In many early cultures, there were strictly adhered to traditions related to animal welfare.

Many of these traditions were practical in the sense that they helped local ecologies

maintain a decent balance most of the time, even though the cultures that adhered to them

typically also hunted the animals to which these traditions applied.

So animals might be respected and even revered, but that respect and reverence was also generally

associated with the measured or periodic culling of members of these species.

Back in the early 13th century, for instance, the Mongolian Empire under Jenghis Khan

had a tradition that became a law that disallowed the hunting of most game species during

mating season, which was sometimes justified in more spiritual terms, but which had the practical effect of ensuring the propagation

and thus the perpetuation of that species,

which in turn ensured there would always be more of that species to hunt

without that hunting, putting said species at risk of endangerment or extinction.

The same general concept was developed by many Native American groups, countless cultures throughout pre-colonial Africa, and many other

groups throughout the rest of the world, though often, once these groups either scaled up sufficiently or encountered survival-related pressures from their environments or from other groups of humans,

some or all of these traditions went out the window and the most valuable game species used as food or for raw materials used for shelter or clothing

or whatever else, they would be relatively quickly hunted to extinction or near extinction.

In the European world, which at the time, because of how printing and distribution worked, was the collection of cultures

whose thoughts were most widely disseminated. A book called A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy

and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals was written and published by a member of the Church of England clergy named Humphrey

Promet. And by some estimates, this was the or at the very least a foundational document of the

modern animal rights movement. In this book, Pramatt argued that animals were created by God, and thus should be treated

as humanely as possible. He claimed that cruelty to animals was wicked and atheistic, a denial of God

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