Two major types of aggression, proactive and reactive, are associated with contrasting expression, eliciting factors, neural pathways, development, and function. The distinction is useful for ...understanding the nature and evolution of human aggression. Compared with many primates, humans have a high propensity for proactive aggression, a trait shared with chimpanzees but not bonobos. By contrast, humans have a low propensity for reactive aggression compared with chimpanzees, and in this respect humans are more bonobo-like. The bimodal classification of human aggression helps solve two important puzzles. First, a long-standing debate about the significance of aggression in human nature is misconceived, because both positions are partly correct. The Hobbes–Huxley position rightly recognizes the high potential for proactive violence, while the Rousseau–Kropotkin position correctly notes the low frequency of reactive aggression. Second, the occurrence of two major types of human aggression solves the execution paradox, concerned with the hypothesized effects of capital punishment on self-domestication in the Pleistocene. The puzzle is that the propensity for aggressive behavior was supposedly reduced as a result of being selected against by capital punishment, but capital punishment is itself an aggressive behavior. Since the aggression used by executioners is proactive, the execution paradox is solved to the extent that the aggressive behavior of which victims were accused was frequently reactive, as has been reported. Both types of killing are important in humans, although proactive killing appears to be typically more frequent in war. The biology of proactive aggression is less well known and merits increased attention.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Domesticated chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) are a dominant part of the global human diet. Although the early domestication history of this species remains disputed, Mainland Southeast Asia ...(MSEA) is assumed to have been the initial domestication center. The eastward spread of chickens into Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Pacific is typically attributed to human‐mediated dispersals. Chicken remains are relatively common at Pacific Neolithic sites but are extremely rare in the archaeological records of MSEA and ISEA. Therefore, the exact routes and timing of the human‐mediated spread of chickens from their native range in MSEA into the Pacific remain questions of interest. Here, we present the earliest evidence of Gallus on the Indonesian island of Flores at Liang Bua. This site has yielded an extensive stratigraphic sequence that spans from ~190,000 calendar years (ka) ago until the present and includes dense accumulations of faunal remains. Twelve bones from the cave's Holocene deposits have been identified as Gallus. The oldest remains, a right and left coracoid, were each directly dated to ~2,250 calibrated radiocarbon years before present (ka cal. BP), whereas the youngest Gallus elements are ~0.3 ka old. Although wild Green Junglefowl (Gallus varius) and Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) are found on Flores today, the absence of either of these species in deposits at Liang Bua older than ~2.5 ka as well as the size and shape of the oldest coracoids suggests that these remains likely represent domesticated G. gallus. This is the first evidence for domesticated chickens in the Neolithic of Flores and the first directly dated Gallus remains in Wallacea. The absence of chickens in the fossil record of ISEA suggests that Red Junglefowl (and perhaps Green Junglefowl also) reached Wallacea via human‐mediated dispersal(s) at least ~2.25 ka cal. BP.
Full text
Available for:
FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The dog was the first domesticated animal. Its derivation from grey wolves Canis lupus is important to the study of mammalian domestication, and wolf domestication is an active area of investigation. ...Recent popular books have promoted a hypothesis that wolves domesticated themselves as opposed to the earliest hypothesis that featured pup collection, adoption, and artificial selection. Continuing research has produced a greater understanding of wolf ecology and behaviour, including new insights into the wolf’s interaction with humans. Several characteristics make the wolf conducive to domestication: its sociality, catholic diet, excellent individual and cultural memory, inbreeding tolerance, varied personalities, and adaptable lifestyle. The wolf’s fear of humans is the main impediment and that alone is a factor strongly disfavouring the self‐selection hypothesis. However, collecting young pups from dens and raising them would foster their socialising with humans as pack members. Neither hypothesis explains how wolves undergoing domestication were separated reproductively from their wild relatives, an important condition for domestication. We combine information from the literature with information from our own research on wild wolves, archaeology, and canid morphology. We explain how pup collection and deliberate or incidental selection and encouragement to breed with similarly raised wolves could keep incipient dogs separated reproductively from wild relatives. The key is humans regularly feeding the wolves and keeping only those able to live harmoniously with humans. Well‐fed, human‐dependent wolves would remain near their food supply and in the company of humans, thus increasing their bonds to humans and vice versa. Outbreeding with wild wolves would thus be avoided. Generation after generation of these human‐fed, raised, and selected wolves would become increasingly dependent on humans and shaped by them. The pup‐adoption hypothesis presented here is more in keeping with basic wolf ecology and behaviour than the self‐domestication hypothesis.
Dogs were domesticated from wolves 15000–25000 years ago, and two theories prevail about how the domestication process originated: 1) wolves domesticated themselves by frequenting human camps and feeding on discarded food, and 2) wolf pups were collected from dens and raised by humans selecting those most tractable and suitable for living with humans. This review is the first to assess these theories in relation to the characteristics of wolf ecology and behaviour that make the wolf suitable for domestication. The second hypothesis of pup adoption followed by selection seems better supported.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The Russian Farm-Fox Experiment is the best known experimental study in animal domestication. By subjecting a population of foxes to selection for tameness alone, Dimitry Belyaev generated foxes that ...possessed a suite of characteristics that mimicked those found across domesticated species. This ‘domestication syndrome’ has been a central focus of research into the biological pathways modified during domestication. Here, we chart the origins of Belyaev’s foxes in eastern Canada and critically assess the appearance of domestication syndrome traits across animal domesticates. Our results suggest that both the conclusions of the Farm-Fox Experiment and the ubiquity of domestication syndrome have been overstated. To understand the process of domestication requires a more comprehensive approach focused on essential adaptations to human-modified environments.
