GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

ZEBRAS AND UNHAPPY MARRIAGES " 175
diversity, started out with the most candidates. Second, Australia and the
Americas, but not Eurasia or Africa, lost most of their candidates in a
massive wave of late-Pleistocene extinctions—possibly because the mammals
of the former continents had the misfortune to be first exposed to
humans suddenly and late in our evolutionary history, when our hunting
skills were already highly developed. Finally, a higher percentage of the
surviving candidates proved suitable for domestication on Eurasia than on
the other continents. An examination of the candidates that were never
domesticated, such as Africa's big herd-forming mammals, reveals particular
reasons that disqualified each of them. Thus, Tolstoy would have
approved of the insight offered in another context by an earlier author,
Saint Matthew: "Many are called, but few are chosen."