What was the most important step in civilization? Alan Butler's answer
is that it was when we began capturing wild sheep, domesticating and
breeding them. Sheep were the mainstay of ancient cultures, by far the
most important of the domesticated animals. Able to survive almost
anywhere, over-wintering successfully, they provided not just milk, meat
and skin, but warm clothing. This is why so many of the earliest gods
and their myths are sheep related, from the Egyptian Ra (ram) to the
later Christian Lamb of God. But sheep have not only sustained us for
thousands of years. Sheep farming also underpinned the growth of
European nation states, international trade and modern economies. In
effect sheep built the modern world. The demands of the woollen textile
industry both drove and financed the Industrial Revolution. The British
Empire was founded on wool. The space needed for sheep drove millions
off the land, many of whom took them to Australasia and the Americas.
With over a billion sheep in the world today the humanity-sheep
relationship represents the most successful example of mammalian
symbiosis on the planet. The story of the sheep is the story of
humanity, a surprisingly exciting and gripping tale that deserves to be
told. Spanning a vast period of time, it includes some of the most
famous names that have been left to us by history, and many that deserve
to better recognised.
