SETI-related discussion, split from another thread.

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, wumpus said:

The only pre-Columbian method I've heard of to hunt buffalo was to spook them and get them to charge off a cliff. 

This sounds alarming.
If they needed a cliff to kill just a big cow, how could they finish the megafauna like mammoths, seriously?

Especially since the mammoths preferred steppe and tundrosteppe where the nearest cliff can be at hundreds kilometers away.

Idk if the Indians were sophisticated in Vietnam War style ground traps, but wolf pits as a artificial cliff was in use long ago.
Though, it's a real entertainment to dig a mammoth pit with sharp sticks instead of shovels.

6 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Wild apples aren't edible.

???
It's "dichok" ("wild thing"). Sour, but sometimes edible. Also you can cook them on fire like you do with roots.

6 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Planting anything is not an initial achievement of the neolithic which is first observed around the fertile crescent (around 13000bp).

Planting was known since the first human had thrown away a sour apple or uneaten grains, and a year later they saw a plant growing from the trash heap.

Just it was a fun fact for them, as it was easier to find a wild one than to throw grains and apples.

After the Ice Age the Fertile Crescent had enough good climate and soil to make such seeding productive, and the people were needing new food sources in the changed conditions.
It took them just 2 000 years to put the farming on conveyor.

***

Also the thing making to think they were aware of idea of "dig into ground to keep it returnable" is an inhumation burial ritual.

Originally probably just to prevent the smell which attracts predators, but later turned into a whole procedure with equipping and posing.

6 hours ago, Pixophir said:

But the Vikings were no hunters/gatherers, quite the contrary.

Why? They were hunting the British and gathering gold.

6 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Anyway, trying to find a way back to Seti. Early and middle stone age is not that interesting there

It appeared from the discussion if metals are a necessary attribute of a civilisation, so can a species having no metallurgy become enough developed to be compatible to what we call "civilisation".

The humans obviously have such ability, just different peoples had different rate of its development due to various local reasons. But anyway everyone who survived would come to it.

So, as SETI hasn't brought any new data, all we can discuss here is why the purple ammonia-breathing octopuses still haven't built a radiotelescope out of ice and fish fat.

Edited August 29, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pixophir]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Planting was known since the first human had thrown away a sour apple or uneaten grains, and a year later they saw a plant growing from the trash heap.

There is, I think, the main confusion: Humans did not intentionally nor accidentally "discover" domestication of plants. For the n th time: it was a process of thousands of years. That phrase does not reflect reality.

It makes no sense for a hunter and gatherer to plant anything because they won't be there when it germinates and grows. They simply have no use for that, it is not in their mindset. They did not even have vessels to collect, transport or store such things. What for ? They encounter more than enough on their travels long and far, from unlucky game to herbs and wild berries, depending on climate and region, they can afford to pick what they need in an opportunistic way. This should be understood to actually get behind the conundrum of why humans walked the earth for millions of years before just recently, after a glaciation, started to settle down.

That's why I say such communication programs (whose scientific value is questionable) will have a hard time, because even if against all odds there is intelligent life out there, it may not have built a civilization, maybe not yet, maybe never will, because what for ? And if it has built one, there may be only a short window of actually catching it.

Between the domestication (human controlled planting and harvesting) of crop like wheat and barley and that of fruits lie thousands of years and quite different principles. Can't just throw them together thoughtlessly.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Pixophir said:

There is, I think, the main confusion: Humans did not intentionally nor accidentally "discover" domestication of plants. For the n th time: it was a process of thousands of years. That phrase does not reflect reality.

People do rediscover this every time when some plant grows at the place where they usually throw uneaten or spoiled fruits. Many times per life.

A hunter/gatherer is knowing that as well. He has enough practice in looking for food places, and he knows that raspberries grow around the raspberry bush, where the berries had fallen.
As well he many times had seen young apple trees around the apple tree, and a mushroom colony around the same rotten tree.
He can't explain its physical basis, but the principle "like attracted like" he understands brilliantly well, and the whole tribal and rural sympathic magic is based on it.

