Gradually, the first primitive dogs emerged from this group. Some wolves adapted to the human niche, resulting in a commensal relationship. The self-domestication model considers that fossil wolves were attracted to prehistoric garbage dumps at human settlements. Two main scenarios explain the early domestication of the wolf.
The dog is the only species that was domesticated before the origin of agriculture, when human populations were living as hunter-gatherers. The quiet they experience reminds us of the profound silence that awaits all humanity when, as the Japanese priest Kenko taught almost seven centuries ago, we "look on fellow sentient creatures without feeling compassion." © 2005 by The University of Washington Press. Certain wolf scientists still camp out in Japan to listen for any trace of the elusive canines. The systematic erasure of one of the archipelago's largest carnivores-through poisoning, hired hunters, and a bounty system-elevated humans to spiritual and actual mastery over a part of the natural world.The story of wolf extinction exposes the underside of Japan's modernization. To contrast wolf killings in the decades before and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Walker looks at killings on the island of Hokkaido. By the nineteenth century, however, the destruction of wolves had become decidedly unceremonious. Highly ritualized wolf hunts were instigated to cleanse the landscape of what many considered as demons. The Ainu people believed that they were born from the union of a wolflike creature and a goddess.In the eighteenth century, wolves were seen as rabid man-killers in many parts of Japan. Talismans and charms adorned with images of wolves protected against fire, disease, and other calamities and brought fertility to agrarian communities and to couples hoping to have children. He discusses prominent Japanese naturalists, their theories of wolf extinction, and the development of Japan's scientific discipline of ecology, looking at how nation-building and industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reconfigured relationships with the natural world in ways that led to the extinction of wolves.Grain farmers once worshiped wolves at shrines and left food offerings near their dens, beseeching the elusive canine to protect their crops from the sharp hooves and voracious appetites of wild boars and deer. In this spirited and absorbing narrative, Brett Walker takes a deep look at the scientific, cultural, and environmental dimensions of wolf extinction in Japan and tracks changing attitudes toward nature through Japan's long history.
By 1905 they had disappeared from the country. Many Japanese once revered the wolf as Oguchi no Magami, or Large-Mouthed Pure God, but as Japan began its modern transformation wolves lost their otherworldly status and became noxious animals that needed to be killed.
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