Hypothesis:
The post reindeer hunter learned that it was worth the trouble
to protect the cattle
against bear and wolf and make its surviving more easier by feeding them during the
winter
The former hunter no longer hunted
the auerochs
he learned to take care
The basis of a special cultural development of the isolated Nordic Post-Magdalénian
becomes recognizable A culture shaping partnership, a symbiosis between humans
and cattle develops
in the North.
First only one family in a clearing
with some cattle. By the forest pasture of cattle young
trees could not sufficiently regenerate .Thereby the clearing, the family and the number
of the
cattle became slowly larger and larger. With milk, blood and meat of the cattle
the post Post-Magdlénian former reimdeer hunter could adapt and survive.
The families had to live closely together with their animals
in their clearing, because the
animals must be milked daily. Necessarily
they needed a sufficient distance to their
neighbours. In consequence they
need no villages or even cities.From the point of a
dairy farmer good forr nothing.
Even later on in historical times Tacitus described a typical northern living habit
" It is well known
that the people of Germany have not cities,and that they do not even
tolerate
closely contiguous dwellings. They live scattered and apart, just as a spring,a
meadow, or a wood has attracted them".Germania
(16)
Bronze Age longhouse
The three-aisled
longhouse, ‘longhouse’ being used here as a technical term to indicate
a
farm with a living area and a byre included. The number of cows that
could be housed
in Bronze Age farms was rather large: 30 head may not have
been an exception.
Given data seem to
indicate that the transition from an earlier two-aisled to the three-
aisled farm took place not much later than 1800 B.C. Whether cows were already held
in the Neolithikum in cow stalls in or at the
house is still disputable
Thus
cattle represented an important economic, social and ideological factor in
the daily
life of northern Bronze Age farmer. Strong support comes from biology.The Northerners
of to day are lactosetolerant. They can drink fresh milk.Normal´ grown up mammalians
can´t..Lactosetolerance is worldwide typical DNA for milk drinking humans (s.later)
Problem: Why did people keep their cattle inside the house?
We are so used
to it that
we hardly realise that outside the lowlands of north-western Europe
the housing of people
and animals in one and the same building is unusual
If we go back to the roots of this
tradition, it is generally assumed that
its origins lay somewhere in the Bronze Age,
between 1800 and 1500 BC (Fokkens (Google))
Likely to accept a close economical, social and mythological connection.
Both cattle
within the longhouse and worshipping the cow appear to have been important symbols
for a northern Bronze Age
society.
Facit
Problem: How is one to imagine the beginning of a rein-
