A post I read about ferrets being domesticated 2000 years more than cats
or dogs inspired me to verify some things I thought I knew.  I thought
dogs were one of, if not, the first domestic animals.
 
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/01/01/html/ft_20020101.1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog
these sites have history roughly equivalent to what I had learned, and
puts dogs conservatively 12000-14000 years ago lets say 10000-12000BC.
 
http://www.lookd.com/cats/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog
these sites have cat history as I learned it, and put domestication at
Egyptian times and say 3500-8000 years ago lets say 3000-4000BC.
 
http://www.rud.dk/ferrets/faqhtml/history.html
http://www.britishferretclub.co.uk/ferrethistory.htm
these sites both put ferret domestication in the hands of the Greeks
2500+ years ago around 400BC.
 
I don't recall who made the post but thank you for inspiring me to verify
some of the things I though I knew.  One of the interesting things I
found were the amazing number of web sites that deal with the history
of domestic animals and how different people define domestication.
 
In my web searching I came across this page that has scary inaccurate
facts on ferrets she still thinks they are wild and thinks she is
educating people.
http://members.tripod.com/~Ketchup_9/ferret-home.html
It seems that almost every time I go looking for ferret facts I find
something like this that reminds me how inaccurate web sites can be.
 
Ken Nyren
 
Ken Nyren, 23/1/2006
[Posted in FML issue 5132]