7 Signs That Humans Are Domestic Animals
Tens of thousands of years ago, humans were wild animals. Our ancestors roamed the land in search of food by day, and huddled together for safety by night. But then something changed. We domesticated ourselves, and this process didn't just change us profoundly — it changed a lot of other life forms around us, too.
1. We Survive Due to Agriculture
When did Homo sapiens become a "domestic animal"? There are many ways to answer this question, but most anthropologists would agree that the main difference between a wild-type human and a domestic one is agriculture. Humans began domesticating plants and animals between 10,000-8,000 years ago, and it changed us biologically and culturally. Our diets were transformed, and we abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for sedentary lives in villages (and, later, cities). Humans in agricultural settlements experienced a 5-fold increase in their populations. Evolutionarily speaking, this is a win, since descendants of farmers quickly outstripped hunters in terms of genetic presence. That means the genetic changes caused by domestication ripped through Homo sapiens populations like wildfire, transforming our species quite rapidly.
2. Population Crashes Become Common
Agriculture allowed human populations to boom, but this also meant that there were enormous population crashes among domestic humans too. A study published last year shows that European agricultural communities often grew to large sizes, then abruptly dwindled to almost nothing, between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago. It's not clear what causes these population crashes among domestic humans. There's little evidence that it was climate and habitat change, so it's possible that pandemics were the culprit (domestication makes diseases deadlier, as you'll see in item 4), or overfarming and poor agricultural practices.
More: http://io9.gizmodo.com/7-signs-that-humans-are-domestic-animals-1586580895
Tens of thousands of years ago, humans were wild animals. Our ancestors roamed the land in search of food by day, and huddled together for safety by night. But then something changed. We domesticated ourselves, and this process didn't just change us profoundly — it changed a lot of other life forms around us, too.
1. We Survive Due to Agriculture
When did Homo sapiens become a "domestic animal"? There are many ways to answer this question, but most anthropologists would agree that the main difference between a wild-type human and a domestic one is agriculture. Humans began domesticating plants and animals between 10,000-8,000 years ago, and it changed us biologically and culturally. Our diets were transformed, and we abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for sedentary lives in villages (and, later, cities). Humans in agricultural settlements experienced a 5-fold increase in their populations. Evolutionarily speaking, this is a win, since descendants of farmers quickly outstripped hunters in terms of genetic presence. That means the genetic changes caused by domestication ripped through Homo sapiens populations like wildfire, transforming our species quite rapidly.
2. Population Crashes Become Common
Agriculture allowed human populations to boom, but this also meant that there were enormous population crashes among domestic humans too. A study published last year shows that European agricultural communities often grew to large sizes, then abruptly dwindled to almost nothing, between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago. It's not clear what causes these population crashes among domestic humans. There's little evidence that it was climate and habitat change, so it's possible that pandemics were the culprit (domestication makes diseases deadlier, as you'll see in item 4), or overfarming and poor agricultural practices.
More: http://io9.gizmodo.com/7-signs-that-humans-are-domestic-animals-1586580895
