Is it true that the aurochs died out because it wasn hunted enough?
No that’s not true. Aurochs were over hunted, their populations became too small and they became extinct, or they gradually hybridized with domestic cattle. They were probably also just exterminated wherever they competed with domestic cattle. Finally, the overhunting of all large herbivores changed the vegetation so that grass was replaced by woodland which helped drive lots of large herbivores to extinction. Cattle weren’t even eaten for centuries after domestication – before that they were used as draught animals. The word ox, which we think of as a draught animal comes from the word aurochs. Finally, the eastern aurochs which was domesticated in the Indian subcontinent and gave us humped cattle called zebu aren’t even eaten today wherever they occur in Hindu areas as they are sacred, yet the wild ones are still extinct.
