WHAT BRINGS US TOGETHER, WHAT SETS US APART
The sheer range of topics that can be discussed refracted through the mirror of human/animal relationships in the past is enormous, encompassing in prehistory canonical issues such as the nature of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the exploitation of natural resources, the origins of farming, and the domestication of animals. Animal images came to feature as signs and symbols in religious or ritual systems. As complex societies developed issues around status and diet, religious practice, foodways, and food taboos became interwoven, and before human slavery certain animal species became widely exploited as working creatures.
Animals as status symbols
The keeping of certain types of animals as pets and status symbols must have begun at an early date. Considering the history of collecting, observing, cataloguing, and studying animals can be illuminating. The Chinese ‘garden of intelligence’, including a collection of animals, founded by the emperor Wen Wang around 1000 BC, was a menagerie of a
