National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

CAVICORNIA.   369

Some comparative withers heights are given below :

cm.

Bos primigenius, skeleton at Berlin   168
Bos namadicus, Narbada Valley India, calculated from the length of the skull (50.8 cm.) in the

British Museum   149

Bos namadicus, Anau   149

Apis skeleton (Bos taurus macroceros) Paris   154

Bos taurus macroceros, Anau .    153

Hungarian cattle   150

Short-horn cattle   149-122

Fast Frisian cattle   149-137

Swiss Simmental cattle   145-137

It is probable that the measurement calculated from the lower jaw for Bos

namadicus is rather small, because the lower jaw is perhaps that of a smaller or female individual. We have unfortunately no means of checking this, unless we calculate the height of the withers from the width of the metacarpus. This small measurement, however, leaves a very uncertain result. We obtain i 58 cm. in our special case. In any event, the two calculated withers heights suffice perfectly to show that we have to do with large, stout bovids, in both wild and domesticated forms.

We can therefore recapitulate as follows concerning the results of our study of the bovids of Anau :

In the lower layers of the period I a, from — 24 feet upward, there occur the remains of a wild Bos namadicus Falconer & Cautley. During period I b there originates from this wild form a domesticated bovid, large and stately, provided with long horns. Judging from the measurements of the preserved bones, this is absolutely the same ox that was possessed by the ancient Egyptians. In the period II the size of the animal seems to have somewhat diminished, unless possibly a smaller bovid may have reached Anau with the other newly imported domestic animals. It is, however, possible that this small form of cattle of the culture II originated in a decline of the cattle-breeding of the later Anau-li ; as indeed the originally large, long-horned ox of the early Babylonians had already become small and short-horned in Assyrian times, and to-day, after a relatively shorter interval, shows a tendency to become hornless. The existence of the short-horned cattle in Western Central Asia is also shown by the discovery of a skull in a kurgan of bronze time in Bizino, near Tobolsk (plate 78, fig. 6).

We find the long-horned form of domestic cattle already in the time of the Babylonians about 4000 to 5000 B. C., in Mesopotamia, as appears on a cylinder seal of those times. We see on this seal the representation of two oxen, moving through a field of grain. Still better known and more available for comparison, because of the greater quantity of existing bone, whole skeletons, skulls, etc., is the occurrence of long-horned cattle dating from the earliest times in Egypt. I have previously discussed the connection of these bovids with the African and European forms. It follows clearly from the distributions of the long-horned cattle over Asia and Europe that the Anau bovids also had an influence in forming the European domestic cattle, as we shall endeavor to show later.