Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1918 — ANIMALS OF THE CAUCASUS [ARTICLE]

ANIMALS OF THE CAUCASUS

Have Preserved Much of the Original Character of Their Stone Age Ancestors. The Caucasus lies on the road which links Europe to Asia and its high valleys offer a safe refuge to man and his herds. This explains both the mixed and archaic type of its domestic fauna, which shows some curious analogies with the human material of the curious living ethnographic museum of those regions, observes a writer. In all probability not one of the domestic animals of the Caucasus is autochthonous. The earliest epoch of the importation is prehistoric; the latest is contemporary with our own generation. Even the samples belonging to the stone age have preserved a good deal of the original character Of their ancestors, owing mainly to the preservative character of the mountain region. Turkestan, the countries of the Cretan civilization, North Africa and America ,have each furnished their quota. From Europe hail the bull and the dog. The so-called Tartar dog especially, a descendant of the wolf, had’ its ancestral home in the plains of Volga.