Who Domesticated The Ferret?
 
This is perhaps the most difficult question in the study of ferret
domestication.  If this question could be answered, then most of the
other questions would simply fall into place.  For example, if you could
prove the Romans domesticated the ferret, then the possible references
in the Greek literature would hold little meaning.  If you could prove
the Greeks domesticated the ferret, then those same references would
hold tremendous meaning.
 
There is more to this question than what appears on the surface.  Animal
domestication is intrinsically tied to people, so any history of ferret
domestication is also one of human history.  In fact, you can't have the
one without the other.  To have a domesticated animal, at some point in
the past a group of humans had to have essentially removed the animal's
wild progenitor from the wild to start a selective breeding program.
This breeding program may or may not have been conscious or recognized.
For example, all pet hamsters are the descendents of a single male and
two females that survived from an adult female and 8 offspring removed
from the wild.  In this case, the domestication of golden hamsters can
be traced to a single person at a single point in time, and it was a
conscious decision.  On the other hand, there is genetic evidence that
suggests dog domestication started 135,000 years ago, with good
archaeological evidence of domestication dating to nearly 14,000 years
ago, but there is no good evidence of where domestication first occurred,
or by whom, or even if it was a conscious decision.  However, even if
you don't know the "who done it," it doesnt mean there wasn't done; you
do have the domesticated animal in front of you.
 
In the first installment in this series, it was suggested the area of
domestication was in the southeastern parts of Europe roughly adjacent to
the northeastern Mediterranean.  This was based on a number of factors,
including genetics, the geography of natural history, and even the
historic record, such as it is.  In the second installment, it was
suggested the ancient Greeks had a part in domestication, based mostly
on the historic record.  It would then follow that in this installment
where I discuss who domesticated the ferret, I would return to the same
location and people.
 
If such a position where taken, it would follow that initially only the
ancient Greeks had ferrets; if they domesticated them, they would be
first to have them.  However, remember that polecats were probably not in
all of Greece at the time of domestication.  Even if they were in Greece,
they would have been declining in numbers or rare because of ecological
changes caused by agricultural intensification, the general drying out of
the region, and the substantial increase in Greek population.  Whatever
the reason, polecats are now either rare or absent from most of Greece
today.  If you are going to domesticate ferrets, you have to have
polecats to start with, which is a compelling reason why it is clear the
Egyptians did not domesticate the ferret.  Also, it is important to
remember the level of literacy in the ancient world.  For a historic
record to be documented, you need to have someone to have detailed it,
which means you need literate people.  That is why people associated
with the Church or the State made all the early European records of
ferrets.  The average person was not equipped with the education
necessary for recording ferret use and husbandry, so the early records
tended to be of natural history records, the nobility out hunting, laws
regulating use, or some type of payment record or will.  Even the Greek
and Roman records were not actually about ferrets; both were discussing
the troubles caused by the over-population of rabbits.  The mention of
ferrets was more-or-less a side comment regarding a method of hunting
them--a sort of historical accident.
 
In a situation where you do not have the archaeology to fill in the gaps
in the prehistoric record, and the genetics have been contaminated by
hybridization to wild populations of polecats, you are left high and dry
when the historic record is left at the high tide mark.  The danger is
in assuming the people who domesticated the animal made the last record.
For example, imagine the ferret reference was missing from the Roman
and Greek records and they only discussed rabbits.  In that case, the
oldest reference to ferrets was made about AD 600, and was in Spanish.
If that record was the only one that survived, we could be arguing a
domestication of ferrets on the Iberian Peninsula about 1400 years ago.
The point is the last historic record is not necessarily definitive.
It is true the timing of domestication and the natural history of the
progenitor suggest the Greeks were involved, but it is critically
important to recognize other groups of people could have had a part in
the process.
 
Indeed, we already have a clue to this complexity with the Roman and
Greek records that refer to "Libyan ferrets." I don't think for a second
ferrets were domesticated in Libya; I think the reference is to a name or
a place, not a center of domestication.  Even if ferrets were in Libya,
their presence is not evidence of domestication, but of animal keeping;
ferrets are in Missouri, but I didn't domesticate them.  Still, the
references are extremely important for at least two reasons.  First, they
clearly discuss ferrets and in that regard, most domestication scientists
accept the references.  Second, they indicate ferrets were muzzled and
used to drive animals from burrows--very similar to how it is done today.
There are some very important implications in these two observations.
It means that ferrets were already domesticated; why else send away for
"Libyan ferrets" if you could use a wild animal?  Second, the remark that
ferrets were muzzled indicates that ferrets had been around for quite
some time, at least long enough for ferreting technology to be developed
(a technology that remains largely unchanged).  This implication is
actually quite important, because it takes a lot of time to figure out
how to use an animal for hunting, what the best type of technology would
be, and how to best go about the job, and hundreds of little details
that would take quite some time to figure out.  Exactly how much time it
would take to learn these things is unknown, but it could conceivably be
several generations.  Maybe it was as long as a hundred years to get
ferreting right.  It is even possible it took 300 to 400 years to switch
from using a ferret for mousing to using it for rabbiting, about the time
difference between Pliny and Strabo's references, and those tenuous ones
made by the ancient Greeks.
 
As you can see, the problem isn't finding people who had the ferret;
the real problem is deciding who could have domesticated it, then
methodically ruling each one out.  The possible "A-list" of candidates
include the Greeks, early Romans, Phoenicians, and the Macedonians, but
that is by no means a complete list.  The "B-list" would contain any
number of people living on or near the Mediterranean's northeastern
coastline, up into Hungary, maybe east towards Asia, and even southeast
into Turkey.  On the "C-list" would be North Africans, Moroccans, and
peoples on the Mediterranean side of the Iberian Peninsula, ranging up
into Europe.
 
So, how do we rule any group of people out?  We can't; we need
archaeology to make up for the evidence missing from the historical
record, and we simply do not have any.  The bottom line is that the
people who domesticated the ferret are unknown.  It is a good bet that
the members of the "A-List," especially the Macedonians and Greeks, were
involved.  I think the Phoenicians played an important role in spreading
the ferret throughout the Mediterranean, a role later taken up by the
Romans.  However, regardless of hypotheses, at this point in time, the
people who domesticated the ferret are unknown.
 
Bob C  [log in to unmask]
[Posted in FML issue 4734]