ABSTRACT
In every part of the world where human beings have settled there has been a slow and insidious replacement of the wild flora and fauna by domestic plants and animals, which were either domesticated locally or imported. Africa has been a centre for the local domestication of endemic food plants that have become of world-wide importance, sorghum and the millets being perhaps the most notable of eight species of African cereals (Shaw 1977; Harlan 1989; Harlan, Ch. 3, this volume). In contrast, only one domestic animal, the guinea-fowl, had a wild progenitor that occurred only in Africa; and there is slender evidence for the local domestication in prehistoric times of only three mammals: the ass, the cat and north African cattle. Many other species of African ungulates have been systematically exploited over thousands of years, for example the elephant in ancient north Africa and several species of antelope and gazelle; but these animals have never undergone the process of domestication whereby they have been bred in captivity and become the personal property of humans. Mention should be made, however, of the special relationship that held in southern Africa between the San and the eland (Tragelaphus oryx) which Vinnicombe (1976, p. 177) has described as ‘at the very heart of Bushman social structure’. Eland were never domesticated although the San did regard the wild herds of this antelope as personal and valued possessions.
