INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I describe significant events and activities during the herding year, starting with the birth of the newborn animals in early spring, until the slaughtering of animals in autumn before the onset of winter. In describing spring through to the start of winter, I depict not a full calendar year but at least the main period of herder–herd animal interaction in Mongolia. During the core winter months from mid-November until mid-February, herding families and herd animals resume a period of semi-hibernation in which activity is kept at a minimum to conserve energy so that they might survive the extreme winter conditions. For the rest of the year, daily activity is largely dictated by the routine of the herd animals and by the changing environmental conditions through the change of seasons. In this chapter I provide etho-ethnographic examples of how the herd animals influence particular herders in their day-to-day lives.

Herders are very aware of the changing seasons, weather conditions, and variations in temperature, as their livelihood depends upon it. Each season is very distinct, with dramatic temperature changes and differing weather conditions marking each new season. The average temperature (the midpoint between the daily high and low) in Mongolia is below freezing for seven months of the year (Goldstein & Beall 1994). In winter, the landscape is white with only patches of bare soil on the windswept mountainsides. Every day is short; the sky is blue but the sun barely warms the land.

What is animal “domestication” in Mongolia? On the basis of my experience living in the Khangai Mountains, I came to the view that Mongolian herding families and herd animals have developed co-domestic existences with one another. In adaptive terms, I suspect that both human and non-human animals have experienced symbiosis, or a co-evolutionary domestication process, through their profound influence upon one another over thousands of years. This long-term perspective, however, was not the primary focus of this book. Instead I have described a window into the herder–herd animal relationship in two valleys in the Khangai Mountains, within the lifetimes of specific individuals. My intention was to provide examples of how human and non-human live together through intercultural, interspecies existences in Mongolia.

Mongolian herders and herd animals rely on one another in a reciprocal relationship of co-dependence. While I was in the field, I realised how important the herd animals were to the herding families' everyday lives and ultimately for their survival. Herders refer to the co-domestic herd animals simply as the five kinds of animal, or tavan khoshuu mal (horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and camels), who are nurtured by and regularly engage with humans within the co-domestic sphere of the herding encampment. As Naraa succinctly put it, “We feed them and they feed us.”

INTRODUCTION

The domestic sphere of the encampment does not have sharp boundaries; people and animals move within and beyond this sphere frequently, but most of the herders' and herd animals' time and energy are spent within this co-domestic sphere. In the first part of this chapter I describe the importance of the social landscape of the herding encampment as the central sphere for establishing the co-domestic relationship between herding family and herd animals. Much of the herders' and herd animals' world is focused upon this core encampment, even though the location of the encampment itself migrates and changes with the seasons. The encampment is, therefore, not a fixed space that can be quantitatively measured; both people and animals inhabit it as an ecosocial sphere. Richard Nelson (1983: 243) describes a similar interweaving of life histories into the surrounding landscape in relation to the Koyukon people: “Each living individual is bound into this pattern of the land and people that extends throughout the terrain and far back across time.”

INTRODUCTION

Throughout my descriptions in the etho-ethnographic chapters that follow, I aim to show that Mongolian herders view their herd animals as agents who participate in a reciprocal, co-domestic relationship. This level of coexistence requires a relationship that is based on trust and respect, as the herd animals are contained to a minimal extent yet choose to associate with the herding family of their own accord. The reciprocity between herder and herd animal works because they live in close proximity to one another within a core area, the “co-domestic sphere.” My approach towards the human–other animal relationship is similar to Tim Ingold's in that we both aim to cross preconceived disciplinary boundaries between the natural sciences and the humanities and to take care to avoid the traditional dichotomy of nature versus culture. I do differ, however, from Ingold's conclusions with reference to a frequently cited paper on human–other animal engagement and domestication entitled “From Trust to Domination: An Alternative History of Human–Animal Relations” (1994). Within this chapter I discuss my contrasting view based on observations from the field with regard to Mongolian herders as pastoralists and their attitudes towards their herd animals.

There has been a tendency in literature on nomadic pastoralism to unify all peoples together under a common framework (Barfield 1993; Dyson-Hudson & Dyson-Hudson 1980; Ingold 1994; Khazanov 1994). Instead of discussing the animals as property, commodities, or as metaphors for human behaviour, my focus is on the herd animals as actors in their own right.

INTRODUCTION

A pictorial depiction of Maliin Banzuragch, a Mongolian Buddhist god and protector of the five kinds of co-domestic animal (tavan khoshuu mal), is situated next to the shrine at the rear of Dogsomjav's ger (see Figure 10.1). The top centre of the picture depicts a god riding a horse-like beast into the heavens. Key elements of fire and water are central components of the drawing. Each of the five kinds of herd animal flanks the central gods: a female horse, cow, sheep, goat, and camel, each nursing her own young. Below, and to one side, a figure is revealed stealing livestock and on the opposite side a wolf has been slain by arrows. This cloth thangkar helps protect Dogsomjav's precious herd animals from harm.

