Keywords:
humans and animals, nomadic cultures, animal husbandry, indigenous peoples, domestication
Abstract:
We offer to consider within the frameworks of this section new aspects of human-animal relations in local cultures and landscapes of North Asia. Animals are an integral part of the life of all human communities around the world, but they play a specific role in the cultures of hunters and herders. The relationship between humans and animals is conditioned by different categories of the latter in different cultures: they are usually considered as a source of food, as labor, as helper, friend, or sacred being. Animals are intentional and active actors, beings, who, in interaction with humans, acquire their assigned role, depending on the circumstances. We propose to pay special attention to the position of humans and animals in the worldview structure, multispecies interactions, human-predator relations, cooperation of human and animal in nomadic communities of North Asia, in which human success in obtaining resources supporting his existence directly depends on this kind of relations. Animals become markers of stability and well-being in the life of an individual, family, community and the entire local group as a whole, symbols of the stability of the universe and the interconnection of all living things in the space surrounding a person. We propose also to highlight the issues of traditional technologies of domestication and breeding of animals, to discuss the current state of such sectors of the economy as reindeer husbandry, yak breeding, dog breeding, etc., prospects for the development of animal husbandry in communities of indigenous peoples of North Asia in the context of changing materiality.