Two cows

We had the Bronze Age horse, which I found uninteresting but posted anyway; last year we had the cow. Two cows. Intrinsically more interesting. Razib Khan has a full (belated) post to which the Turtle has a followup.

Razib for his part was preparing the way for his Semitica post. As for the Turtle... keep in mind he isn't good at the pre-Thera Bronze Age. Reserve judgement accordingly.

Pointed out at the Turtle is the horrible climate 2200-2000 BC. This is true. Also mooted is that it may have spurred the Aryan movements: bringing Mitanni to the Hurri lands, Sanskrit to the Indus and Iranians everywhere in between. Although certainly the Near East and I think also the Indus held on for a few centuries more. But, first the Aryans had to get there...

The original paper, and Razib's summary, serve to constrain the possibilities. And what they find is: the cow, up to the Neolithic, was two species. They had split well before the Eemian, 300 kBC. As Razib points out, they are cows: that would be 1.5 My in human years; and 300 kBC may be an underestimate. Taurus is the Near Eastern cow, or bull if you're a Latin or Greek, familiar to West Europeans and Semites. The Indicus cow is different, though crossbreedable. Like the bison.

Indicus came to the Near East 2000-1500 BC, based on genetics. Razib at Brown Pundits figured that the Mitanni had planted their Aryan aristocracy upon their Hurri 1600 BC; he draws back to 1750 today. Missing in both Razib and the Turtle is that the Semitic Near East came back strong circa 1800 BC, with Zimri-Lim and Hammurabi, and the Assyrian merchants. Razib bases Mitanni 1600 BC on when the Hittites and Hurri allies sacked Babylon. Wikipedia thinks the Mitanni were already "king of Hurri"; Razib (here) deems Mitanni proper to have arisen in the vacuum. (Thera wasn't a factor but here's where I perform my obligation and say that went up around the same time.)

I am inclined, then, to agree that the Mitanni brought their species of cow along with them. 1600 BC is indeed the upheaval time in the upper Mesopotamia / Naharayn Hani GAL-bat (i.e. rabbat, Great Hani). Before that I am not seeing Nuzi, Mari, Asshur, nor Hammurabi's Babylonia much needing to bring in different cows. Pace Wiki I don't see the evidence for Aryans over the seventeenth-century Hurri; I am aware of no Aryan words in the pre-sacking tablets. In Assyria's northern colonies, we do meet Knesian "Hittites"... but, were they milking Indicae yet? Doubt it...

Razib considers a common protoIndic culture between east and west, before the Mitanni and Sanskrits made their move. He analogises to the Saxons, a German people who could notify raiders in the Mediterranean that the pickin's were gettin' rich in Britain. The protoIndic people had the Indica cow which they could assuredly herd on horseback. Iranians I suppose were north of there milking the Bactrian camel, I'm unsure if these were pack beasts yet.