Sheep

Sheep descend from ancient mouflon that humans domesticated thousands of years ago. The feral sheep of the Fifth World descend from domesticated sheep, but have evolved not to produce as much fleece as domesticated sheep currently do, so they no longer require regular shearing. They have also regained their ancestors' colorful coats (so fleece no longer comes just in white) and great curved horns.

#Human relations

People in the parts of the Fifth World where sheep still roam will occasionally hunt them for meat, leather, and wool. They rarely use wool for clothes, due to the Fifth World's heat, but will frequently make bedding and rugs from it.

Communities that live closely with sheep predominate around the poles, where it remains at least occasionally cool enough to sometimes warrant the wearing of wool. Given the long tradition of shepherding in Australia and New Zealand, and those places' disproportionate role in settling Antarctica, combined with Antarctica's grassy mountains and long winters, many communities specializing in relationship with sheep live there.

As the Arctic and Antarctic lands lay under glaciers until fairly recently, these newly-emerged lands grew little more than moss and grass during the early years of settlement. Raising sheep became an important way for early settlers to produce food. As time went on, settlers became hunter-gatherers and the sheep began to go feral, no longer in a relationship of domination but the normal relationship of predator and prey.

Thus, one most commonly finds shepherding communities in Greenland, the North American arctic, parts of the Asian arctic, but one can also find them anyplace rocky and marginal enough that grassland predominates over the more typical jungle (most often at high elevations).

#Sheep People

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