"Man has had a long history of association with the deer family — economic, religious, aesthetic and social. Deer are widely distributed throughout the north-temperate zones of the world, extending into the tropics in Asia and South and Central America. Throughout this range they were the major food species for man the hunter. As, in Africa, the hunter-gatherer economy relied heavily on exploitation of antelope, so, in other areas, the various deer species provided the main source of meat, hides and other products: sinews for sewing or twine, antlers for picks and other tools, etc. So fundamental were the deer to the subsistence of these people, so deeply interwoven with their whole life style, that they were endowed with mystical, magical properties, and became an integral part not only of man's secular existence but of his spiritual world as well. In extreme cases the relationship became so intimate, and human populations became so dependent on one particular species — as the of the far north of Scandinavia — that the situation developed into of complete social parasitism: one organised population relying entirely upon one other."