I'm not an expert, but the argument that Diamond made was that by 1492, every animal on the planet that could be domesticated had already been. It takes a very special combination of traits to make it possible to domesticate an animal and the vast majority of large mammal species do not possess those traits. Bison, for instance, have never been domesticated, nor have deer, even in modern times.
> domesticated animals that are useful in agriculture for tilling fields
One key trait that Diamond mentions is whether a species
is susceptible to dominance - horses evolved with a herd
dominance order, zebra did not; thus horses can be domesticated and put to the cart or plow, while zebra cannot
(modulo a few feral zebra which have been tamed & trained).
The book is well worth reading, and contains a great deal
of content which the margin of this reply is too small to
contain.
I've read the book.
And afterwards I felt very compelled to believe what he had to say, but overtime, more and more examples start pointing to an over simplification of what is possible.
Horses may have herd dominance, but what about the ox? or the donkey? or the water buffalo? or the yak?
