounts, even in the realtively few cases it wasn't just a novelty.
Evan Hall
>But we *know* the Germans domesticated hundreds of them to ride and haul military equipment in East Africa in a short timeframe.
Citation needed.
Matthew Davis
>horeses were never wild
>it didnt take about 1000 years to tame them
Its the single most retarded argument I have ever heard
Alexander Thomas
*sigh*
It’s a lot of work being the superior race of people
Isaac Peterson
Jared Diamond should go back to studying birds, not making what's essentially a written special for the history channel
Justin Jones
It's pointless to say that zebras are harder to train than horses. Horses are a domesticated species - by fucking definition they're easer to train.
What you want to compare zebras to is the ancestor of the modern horse ... but since we don't have any of those floating around today it's impossible to know whether they were any harder to domesticate.
David Martinez
Except a similar comparison does exist - the range the African Wild Ass was domesticated overlaps with the ranges where Zebras existed. But they were domesticated while zebras weren't.
Adam Howard
He was nothing but a faggot who wrote a book to confirm his bias.
Normal horses are social, herd animals.
Nathan Murphy
well considering they were using 1st or 2nd gen domesticated then thats to be expected
Andrew Allen
When your options are haul stuff by hand or train zebra, you train zebras. When you have a ready supply of much larger horses which are already more docile from generations of captivity and have been tamed (because let's not forget that horses typically require some breaking in even today), the zebra is pointless as a beast or burden or riding animal.
Diamond operates under the idiotic logic that "if it wasn't historically domesticated, it can't be." We know from the Soviet fox experiments, that you can selectively breed for docility very easily and see significant results in as few as 6 generations. This was then repeated with other wild animals like minks and otters with similar results. In 40 years, you could have 10 generations of selectively bred zebras. In 100, you could have 25 - at which point you're probably looking at a domesticated zebra. Who knows, they might lose their stripes like the ancient proto-horses.
William Reed
The Fox Domestication proves that more things can be domesticated than are, but be careful of falling into hindsight bias.
We know the effects of horse domestication. They didn't. 40 years is spending your entire working life breeding zebras for something that you don't know will pay off and more importantly DOESN'T pay off for most of your life. That sort of thing isn't a luxury available to a subsistence farmer or hunter gather.
Most of the evidence I've seen shows that horses, aurochs, and other beasts of burden were domesticated for meat first i.e. something provides a benefit in the meantime and allows for multiple human generations to work on their livestock. In that meat role, other animals like cattle were already available and far more suitable.
James Bennett
Zebras are harder to domesticate because of the males, in a herd the male zebras aren’t exactly team players and only establish a hierarchy when mating. Horses have herds with far more social hierarchy and when you ride a horse it accepts you as it’s superior. To a zebra it’s just a lot more uneasy. Can it be bred out? Maybe, just every male is considerably dangerous.
Brody Miller
>africans: have thousands of years to train zebras, but don't
>germans: train zebras in a few years
Imagine the mental gymnastics it must take to believe Africans are anywhere near equivalent to Europeans.
Juan Williams
Zebras are to horses as niggers are to people. They can be tamed but not domesticated.
Andrew Thomas
>Jared Diamond
>probably right
if the reasons he stated really applied there is no way the auroch or wild asses or camels could have ever been domesticated. Lots of domesticated beasts of burden completely lack social hierarchies like those of ancient wild horses/wolves
Sebastian Bennett
>(((Diamond)))
youtube.com
Noah Perry
Would cavalry have helped subsaharan Africa develop more sophisticated kingdoms?
Alexander Nelson
Zebra Troops
Grayson Rogers
given enough time and money you can domesticate anything
Noah Brooks
ay ho up so yous saying a wild animal wit no 6 gorillion year historey of domestocation and selectave breedan is wild an shit
Brayden Ortiz
youtube.com
What's going on here?
Austin Stewart
Undoubtedly, but Africans lack the intelligence and skills to accomplish such a feat
Adam Peterson
That same asshole started the urban legend that Easter Island inhabitants cut down every last tree on their island which is such a mind boggingly stupid assertion it might be trolling irl
Carter Edwards
this post brought to you by alt hype gang
Christian Campbell
Diamond is shit but damn so many of the rebbutals fall into the same reductionist and presentist pit falls.
Accounts from when Aurochs still existed in the wild say they were comparatively docile similar to cattle, and the wild ass, the animal we domesticated donkeys from still exists and are much more easily domesticated than zebras.
Something can be easier and or more fruitful to domesticate, and that does make it more likely to be domesticated. It's not deterministic like he says, but it is relevant. Its likely part of why cattle were domesticated so much earlier and were much more ubiquitous.
It also helps to explain why only the Donkey was domesticated in areas shared by both Asses and Zebras.
> ancient wild horses/wolves lack social hierarchy
Lolwut. We misunderstood wolf familial pack mechanics for a long time with the whole Alpha thing Mech popularized and then later rightfully disavowed, but they still have hierarchy.
Joseph Martin
Fucking ziggers