History
People have eaten the flesh of bovines from prehistoric times; some of the earliest known cave paintings, such as those of Lascaux show aurochs in hunting scenes. People domesticated cattle around 8000 BC to provide ready access to beef, milk, and leather. Most cattle originated in the Old World, with the exception of bison hybrids. Examples include the Wagyū from Japan, Ankole-Watusi from Egypt, and longhorn Zebu from the Indian subcontinent.
It is unknown exactly when people started cooking beef. Cattle were widely used across the Old World as draft animals (oxen), for milk, or specifically for meat. With mechanization of farming, some breeds were specifically bred to increase meat yield, resulting in Chianina and Charolais, or to improve texture, as the Murray Grey, Angus or Wagyū. Some breeds have been selected for both meat and milk production, e.g. Brown Swiss (Braunvieh).
Read more about this topic: Cuts Of Beef
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“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
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—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)