He just doesn't seed the seed, he buries this seed to kick this plant spirits to bring more such plants.
Of course, for a bribe.
(If this bribe is some food, and he usually has nothing else to bring as a bribe, it becomes a fertilizer and the spirits like it.).

He just doesn't need to use that knowledge intentionally, because he gathers more in the wild nature.

***

The problem of academic humanitarian science is that the academic scientists are too separate from real life and simple people, and are always trying to invent complicated schemes where a simple dumb guy from a random village is just doing everything in a shockingly simple way instead of long thinking.
And the historians of all kinds are known as the best example of this.

The linguists are another one. Where an illiterate peasant learns another language just by practice, a pupil/student is forced to first learn a lot of specific terms and rules, and then have a several year long practice to do the same.
The languages aren't invented by the scientists and writers, they are invented by illiterate peasants who weren't even splitting words into sounds, let alone spelling them in letters.

I strongly insist that every ancient/medieval historian student should have a several year long slavery practice in a village to protect his common sense from blurring by theoretical authorities.
With kicks and limited amount of given food instead of marks. This would make them operate in the most  simple, quick, and efficient way, with limited tools and resources, and laugh at overcomplicated suggestions.
To study the village, they first should be trained to think like the village, brutal, simplistic, and short-thinking. Doing before (and preferrably - instead of) thinking.

(And the best part of that would be forcing the antiquity historians finally build at least one Great Pyramid with Ancient Egyptian tools, instead of telling that they can, lol.)

Edited August 29, 2022 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

...and, don't forget that the simplistic and repetitive nature of the work will lend itself to long thinking (daydreaming) from which epiphany arises 

[Pixophir]

Well, I've tried. If people are just too stubborn and have such basic problems with science as to accuse all scientists of conspiracy, to keep the public out, to just copy from each other, and that in the face of evidence to the contrary all around, then any attempt of an explanation is just wasted. It'll always be counted with whataboutism and uneducated, devious claims, no matter what.

Pity.

 

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, Pixophir said:

But the Vikings were no hunters/gatherers, quite the contrary. And not all of them were pirates. When we say hunter/gatherers, we mean those pre-Neolitihic societies of the Pleistocene, that gradually disappeared with the spread of the new lifestyle from 13,000BP on. Sure, hunting did contribute some to the diet at any time, it is still a sport today.

Btw., domesticated horses were widely used in the iron age, that's >15,000 years after the hunter/gatherers of the ice age. Earlier domestication 5,000 BP possible. Still, it is before the Vikings, which where a medieval group of chaps.

Think early horses was smaller so they used chariots back in the bronze age. Riding into combat was not very practical until well into the iron age. 
 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 hours ago, Pixophir said:

There is, I think, the main confusion: Humans did not intentionally nor accidentally "discover" domestication of plants. For the n th time: it was a process of thousands of years. That phrase does not reflect reality.

It makes no sense for a hunter and gatherer to plant anything because they won't be there when it germinates and grows. They simply have no use for that, it is not in their mindset. They did not even have vessels to collect, transport or store such things. What for ? They encounter more than enough on their travels long and far, from unlucky game to herbs and wild berries, depending on climate and region, they can afford to pick what they need in an opportunistic way. This should be understood to actually get behind the conundrum of why humans walked the earth for millions of years before just recently, after a glaciation, started to settle down.

That's why I say such communication programs (whose scientific value is questionable) will have a hard time, because even if against all odds there is intelligent life out there, it may not have built a civilization, maybe not yet, maybe never will, because what for ? And if it has built one, there may be only a short window of actually catching it.

Between the domestication (human controlled planting and harvesting) of crop like wheat and barley and that of fruits lie thousands of years and quite different principles. Can't just throw them together thoughtlessly.

I'd suggest, perhaps, reading some of the histories of modern 'hunter-gatherers' like the plains people of the American West (specifically, Comanche) and African savannas.  They do provide an analog for what happened in ancient times.  Notably, they'd return year after year to 'sweet water' places (as opposed to high alkali, bitter or salty flows).  Admittedly, modern analogs all had knowledge that some people were farming, even if they were not - but absent actual written records archaeologists are forced to look at both ancient camp sites and modern analogs to try to decipher what our ancestors likely did.  It is a fair thing to look at @tater's "Trash Pumpkins" and project that ancient people came back to discover that their middens had edible food growing in them.  Someone likely threw seeds there intentionally - but the economy wasn't such that they'd stay to watch the plants; they'd just see what was there when they came back that way.

