Relationship With Humans
The even-toed ungulates are of more economic and cultural benefit than any other group of mammals. There is clear evidence of antelope being used for food 2 million years ago in the Olduvai Gorge, part of the Great Rift Valley. Cro-Magnons relied heavily on reindeer for food, skins, tools and weapons; with dropping temperatures and increased reindeer numbers at the end of the Pleistocene, they became the prey of choice. By around 12,500 years ago, reindeer remains accounted for 94 percent of bones and teeth found in a cave above the Céou River.
Today, cattle are the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. The international trade in beef for 2000 was over $30 billion and represented only 23 percent of world beef production.
Jewish biblical laws of Kashrut define a cloven hoof as one of two key requirements for an animal to be capable of consideration for Kosher consumption.
Read more about this topic: Even-toed Ungulate
Famous quotes containing the words relationship and/or humans:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“The difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)