The ‘domestication syndrome’ has been a central focus of research into the biological processes underlying domestication. The Russian Farm-Fox Experiment was the first to test whether there is a causal relationship between selection for tameness and the domestication syndrome.Historical records and genetic analysis show that the foxes used in the Farm-Fox Experiment originated from fur farms in eastern Canada and that most traits attributed to the behavioral selection for tameness predated the experiment, undermining a central pillar of support for the domestication syndrome.The overall weight of evidence, including data from other species, does not unambiguously support the existence of the domestication syndrome in animals. Competing theories to explain domestication syndrome should be reconsidered after the traits themselves are more clearly connected to the early stages of domestication.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The study of the history of domesticated species reveals environmental conditions and human needs in the past and elucidates how plants have been shaped by local culture through time. Therefore, ...combining biological, archaeological and anthropological methods to study domesticated plants provides new insights to the long journey of human evolution. European grape (Vitis vinifera) is an agriculturally important species that has been grown for thousands of years. In this study, I used archaeological, historical, modern grape material and rootstocks of modern grape to investigate the genomic changes that occurred in grape as a consequence of cultural influences, grafting, and pathogen. The aim is to ascertain whether human manipulation has caused any genomic changes. This variation is examined between 1) different time periods, 2) distinct varieties, and 3) different scions and rootstocks.
The challenge of studying human cognitive evolution is identifying unique features of our intelligence while explaining the processes by which they arose. Comparisons with nonhuman apes point to our ...early-emerging cooperative-communicative abilities as crucial to the evolution of all forms of human cultural cognition, including language. The human self-domestication hypothesis proposes that these early-emerging social skills evolved when natural selection favored increased in-group prosociality over aggression in late human evolution. As a by-product of this selection, humans are predicted to show traits of the domestication syndrome observed in other domestic animals. In reviewing comparative, developmental, neurobiological, and paleoanthropological research, compelling evidence emerges for the predicted relationship between unique human mentalizing abilities, tolerance, and the domestication syndrome in humans. This synthesis includes a review of the first a priori test of the self-domestication hypothesis as well as predictions for future tests.
Archaeological horse remains from Mongolia's late Bronze Age Deer Stone-Khirigsuur (DSK) culture present some of the oldest direct radiocarbon dates for horses in northeast Asia, hinting at an ...important link between late Bronze Age social developments and the adoption or innovation of horse transport in the region. However, wide error ranges and imprecision associated with calibrated radiocarbon dates obscure the chronology of early domestic horse use in Mongolia and make it difficult to evaluate the role of processes like environmental change, economic interactions, or technological development in the formation of mobile pastoral societies. Using a large sample of new and published radiocarbon dates, this study presents a Bayesian chronological model for the initiation of domestic horse sacrifice at DSK culture sites in Mongolia. Results reveal the rapid spread of horse ritual over a large portion of the Eastern Steppe circa 1200 BCE, concurrent with the first appearance of draught horses in China during the late Shang dynasty. These results suggest that key late Bronze Age cultural transformations – specifically the adoption of mobile pastoralism and early horseback riding – took place during a period of climate amelioration, and may be linked to the expansion of horses into other areas of East Asia.
•A precision radiocarbon chronology places the spread of domestic horse ritual in Mongolia at ca. 1200 BCE.•Spread of horse use and mobile pastoralism in the Eastern Steppe linked with a wetter, more productive climate.•Innovation or adoption of horse riding in LBA Mongolia shaped the social and ecological landscape of East and Central Asia.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
De-Domestication: An Extension of Crop Evolution Wu, Dongya; Lao, Sangting; Fan, Longjiang
Trends in plant science,
June 2021, 2021-Jun, 2021-06-00, 20210601, Volume:
26, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
De-domestication or feralization is an interesting phenomenon in crops and livestock. Previously, evidence for crop de-domestication was based mainly on studies using phenotypic and genotypic data ...from limited molecular markers or gene segments. Recent genomic studies in rice, barley, and wheat provide comprehensive landscapes of de-domestication on a whole-genome scale. Here, we summarize crop de-domestication processes, ecological roles of de-domesticates, mechanisms underlying crop de-domestication syndromes, and conditions potentially favoring de-domestication events. We further explain how recent de-domestication studies have expanded our understanding of the complexity of crop evolution, and highlight the genetic novelties of de-domesticates beneficial for modern crop breeding.
De-domestication has recently been confirmed in several crop and livestock systems by genomic evidence and has been demonstrated to be not just a genetic reversal of domestication, despite reacquisition of wild-like phenotypes.Multiple pathways lead to the emergence of plant de-domestication, and de-domesticates have multiple roles in both wild and agricultural ecosystems.Under loosening artificial selection due to the wide application of non-intensive farming practices, crops, especially diploid ones, tend to be more likely to initiate de-domestication.Under natural selection, de-domesticates could provide valuable genetic resources for modern crop breeding.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
PDF
