The Donkey’s Tale

Readers must draw their own conclusions as to whether Eeyore’s assessment that ‘That Accounts for a Good Deal’ is valid regarding what they have read thus far and whether they agree that the statement of a Tswana informant consulted by Martha Geiger and Alice Hovorka—‘Donkeys made me who I am today’—captures an important truth about their overall significance in human history. This final chapter summarizes my own thoughts on the matter. It starts by identifying the key themes that run through the donkey’s tale, the millennialong association between people and donkeys and mules. Can we recognize durable or recurring sets of connections, either practical or symbolic? Are consistencies discernible across time and space, independent of cultural context, perhaps because of biological and behavioural propensities that all mules and donkeys may share? What kind of worlds, in short, did the donkey make? One theme that undoubtedly warrants attention is the widespread demotion in the donkey’s status following the adoption and spread of other riding animals— horses and camels—across much of the Old World. How far does this in fact permit, or encourage, us to use donkeys to write a history of the subaltern, of the oppressed, something that archaeology still often neglects? Whether the framework of interspecies relations within which donkeys have existed—and still exist—truly permits us to write a history of the donkey (rather than of donkeys and people), let alone a donkey’s history of the worlds the two have shared, also demands consideration. In turn, this requires us to think carefully about how active the donkey has been in the creation of those worlds. Responding to these points connects as much with the status and recognition we are prepared to extend to Equus asinus as it does with framing the questions by which to continue investigating our shared past. People domesticated donkeys some 7,000 or more years ago somewhere in northeastern Africa, most likely because of the assistance they could offer in supporting a mobile pastoralist way of life by reducing the costs of moving personal possessions, children, the infirm, and perhaps even young animals.