When it comes to wolves and humans, while there’s no doubt these interactions do exist yet attitudes to wolves vary from culture to culture and between individuals and sometimes these attitudes exist in perplexing ways (perplexing for some people). In the case with the Middle East, while Turks and Turkic people revered the wolf the same can’t be said of Iranians where they mistrust it. At some point, Iranians believed that wolves were the creation of Ahriman as the evil counterpart of dogs (which are good animals) hence why they’re similar. (This belief long predated scientific discovery that dogs are wolves.)
Wolves were despised for stealing livestock, while dogs are valued for guarding them. While this isn’t unique to Iranians since some people have similar feelings towards dogs and wolves, but it does give a good insight into what their cultural beliefs are like and why Middle Easterners aren’t all alike when it comes to attitudes to wolves. (For another matter Muslims since some Muslims are very sympathetic to dogs, especially with the Sufis.) While the Middle East’s also another place where dogs were first domesticated, yet attitudes to wolves aren’t universally favourable.
If the ancient Iranians are any indication, even if dogs come from wolves that doesn’t explain why Zoroastrian Iranians mistrust wolves who see them as evil copies of dogs. Either the dog’s imported from elsewhere or that like with the Chinese, Iranians mistrust wolves on some level despite being related to the dog. Consider the Chinese and Japanese, while the Japanese historically loved wolves and the word for wolf contains a word or character for deity, the same can’t be said of the Chinese where they have negative proverbs about wolves.
And that the Chinese word for pervert contains the character for wolf, while proverbs about dogs are more ambivalent (not always favourable but still tolerated). My understanding’s that with both Iranians and Chinese, dogs are tolerated at best for being useful but there’s not much practical use for wolves so they mistrust them a lot even if that’s not case for other animals. But it makes better sense in that animals are treated and regarded differently if there’s any practical use for them.
Cultural and individual attitudes to animals aren’t universal, the point of anthropology’s to study a culture from its own perspective and nearly free from a projected bias. While you might say that wolves are selected to be wild due to persecution, it’s really not that simple in real life where as what some people say or rather imply the bolder wolves get persecuted for going near livestock and human habitation. Dogs also get persecuted, not just for attacking animals but also for their link to witchcraft at some point for some cultures and in some countries.
Retrieverman’s reasoning doesn’t explain why semi-feral dogs exist and why some people allow their dogs to roam freely and why some dogs hunt on their own despite being trained and owned, which means dog domestication isn’t that straightforward as it should be. Wolf-human interactions are complex, but not always for reasons you think it is.
fynm 