Giddy Up Rudolf...It Is Time To Round Up The Reindeer

It is too damn cold around the arctic circle of villages and peoples.  So few academics have endeavored to emerge themselves into the search for artifacts and settlements of any age.  Indeed would there be such.  Igloos melt, skin boats rot or are eaten, wood & bone are reused and remade and left to the elements simply return to the earth.  but the circle of Arctic peoples did not come into existence recently.

10,000 years ago they lived on the edge of the ice as well but it was much further South because the continental glaciers had yet to fully melt. 10,000 years ago they probably had the first domesticate herd animal, the Reindeer.  Not hard to imagine a cute little reindeer being adopted by a child and from there the symbiotic affiliation of reindeer and man was born,

 It was the same with wolves.  Puppies to symbiosis and dogs.  Wolves are not domesticated, they had to become dogs first.  Think about that statement.  It is ludicrous. Wolves associate with man a long time before they were dogs. As they do with at least one Arctic tribe today.

What you are looking at is a living tribal structure who has lived off their deer herds for thousands of years.  Man didn't become civilized at the edge of the desert alone, the edge of the ice worked the magic as well.

Some Geographers and others believe the reindeer are the first animal to be ridden by man. 

    

Many burials in the Asian plains have horses buried with them. The horses had head gear with reindeer antlers attached as though they were making their animal look like a more preferred but unavailable mount.

Modern man simply does not get it, when it comes to men and animal, especially those who have had hundreds of generations side by side.

Some we herded, and they gave us everything we needed.  Some we hunted with, the wolves and the eagles, and shared the kills.  In some we found great spiritual wealth.

These picture come from one tribes left over from the ice age.

Sources:  http://boredomtherapy.com/reindeer-tribe-mongolia/?as=6025809737284

http://www.shareably.net/mongolia-reindeer-tribe/

http://www.amazon.com/Before-They-Pass-Jimmy-Nelson/dp/3832797599