Abstract
Most
cattle in the Netherlands have been deliberately dehorned, which some
people consider to be a cruel practice. But the breeding of genetically
hornless (or polled) cattle is also regarded as unnatural and cruel to
animals. Nevertheless, this is a practice which, like elsewhere in
Europe, was also common here in the past. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, in
the Netherlands polledness, a dominant trait, occurred mainly in the
Roman period and disappeared again in the Middle Ages. Polled cattle
were particularly common in the coastal area beyond the borders of the
Roman Empire, where up to 40% of animals were hornless. By contrast, to
the south of the border, polled cattle were rare. No polled animals have
so far been found in Nijmegen, at the time the country’s most important
military and civilian centre. The question is why this is the case, and
why polled cattle subsequently disappeared from the Netherlands.
There
is little evidence to explain the presence of polled cattle on one side
of the Roman border, their near absence on the other, and their total
disappearance after the Roman period on the basis of natural selection.
Nor do functional considerations – superiority as a source of food or
supplier of tractive power – provide us with any conclusive answers. The
most likely explanation is that it was mainly emotional and aesthetic
considerations that led farmers and other users of cattle to decide what
a ‘good’ cow was, and that was a cow with horns. The fact that polled
cattle occurred in the coastal area during the Roman period may be
associated with a different ideal, and possibly also with a lack of
economic power that prevented farmers from being selective. After the
Roman period, the desire for ‘good’ horned cattle will have caused the
disappearance of the dominant polled cattle. A growing demand for horn
as a raw material for the manufacture of objects might also have played a
role. These factors should probably be viewed in the context of an
influx of other breeds brought by new population groups that ‘drove out’
the old cattle populations. The current debate in the Netherlands as to
the desirability of breeding polled cattle would appear to be nothing
new, having already exercised the minds of farmers centuries ago.
Keywords
- Polled cattle;
- Hornlessness;
- roman Netherlands;
- Archaeology
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