Standing on the shoulders of goats

We go back a long way, we and the sheep/goat. It has been some ten thousand years since we – together – took our first trembling and tentative steps along the exhilarating, adventurous roller-coaster road of domestication. And before that, we hunted down and ate the wild goat like, well, an animal. Only the dog has been with us longer as a companion. Yet what do we understand about our common history? About the hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations of the ovicaprid? So little.

In these early posts we are setting out our aims. We are trying to define our parameters, visioneer our ambitions, limn our remit. We will, of course, bring you news (we now know, for instance, of the sad fate of Rose, the Sudanese matrimonial goat). But part of this project is an unsheepish determination to plumb vigorously the long story of our intertwining with the goat and sheep, and to demonstrate just how much it is we owe the ovicaprid. The goat, as we will show, was with us at the birth of civilisation and state-formation; had a hand in the invention of writing and bureaucracy; and even accompanied us into the afterlife.

We are all standing on the shoulders of goats.