Animal Domestication

We do not know for certain how animal domestication began. Even the possible time periods for the genesis of the idea are disputed. There are claims of fossil dog skeletons that go back to 30,000 B.C. Most researchers seem to agree that the domestication of the dog occurred closer to the end of the last Ice Age, somewhere around 10,000B.C.

How did the dog become domesticated? That is to say, why did the wolf become a dog? The how and the why are most likely answered together. Anthropologists suspect that human hunting camps, especially after a big kill, attracted the usual scavengers. Perhaps some wolves began a symbiotic relationship with humans, roaming near human camps and growing accustomed to the human presence without becoming alarmed. Did humans tolerate the wolves because there was little they could do about it, or was there an advantage to having a wolf pack residing nearby? At some point, individual wolves or their pups grew up among the humans, perhaps just admired as cute pets or possibly raised by shrewd men who suspected that a friendly wolf would be a great aid when tracking game.

Eventually, these tame wolves were bred within human communities. Unlike other most animals, wolves were receptive to domestication. That is, there is something in their biological and psychological make-up that allows them to feel a sort of kinship with humans if raised under the right conditions. So, not long after the first wolves were tamed or brought up by humans, some bands of humans found themselves the masters of an entire other species. In the next few millennia, man would accomplish the same feat with sheep and pigs.

Animal domestication was another step away from other animals. As the last glacial period of the present ice age (the Pliocene –Quaternary) receded, man was in possession of complex tools and weapons made from wood, bone and stone, he knew how to control fire and he had begun to dominate other species. Furthermore, he had spread out over the African and Eurasian continents and was making his way over the surface of the Americas.

Sources

Sources

Durant, Will (1954). Our Oriental Heritage, New York: Simon and Schuster

TimeFrame (1990). The Human Dawn, Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books

Domestication. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved June 2, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication