Cow

From the milk we drink at breakfast to the leather shoes we wear, or the steaks or burgers we eat at dinner, our daily lives are bound up with the cow. This has been so for millennia, beginning with the domestication of the aurochs – wild cattle – around 6000 BC. In Cow Hannah Velten unravels the complex story of the cow, bull and ox, and the ever-changing social relationship between humans and cattle. Her engaging account ranges from the oxen-plowed fields of the ancient Near East to India’s temples, and from Spain’s bull-rings to America’s rodeos and cattle drives.

Early civilizations regarded cattle as their chief wealth, for in addition to supplying brute strength for the plow, they provided meat, milk, cheese, butter, leather, horn and other valuable commodities. Cults and mythologies developed that deified cows and bulls in cultures as various as those of early Egypt, Greece and India. But today, while Hinduism continues to venerate the cow as one of the most sacred members of the animal kingdom, in the West, where beef is a prized diet staple, cattle are seen as little more than a commodity involving a production process. By exploring their purpose, meaning and fate in mythology, folklore, farming, bloodsports and art, Hannah Velten restores to these oft-overlooked creatures something of the respect they deserve.