Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/574/en

Sheep and Goat

As the so-called "small ruminants," sheep and goats rank among the oldest of our domestic animals, following the dogs. Although closely related, they differ markedly in temperament, mobility, and in degrees of frugality. Like all ruminants, they appear in the history of their kind as cloven-hoofed horn-bearers only at the end of the mammalian series. Indeed, the diversity of forms among wild sheep- and goat-like creatures and the later domesticated forms developed only in the transition from the late Tertiary into the Ice Ages (Pleistocene) and within these epochs continuing into the present (Holocene) — in times, that is, when the human being stepped among the animals and, out of a cosmically shaped, instinctively spirit-near consciousness, founded with them a magical-cultic relationship that found its expression in the manner of hunting with regard to food and clothing, and in animal sacrifice.