Why did Ray love this book?
Donkeys quite literally made the ancient world. When we think of the pyramids of Egypt, we tend today to think in the same thought – camels, but the camel was not domesticated more than a millennium later than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Thus, when we see the monuments of the ancient world – we are looking at the product of human-animal relations and the humble donkey was at the very heart of these civilizations so revered by the west today. Peter Mitchell does a fantastic job at being the voice for the donkey and setting out the archaeolgical evidence for donkeys so clearly and concisely.
The book as a whole alters the way we think about the ancient world and to some extent the domestication and adoption of the donkey coincides with the development of many an ancient civilization. Perhaps, this is why this book and the donkey in…
1 author picked The Donkey in Human History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Donkeys carried Christ into Jerusalem while in Greek myth they transported Hephaistos up to Mount Olympos and Dionysos into battle against the Giants. They were probably the first animals that people ever rode, as well as the first used on a large-scale as beasts of burden. Associated with kingship and the gods in the ancient Near East, they have been (and in many places still are) a core technology for moving people and goods over both short and long distances, as
well as a supplier of muscle power for threshing and grinding grain, pressing olives, raising water, ploughing fields, and…
- Coming soon!