Native americans domesticating the Bison

    Why didn't the native Americans domesticated the Bison. To me it looks even more well built than the traditional bull. And as far as i know it is a herd animal. That would have solved their beast of burden problem. I am curious that why didn't they domesticated it.

They also hunted for honour. There is no honour in hunting a domesticated animal.

Originally posted by Paul In prehistoric Europe domestication of animals was sporadic, in some places they did and some they didn't. The main factor seems to be abundance of food. Where the was plenty of food available no domestication was needed. The Injuns would only have needed to domesticate the bison in an area there was a shortage.

If you ever use that term again there is going to be trouble!

Yeap, English is plenty of hate words... Tell me about it...

Actually, believe it or not, there are very few real hate words in Spanish. If we want to ofend a person of another ethnic group or race we have to make the effort of compounding phrases! Creating stupid new words or using methaphores (comparing with animales, etc.) but the language itself is not very hateful at all.

Edited by pinguin - 18-Nov-2007 at 21:23

Many of the peoples of Asia, Europe and Africa received their domesticated animals through association with other peoples whom they came into contact with. The pig is the only animal that seems to have originally been domesticated in Europe, though it was also seperately domesticated in Asia. The origins of domesticated dogs and horses is uncertain. Researchers are trying to determine if they were originally domesticated in one place and then spread throughout the world, or whether they were domesticated seperately by different peoples at different times. It's fairly certain that cattle, sheep, and goats were originally domesticated in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and then spread throughout the world by humans. Though a subspecies of cattle was seperately domesticated in the Indus Valley of South-Central Asia. There were wild cattle in Europe (now extinct) but these weren't the ancestors of domesticated cattle, the  domesticated cattle coming from the Middle East were. Wild cats are found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but it was the subspecies in north Africa that was domesticated and spread by humans throughout the world. The first horses were domesticated in Turkestan (Central Asia) though there were probably additional domestications elsewhere, and the European wild horse (tarpan) is very likely ancestral to modern European horse breeds.

Pinguin, how is Latin America so brilliant?!! I just cant get my head around it!!

Yeah, I just looooove to re-iterate!!

Originally posted by pinguin anti-western feelings? come on. What most Western than the "Holy" Catholic Church? . Read "Mio Cid" and you'll figure it out what I mean.   Besides, never hear about the origin of the Arthurian tales about the Holly Grail? They are Spanish! Ole!

From what everyone has said so far, it seems like domestication of animals is largely tied to agriculture (dogs and horses being an exception). So I guess what you would need to do is look at the people in central North America who were farming, and I think this was only happening along the banks of the Mississippi and in the Eastern Woodlands (and Southeastern US and Southwest, but I don't think there were any bison there) and compare that to where the bison lived. Was there a correlation? Were the Mississippians hunting bison at all?