I meant mules* sorry for the typo
Mules are the offspring of a male Donkey (which is also called a burro or ass) and a female Horse. “They look like donkeys with long ears, an ass-like tail, and small hooves, but have the body of a horse.”
The origins of the mule are not known with certainty. Donkeys are native to Africa, and horses arose in the Americas and spread across Asia when a land-connection still existed. It is probable the two species first met in Asia minor or Abyssinia, and several classical sources point to Asia minor. Mules might occur naturally among wild populations of horses/donkeys, but they only became widespread through purposeful human breeding. Mules were common in the Mediterranean basin by the classical period, and many references to them appear in Greek and Roman sources.
The purposeful breeding of a sterile animal was undertaken because Mules exhibit “hybrid vigor” (heterosis) and are superior in some ways to both their parent animals. Mules are larger and stronger than the donkey parent, but have superior endurance to horses and can be sustained by an inferior diet that would ruin or kill a horse. Mules are also reported to be nimble, less prone than horses to heat exhaustion, more disease-resistant, more sure-footed on precarious trails, and their smaller stature makes them better suited than horses to working in mines. Though the use of mules in mining is probably rare before the nineteenth century.
Despite the idiom “stubborn as a mule,” historical observes often described Mules as more intelligent, or at least more easily trained than horses. Mules are less likely to bolt and have been reported to “perform routine tasks, such as following completely without guidance, a familiar route with many stops.”
Perhaps the most significant factor is that the working life of a mule is usually given as double that of a horse. One source gives the average worklife of a mule as twenty-five years versus ten for a horse. Working-life will naturally vary based on work conditions, climate, feed, and breed; but the time investment in gestation is more than recouped in working-years.
The use of mules and donkeys varied across time periods and geographical areas, with local custom and prejudice seeming to play a significant role. Prior to European colonial expansion, both mules and asses seem to have been concentrated in the Mediterranean Basin and Middle East. At least in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Northern Europeans seem to have often rejected mules because of their speed and cultural associations.
I can’t speak to the veracity of it, but one fun anecdote which came up in the reading concerned “the first American Novel, La Monja Alferez, printed in Mexico in 1653, was based on the unbelievable but true exploits of the most famous mule-driver of all time, Dona Catalien de Erazu, the Nun Ensign. She fled from a Spanish convent in male clothing and masqueraded as a man, working as a muleteer and soldier. She became a successful swordsman and duelist and only saved herself from execution by revealing she was a woman, a nun, and a virgin.”
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