About 10 feet off the ground, bighorn sheep, ducks, spirals, zigzags and human figures scratched in white and dating from 5000 B.C. covered the terra-cotta-colored rock.
Its plains, especially the Esla Valley, yield much grain (barley and wheat) and pulse; wine and flax are also produced, and on higher grounds Merino sheep and goats are raised for wool and cheese.
All three diseases have been linked to abnormal proteins called prions, and some researchers have speculated that cattle got the disease from feed containing ground-up sheep with scrapie, which has infected sheep herds for decades.
Sheep have poor depth perception; shadows and dips in the ground may cause sheep to baulk.
It is suspected that the diseased cattle had been infected by eating the ground remains of sheep with the neurodegenerative disease scrapie.
Luckily we have one bit of high ground where our sheep may safely graze as we hope the weather improves before they lamb.
My guide told me a story of a friend who got stomach cancer, went home to Nakhchivan, and spent a week eating mountain herbs from the ground like a sheep.
§Of these, 12 contained also ground meat from sheep.
In both "Losing Ground" and "Killer of Sheep," it is relationships outside of marriage that protagonists rely on the most.
