How the first reindeer was domesticated
Humans and reindeer have been interacting for some 60,000 years and reindeer-herds have been followed by nomadic humans for some 10-20,000 years but true domestication is much more recent. Genetic studies indicate that many domestication events probably took place but starting no more than 2-3,000 years ago. But how was the first reindeer domesticated?
“Alice Roberts: Rudolph and our early ancestors – a love story” has a plausible narrative:
I first visited the icy north of Siberia five years ago while making a BBC documentary about ancient human migrations. We were filming with indigenous Siberians of the Evenki tribe, and staying in a remote reindeer-herders camp – living in tents that were kept warm with larch stoves while it was a bone-chilling -40°C outside. (The stoves went out overnight and in the morning I would wake up to find my eyelashes stuck together with ice.)
There were reindeer all around us in the snowy, sparse larch forest. At night, they came in, walking cautiously around our tents, the thick fur behind their large hooves muffling their footsteps. One morning I wandered off into the forest to answer a call of nature. A single pure-white reindeer followed me. I wandered further and further with the reindeer following me a few paces behind. It felt as though I had made some kind of connection with this beautiful, ethereal creature. After I had done what I’d come for, I started to make my way back to camp, and wondered if the reindeer would follow me back. He didn’t. Instead, he started tucking into the yellow snow I’d created. The mystical moment was shattered. He wanted nothing more than a few salts from my urine. Later I discovered that this apparently common behaviour was enshrined in a Siberian myth about the domestication of the first reindeer: a woman who went for a wee managed to catch and tame a reindeer who, like mine, had been after the yellow snow.
I suppose that if Santa Claus had an internal toilet and was not forced outdoors to relieve himself he never would have met up with Rudolph!!
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