Q:"...I'm looking for an authority on these subjects to set us all
   straight. Are you around, Bob?'
 
A: Sure, and I bounce as well.
 
"2. Ferrets have been domesticated for thousands of years."
 
True.  Between 450-425 BC, Aristophanes used a description of a weasel-like
animal to poke satirical fun at politicians in at least 4 plays.  The
acceptance of this reference has always been clouded because he used the
same word later used for polecat by Aristotle.  Two arguments have always
been used against accepting the statement; first, he was talking about
polecats instead of ferrets, but those arguments were based on a single
translation in a single play, rather than the pattern of references in
multiple plays.  In that case, *I* have found Aristophanes consistently
uses the word to describe an animal in human occupation and service, which
demonstrates a domesticated state regardless of the length of domestication.
 
One of the keys of satire is for the audience to have a common point of
reference, such as when I play the satirical word play of the initals for
California, CA, as well as the use of Gestapo.  Both CaCa and Gestapo are
easily recognized, and the vast majority of people fully understand I am
saying the California Fish and Game are full of crap and undermining
personal liberties because of personal bias rather than sound scientific
reasons.  Satire was no different in Aristophanes day, and the references
were meant to be understood by all.  Thus, Aristophanes was using a
stereotypic idea of a human-centered polecat so that his audience would
understand what he was saying about the politicans of his day.  I think the
reason Aristophane's "ferretr" and Aristotle's "polecat" were the same word
is for the same reason the two words are the same in many European
languages today, even though today there is a clear distinction between
the two animals.  If you assume the polecat was in an early state of
domestication, there is ample precient for a domesticated animal to have
the same name as it's wild kin, such as with the mink, skunk, turkey,
mouse, rat, etc.
 
The second argument is that he was describing a weasel or a mongoose, but
these arguments are invalid because different words were used for these
animals, which Aristophanes knew about and could have used instead.  Most
of this problem stems from older, less accurate translatations of the
ancient plays, which were used as the reference.
 
However, even the elimination of Aristophanes does not negate the use of
viverae by Strabo, which was the Latin for ferret.  Making it even more
unclear is that viverae relates to Viveridae, the family of mongeese and
civets, completely different than mustelids (The two groups were once
erroneously lumped together.  Many taxonomists now use "Herpestidae"
instead, a familial name not accepted by all).  Strabo's reference is
rarely argued against; it is clearly accepted by most students of
domestication as a reference to the ferret, and it was made about AD 70.
That puts domestication in the realm of "thousands of years."
 
The real problem here is twofold. First, there are little historical texts
mentioning ferrets because few people could write and ferrets were a
"vulgar" animal; that is, they were used by commoners rather than by the
aristocracy. Think about it--peasants eat rabbit, nobility eat elk (red
deer). Only the nobility and clergy write, so only those noble animals are
spoken about. That puts the references few and far between.
 
The second difficulty is that there is few archaeological remains
identified as being a domesticated ferret, and those are relatively recent
in nature.  This is the same problem faced by people investigating cat or
dog domestication; few zooarchaeologists will ever identify felid or canid
remains as a domesticated unless it is clearly associated with a skull.
The bones are just too similar.  I have a couple of ideas which may break
this difficulty wide open, but I need funding and I need a source of scores
of unneutered skeletons for comparison.  I currently have neither.  Until
I, or any number of other people, come up with those criteria, domesticated
ferret remains will be recovered, but simply labeled "Mustela sp." and
filed away.
 
Another serious problem with the archaeology is that, especially in Europe,
archaeologists have excavated the nobility rather than the commoners,
simply because there was more chance for gold and fame (and the sites were
easier to discover and dig).  Its called the archaeology of kings, and the
bias was been so severe that we know the daily life of Egyptian pharoahs in
excruciating detail, but we couldn't tell you what early Egyptian laborors
ate until the last few years.  With nobility sites in Europe, you find
horse and dog and hawk, but very little ferret.  My guess is more ferrets
will be found when more common dwellings are excavated and the bone become
identifiable.
 
The bottom line is, ferrets were first domesticated at least 2000 years
ago, and probably more in the 2500 year range.  it is possible that they
were domesticated sooner, but factual evidence limits our best
understanding of ferret origins to 2500 years ago, or about 450 BC.
 
Bob C and 20 Mo' Chronological Carpet Sharks
[Posted in FML issue 2543]