In this book, I attempt to demonstrate and explain why our religious, cultural, and social development would not have been possible without cattle. For about 10,000 to 12,000 years, we humans have lived with cattle, off cattle, and in some regions, even for cattle. They were our happiness, our wealth, our beauty, and our security. Cattle helped us gain freedom and explore regions we would never have ventured into without them. With cattle, we appeased the gods, and with cattle, we conquered the world. Cattle fed and taught us. They placed themselves entirely in our hands.

And so we became their guardians. For a long, long time, the relationship between cattle and humans was a symbiosis, a symbiotic relationship. Today, as the relationship between humans and cattle draws to a close, we are reducing cattle to mere objects. We turn them into objects of production. Alexander Kluge, however, in a conversation with Anselm Kiefer, called the cow the “poet of nature.” And that sums her up and captures her completely. I told the cows I tended about my sorrows and my worries. I rubbed my head against their bodies, seeking their tenderness, their warmth, their affection. I was addicted to their presence.