Monday, February 10, 2025

Why the dromedary was domesticated

Camels are a North American genus, which spread throughout Eurasia - and to South America, as llama. They were sometimes able to cross into Africa and cross they did, as camelus thomasi. They were hunted out here at home... and also died out in Africa. African petroglyphs witness to this camel - but, we must conclude, as game for the hunt. The Sahara wasn't as bad as it is today so, for cavalry, the local nomads could still use the horse, as did the Numidians.

When the camel returned to Africa, it was the Arabian dromedary. Which camel indeed was Arabian, perhaps extending (if concordiae counts) to Syria. Rock artists recall camel-hunts in central Arabia 3000 BC, perhaps moreli. The last population of wild dromedary was in monsoon Oman, where the Mehra live today, per Almathen et al.'s much-cited 2016 paper.

To Egypt the camel was barely known down to the Eighteenth Dynasty. Joachim Friedrich Quack found gmwl in Demotic and then the Coptic dialects - absolutely Semitic, complete with Canaanite-shift. (The Greeks instead have *kamâl from a pre-shift Semitic, perhaps Taymanitic.) This word is not in hieratic or hieroglyphic, so is assumed taken during the Iron Age. If the Berbers have an ancient word for camel, this would I think be taken from Demotic.

Arabian trade kicked off after the 1200 BC crash of the ocean trade. Given that we hear of "Sea Peoples" but not of "Desert Peoples" (Libyans were not desert peoples yet) I assume that the crash forced trade into the deserts so forcing the domestication of this famously grouchy beast. A good thing for the beast, or else it should have died out like the others (and the Bactrian would inherit al-ard).

BACKDATE 2/19

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