Week of March 16, 2009

I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened."

I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward [AIG's bonus executives] if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.

I know many people, including famous people — smart, intellectual people — whose relatives, grandparents, died in the famine, and they speak out harshly against focusing on Holodomor. They consider it not a part of the present. But how can we be quiet about what occurred? Our people were the victims of a great crime.

Early this month, a team of archaeologists reported evidence that horses were domesticated perhaps a millennium earlier than had previously been thought. The site was where northern Kazakhstan is now, the culture was called Botai and the date was around 3500 B.C. The Botai did not just herd horses for meat. Scientists found bit-wear marks on Botai horses’ teeth — a clear sign the animals were being ridden. They also found evidence on pottery fragments that “very likely” came from mare’s milk fat — a sign that the horses were being milked.

This discovery pushes back the date for a hugely important technological change in human existence. But it’s also a reminder that domestication isn’t just the conquering of one species by another. It’s the willing collaboration between two species, a sharing of benefits. There is something in the equine nature — genetic or social — that allowed it to partner with humans, just as there was in the character of dogs.

You might also say that there is something in human nature that allowed us to seek out this partnership. Among all the animal species on this planet, humans have domesticated only a handful. And that fact gives rise to a thought-experiment. What if that genetic or social something had been missing in horses? What if they had remained resolutely wild, refusing the domestic kinship humans tried to impose upon them?

It is not a far-fetched notion. But what it suggests is an alternative history of human development, one in which we could have moved no faster over land than our own foot-pace.

How that would have retarded the spread and integration of language, culture, civilization is hard to calculate. It is safe to say that without domesticated horses, we could not have begun to be who we are today.