The practices I detail within this chapter offer a means of understanding the underlying attitudes and relationships that Mongolian herders have with the animals they herd. I use the term “spirituality” with caution, as I intend to convey the concept of beings containing an “indeterminate energy” (Humphrey with Onon, 1996) or heightened power. A crucial thought that nagged me throughout my fieldwork was this: How can these herders kill and eat the animals that they have known since birth, to whom they have given individual names, and who are referred to as individual personalities with specific characteristics?

INTRODUCTION

To Mongolian herders, “wild animals” are those that do not enter the domestic sphere of the encampment. Herd animals are seen as part of the extended family. According to Naraa, a wild animal is afraid of humans and hides on the forested slopes, or high in the mountains where few herders would venture on horseback. A co-domestic animal is “fed by people” and nurtured as part of the co-domestic sphere (geriin tejeever). When I asked Naraa what she thought “to domesticate'” meant, she answered with a succinct, practical reply: “we feed them and they feed us.” In fact, Mongolian herders provide only minimal supplementary feed to the herds; however, I interpret her answer to mean more broadly that a herder's role is to nurture, and that then the animals will in turn provide for the herder.

In the previous chapters I focused on herd animals and their closely intertwined lives with herders within the co-domestic sphere of the encampment. This chapter goes beyond this co-domestic realm to encounter other animals and plants that live outside this sphere, inhabiting the forest and mountain slopes and those beings that do not have regular contact with humans.

INTRODUCTION

We expect domestic animals to interact with us and to understand our communication with them, even though we are separate species and our evolutionary paths are quite different. Humans and ungulates are able to respond to cues and gestures that are a product of their social gregariousness, engaging in both intraspecies and interspecies communication. Seminal papers on animal communication by Dawkins and Krebs in the late 1970s recognised that animals communicate between species and are even deceitful in their intentions towards one another, particularly between predator and prey (Dawkins 1978; Dawkins & Krebs 1979; Guilford & Dawkins 1991). Dogs, humans, and sheep are able to assist one another in a farming situation through one species communicating signals and another species receiving those signals and reacting to them. As Donna Haraway (2007) points out, the whole process would not work if sheep did not know how to understand dogs and if dogs did not know how to interpret them. In a Western context, cross-species communication between a farmer and a sheep dog may develop into a wide array of voice commands, whistles, and pointing signals.

The focus of this book is on the processes of animal domestication, not in a historical sense but within a current hybrid community, that of Mongolian herders and the herd animals they live amongst. In the chapters to follow I investigate social behaviour between humans and other animals as a key component in this process. I emphasise both sides of the human–animal relationship by examining their reciprocal social behaviour and communication with one another. I engage not only with how herd animals have an influence upon Mongolian herders' lives, but with the herd animals themselves as individual agents, as an active part of the community.

Herding is a way of life for a large proportion of the people in Mongolia and has existed for over 5,000 years in the Eurasian grassland–steppe environment. Anthropologists, geographers, historians, explorers, journalists, and travel writers have previously documented Mongolian society; nonetheless, I am unaware of any other work written in English that has examined the importance of herd animals, specifically ungulates, to nomadic pastoralists of Mongolia. In this chapter, I describe what the term “domestication” means to Mongolian herders and within the academic sphere, as well as my own definition of a domestic animal for the purposes of this book. I provide a background to the literature on the domestication of the animals that Mongolians herd and a brief historical account of herding life in Mongolia.

INTRODUCTION

The subject of animal domestication brings out a complex mix of moralities: those of care and control; training and manipulation; domination and subjugation; and mastery and paternalism. Within this chapter, my aim is to unravel where Mongolian herders are situated in relation to their interactions with the herd animals amongst whom they live. The purpose of this chapter is also to draw out the key factors that contribute to the herder–herd animal co-domestic relationship. In Chapter 3, I detailed how the members of the herding family herd the animals in accordance with the behavioural inclinations of the herd animals.

INTRODUCTION

Mongolia is described in popular literature as “The Land of the Horse,” conjuring up an image of a nomadic herder galloping across the vast grassland steppe. The Hollywood ideal of the cowboy could easily be conceived of as descending from the myth of the nomad (Khazanov 1994). When in Mongolia, the dust-swept towns and the rugged-looking men riding in on horseback brings to mind the archetypal western scene. In this chapter I explore some of the ways in which the horse is of central cultural importance to Mongolian herders. The complex role of the horse is a fascinating aspect of Mongolian herding society, especially because the horse is both a utilitarian resource, as Mongolian herders eat horsemeat in winter, and a unifying symbol, expressed on Mongolian flags.