I’ve been browsing through Michael Hart’s “The 100” when a question occurred to me, weird and twisted as it is…
Which animal can be considered the most influencial over human history? I mean, it is the cow? Sheep? The horse? The donkey? The dog? Buffalo? Fish?
Which had the deepest impact over the development of human civilization to date?
The anopheles mosquito?
Regards,
Shodan
Your mozzie is regionally challenged, Shodan: the rat.
The lice and fleas that carried the bubonic plague?
Failing that, I’d guess whatever the first domesticated animal was that provided a reliable source of foot, leather, sinew and bone.
Well, disease carrying animals have certainly been mighty important in human history (think of the rats and fleas that spread the Black Death).
But since the OP seemed to be asking which animals have changed human development and civilization most, I’d say it’s a tie between the dog and the horse.
The dog made man a much more efficient hunter, and helped him evolve from the hunting/gathering stage to the herding stage.
And the horse’s importance, in warfare, agriculture, and transportation is obvious.
So, those two animals stand alone… maybe the camel is a distant 3rd.
We don’t know that the dog helped in the development of herding-- you are just speculating on that. So I think we have to go with the horse. That we know for sure changed the range and scope of man’s activities.
I’d agree with Astorian: a dog/horse tie.
Third? How about “kine” as a class: cattle, bison, water-buffalo? If you allow me to lump them together like that, then I think they outweigh the camel. If not, the nod goes to the camel for third, and the water buffalo fourth.
Then sheep…
Trinopus
I’d say either chicken or horse.
Cattle and pigs are a lot of work and can really hurt people, and sheep and goats have never been as popular as the friendly, and delicious, chicken.
A lot of the work we credit to dogs and horses can also be done by other people or oxen.
Or the humble and brightly-coloried canary, without whom we would have no coal.
I would definitely go with the horse. It provided early man with the mobility he needed to forage even further and faster, and provide him with the ability to transport larger loads…plus, in a pinch you could eat it, and it tasted better than dog. 
In warfare, it provide man with the same services, mobility and transport, and has only been superceeded as the main moble battle field weapon for the past hundred years or so…after reigning surpreme for thousands of years.
I would rank the dog as a close second.
I like dogs as much as anyone, but the answer is the horse, and it’s not even a close call. Horses changed everything - warfare, industry, agriculture, social organization.
No I’ll wager that dogs taste better than horses. Well its not so much the taste, its the smell and texture that I dont like. Havent tried dog meat.
Cattle.
Alive–milk& cheese.
Dead–Steaks & burgers.
Then–tan the leather & wear the hide.
For sheer diversity of use, the cow takes it all.
The horse. Horses changed warfare, and entrenched the class system. A man on horseback has a tremendous military advantage. But horses are expensive to keep in a subsistance agricultural society. So a horse-riding aristocracy develops…the peasants work to support the horses and the riders, the riders spend all their time practicing warfare and oppressing the peasants. Until a group of nomads arrives, where every adult male is a horse-riding warrior. The nomads wipe out the local aristocracy, and establish timeselves as the new aristocracy. Rinse and repeat for several millenia.
I like horses and dogs as much as anybody, but IMHO the influence of both is overrated.
Wide domestication of horses as a means of transportation is estimated at circa 2000 BC – relatively recent. That would mean horses didn’t play much of a role in early human civilization.
I would go with cattle (cow, sheep, whichever was domesticated first). Correct me if I’m wrong, but it would seem to me that the first domesticated cattle would have played a critical role in the transition away from hunting/gathering.
I wouldn’t think civilization would have been possible without domesticating cattle. Couldn’t say the same for horses or dogs, though…
Interesting question: Which came first, domestication of the horse, or invention of the wheel?
Proof that civilization is possible without cattle: The civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes.
I would be interested in a timeline of what point different animals began being used by humans. I am going to go with the dog, as I think we have probably ha dthem by our sides far longer. They helped primitive man survive (something other animals didn’t do). Hunting, guarding, herding, vermin catchers, work (pulling), and companionship.
But a timeline would be key here. Many here think horses were major, but if we have only been using them for the past few thousand years, yet we have had dogs for far longer I will go with dogs. Sure the horse has been important reciently, but we may not have gotten where we are without dogs.
As far as I know, the llama was to Mesoamerican (and South American) what other cattle was to the old world.
In fact, a quotation from a website:
Dogs.
To be fair, many experts consider the dog to be the first animal ever to be domesticated (at least 12,000 BC)…
Don’t know when sheep or cows were domesticated, though…
Wouldn’t those civilizations have been without horses, as well? I think I recall that horses were brought to the Western Hemisphere by Europeans.
Did the WH have domesticated dogs?
Julie