Maybe we can still be saved from over-domestication. Look at the poor pigs. If they manage to get out of the pen, they revert to having hair and tusks and rooting around in the forest like they were meant to. Not saying I'd like to mess with a wild boar, but somehow I'm glad they're out there.
On the light side, if you want a giggle, try googling for a fur bikini. The recurrent popularity of this item makes me think that there is still hope for humanity.
"Wild thing, you make my heart sing" - quotation from the songwriter
Great article as always. Lots to chew on, but I can’t help think about our advances in genetics today, how we are already playing that hand in a more direct manner, selecting and silencing certain genes and traits in our children and that’s on top of all the cosmetic procedures, and pharmaceuticals in our system, altering it from the inside. Scary to think what that will culminate into in a hundred or more years.
IMO, "domestication syndrome" is a categorical concept rather than a scientific one. I heartily agree with the hybridization hypothesis. High heterozygosity AS WELL AS runs of homozygosity from inbreeding simulates all of the effects we ascribe to domestication. And there was a global human hybridization event ~300kyr years ago (see John Hawks latest).
I see the domestication phenomenon as an outgrowth of the interplay of gene flows and fluctuating population sizes, and things like that. I don't see it as selected for either artificially or naturally (at least at first), but rather as genetic plasticity mixed with unintended consequence. (Once a species is on the way to "domestication," said features may later be selected for however.)
This is marvelous, its details and its possibilities. I think of a transcribed talk of Joseph Campbell's that I read where he said (and this is my memory and summation of it) that moving into a vegetarian-based mythological and cultural system is only possible when a society is living high on the hog, i.e. first, when the resources are abundant and in our pseudo-control, and second, when we no longer conceive of the bear in its mythic dimensions and its immediate dimensions simultaneously (it is a sibling in the web of life, a divine figure, food and the thing to turn us into food). This view – where both immanent and transcended are not just united, but never divided – is a radical shift from what we've all been raised with for thousands of years. Beautiful essay, thank you.
As the technological systems and social structures that led to this auto-domestication are disrupted will the selective pressures return us to a state that is more feral? (I guess the wild pigs give me hope as well).
I guess I found an idea for a book. "How to rewild yourself"
Maybe we can still be saved from over-domestication. Look at the poor pigs. If they manage to get out of the pen, they revert to having hair and tusks and rooting around in the forest like they were meant to. Not saying I'd like to mess with a wild boar, but somehow I'm glad they're out there.
On the light side, if you want a giggle, try googling for a fur bikini. The recurrent popularity of this item makes me think that there is still hope for humanity.
"Wild thing, you make my heart sing" - quotation from the songwriter
Really enjoyed this piece, thank you for sharing!
Thank you!
Great article as always. Lots to chew on, but I can’t help think about our advances in genetics today, how we are already playing that hand in a more direct manner, selecting and silencing certain genes and traits in our children and that’s on top of all the cosmetic procedures, and pharmaceuticals in our system, altering it from the inside. Scary to think what that will culminate into in a hundred or more years.
Gah! I lost my earlier comment while writing it.
IMO, "domestication syndrome" is a categorical concept rather than a scientific one. I heartily agree with the hybridization hypothesis. High heterozygosity AS WELL AS runs of homozygosity from inbreeding simulates all of the effects we ascribe to domestication. And there was a global human hybridization event ~300kyr years ago (see John Hawks latest).
I see the domestication phenomenon as an outgrowth of the interplay of gene flows and fluctuating population sizes, and things like that. I don't see it as selected for either artificially or naturally (at least at first), but rather as genetic plasticity mixed with unintended consequence. (Once a species is on the way to "domestication," said features may later be selected for however.)
Thanks, that was fascinating. Always enjoy your writing so much :)
Thank you!
This is marvelous, its details and its possibilities. I think of a transcribed talk of Joseph Campbell's that I read where he said (and this is my memory and summation of it) that moving into a vegetarian-based mythological and cultural system is only possible when a society is living high on the hog, i.e. first, when the resources are abundant and in our pseudo-control, and second, when we no longer conceive of the bear in its mythic dimensions and its immediate dimensions simultaneously (it is a sibling in the web of life, a divine figure, food and the thing to turn us into food). This view – where both immanent and transcended are not just united, but never divided – is a radical shift from what we've all been raised with for thousands of years. Beautiful essay, thank you.
Thank you Greg 🐻
I wrote this a while ago:
They bred the wolves and
they brought in the dog.
Deedely deedely
deedely dee.
They bred the boars and
they brought in the pig.
Deedely deedely
deedely dee.
They bred the people
What did they bring in?
Deedely deedely
they're bringing me!
As the technological systems and social structures that led to this auto-domestication are disrupted will the selective pressures return us to a state that is more feral? (I guess the wild pigs give me hope as well).
If you are going to play anthropologist, drop any use of the word "primitive." It has been a loaded word since the 1950s.
So "nasty, brutal and short" may be accurate in more ways than onr?