Gordon Dudman

Every civilisation on earth wrote its founding story about a cow. Egypt gave the sky to Hathor, a cow, and the pharaoh drank from her udder to become king. Sumer sent the Bull of Heaven against its first hero, and killing it was the deed that made him one. Crete built a palace around a bull and put a labyrinth under it. The Vedas wrote the word for war as the search for cows. Greece named a continent after a girl carried off by Zeus in the shape of a bull, sent Heracles to steal the cattle of Geryon, and drowned Odysseus's crew for eating the cattle of the sun. Ireland wrote its national epic about a war over one bull and called it exactly that. The Cattle Raid of Cooley. The Norse began the universe with Auðumbla, a cow, licking the first god out of a block of salted ice. The Zulu, the Maasai, the Nuer and the Fulani each hold that God gave the first cattle to them alone, and each has gone to war on the point. Five thousand years, every continent, one animal at the root of the story. Nobody sacked a city for a courgette. No god came to a mortal as a chickpea. No epic was ever sung about a lentil. The animal every people on earth put at the beginning of everything is the one your dietitian calls optional.