Q: "I'm confused....I heard you in Atlanta say ferrets were not
    domesticated in Egypt, yet several notible ferret experts say they
    were.  Are you saying they are wrong?"
 
A: Whaaaalll, let's just say they were mistaken.
 
Science really never proves anything directly; it actually only DISPROVES
things.  This is a process called "falsification," and it is what you do
to ideas (or hypotheses).  If you can falsify an idea, then the idea
cannot be correct.  However, if you cannot falsify an idea, it DOESN'T
necessarily mean the idea is correct, all it means is that it hasn't been
disproved.  The way you disprove an idea is with the type of evidence
that can be replicated (repeated) or tested.  The more evidence you have,
the better, especially if that evidence comes from different types of
investigations.
 
For example, humans evolved in Africa, but sometime or another migrated
out to populate most of the world.  The timing of that event has been
tested using genetic changes in humans and dating archaeological
artifacts, coming up with humans leaving Africa about 60-80 thousand
years ago.  Recent work studying changes in head and body lice have
supported that date.  Human head lice live on human hair, but body lice
lives in clothing, and genetic studies indicate body lice evolved from
head lice.  The obvious implication is that body lice evolved from head
lice during the time humans first started wearing clothing.  The
molecular clock dating that change suggests it took place about 75,000
years ago, neatly fitting in with the other times.  A fourth piece of
evidence is the oldest sewing needles date from that period.  A fifth
piece of evidence is that there are no modern human skeletons in Europe
before that time.  There is more supporting evidence, but you get the
idea that the more INDEPENDENT evidence, the stronger the argument.
 
The same is true about ferret domestication.  For ferrets to have been
domesticated in Egypt, the polecat had to be there.  It wasn't and
polecats are not adapted to the environment of north Africa.  For ferrets
to have been domesticated in Egypt, there had to be a reason for the
domestication.  The Egyptians already had cats, and there were no
European rabbits.  For ferrets to have been domesticated in Egypt,
skeletons have to be there.  They aren't, which says a lot for a culture
that mummified virtually every animal in their domain.  For ferrets to
have been domesticated in Egypt, there should be hieroglyphs, words in
the language, something, ANYTHING to support the idea.  There is nada,
zero, zip, nothing.
 
On the other hand, the evidence supporting a southern European
domestication about 4500 BC is substantial.  Polecats have lived
there for hundreds of thousands of years, ferrets are adapted to
the environment, domesticated polecats were mentioned in early Greek
writing, words for "ferret" exist in multiple languages, they have been
domesticated long enough for a separate word to be invented to describe
the domesticated state of the animal, genetic studies tie the ferret to
the European polecat, and much, much more.  But that doesn't mean the
people who thought the ferret was domesticated in Egypt are wrong.
People, just like scientists, base their beliefs of the best possible
evidence, and for generations the idea that ferrets were domesticated in
Egypt had plausibility.  Since then, it has been realized the Biblical
mention was a mistranslation, the hieroglyphic evidence depicted
mongooses, and zooarchaeologists cannot find a single tooth or bone.  All
it means is that they were mistaken; the idea was tested and it didn't
stand up to scrutiny.
 
Think of it this way.  It has been claimed that Thomas Edison performed
10,000 experiments before he successfully produced the light bulb.  When
he was asked about his 10,000 mistakes before he got it right, Edison
said he didn't make 10,000 mistakes, but that the success took 10,001
steps to completion.  And as far as I am concerned, he was correct; he
wasn't wrong so much as he was discovering things that didn't work.
 
Originally, no one had a clue to where ferrets were domesticated.  Then
it was thought they were domesticated in Egypt.  I have suggested it was
across a wide area of southern Europe.  Tomorrow?  Who knows?  Maybe
better evidence will show a specific locality.  Will that make me wrong?
No, all it would mean is we've taken another step towards the truth.
 
Bob C
[Posted in FML issue 4381]