But transforming a society into agrarian vs hunter-gatherer is (as you point out) much more complex than simply noting favorable coincidences.  Places like Catalhoyuk arose because they were a cross-roads (likely) and some people decided to just stop there permanently.  Also, populations were finally growing large enough that hunter-gatherer tribes kept bumping into one another and thus found their ranges limited... Of necessity and opportunity, they'd hone in on the 'best places' within their range.  At those places - the 'best guess' is that some intrepid person really did notice that if she kept throwing trash and poop into the field where she'd scattered seeds, a better crop of grain arose than in those areas where people just let the wind drop seeds.  Over generations (of plants, and people) the better seeds were selected and sown... resulting in domesticated crops.

Edited August 29, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

59 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Well, I've tried. If people are just too stubborn and have such basic problems with science as to accuse all scientists of conspiracy, to keep the public out, to just copy from each other, and that in the face of evidence to the contrary all around, then any attempt of an explanation is just wasted. It'll always be counted with whataboutism and uneducated, devious claims, no matter what.

Even more SETI offtopic, but on topic of hunting-gathering high-tech and animal domestication.

How do the illiterate peasants in India train cobras to dance to the flute music when the snakes are deaf and extremely silly?

How do the illiterate peasants in Morocco train goats to graze on tree branches, for the tourists' joy?

Edited August 29, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pixophir]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'd suggest, perhaps, reading some of the histories of modern 'hunter-gatherers' like the plains people of the American West

And I suggest studying geoscience and pre history and publish some stuff. I have actually been to Catal Hüyük and Cayönü. I could write about differences between indigenous groups all around the world, North American, circumpolar, African, Australian, ... Need some time, but the knowledge is there. Because, I mean, have that in mind when dealing out suggestions. Or, simpler put, don't tell people what to do. I don't tell you how to plan a some sort of action Marines could perform, because I have no idea of that. But when people write about their favourite subjects, maybe with some sources, one can assume there is something to it. If they are wrong (which can happen) then that can be discussed in a civilized manner.

Guys, I am aware we have all kinds of people and educational levels in here. It shows on many occasions. I have no problem with that. I am probably in the upper middle. But I do have a problem with being scoffed, coloured liar and conspirator by climate change deniers, running against a wall when trying to call that to attention. It is not that I attack any body, I am telling that civilization is not an imperative development and a contact program should take that into account, for reasons I laid out. And then things like this happen (a reply to me saying I am confronted with whataboutism):

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

How do the illiterate peasants in India train cobras to dance to the flute music when the snakes are deaf and extremely silly?

How do the illiterate peasants in Morocco train goats to graze on tree branches, for the tourists' joy?

How is this a useful, even intelligent remark ? What is the content, or base for discussion ?

See what I mean ?

How can we possibly make a progress with this ? Or do you just don't want to discuss Seti and contact with civilizations ?

Edited August 29, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

How is this a useful, even intelligent remark ? What is the content, or base for discussion ?

See what I mean ?

How can we possibly make a progress with this ? Or do you just don't want to discuss Seti and contact with civilizations ?

We are discussing the civilisations, as to the moment the whole SETI project is just an expensive zilch which has brought exactly 0 (zero) bit of scientific data, and any discussion on it is doomed to be a discussion of the sapient races evolution.

Both questions are brilliant samples of how do the  illiterate persons and mostly not brilliant thinkers successfully train an untrainable species with no theory in heads, or solve similar problem in alternative way.

Edited August 29, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pixophir]

21 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Both questions are brilliant samples of how illiterate persons and mostly not brilliant thinkers successfully training an untrainable species with no theory in heads, or solve similar problem in alternative way.

That's a lot of claims over people you don't know. But "snake charming" isn't domestication. It actually has nothing to do with it, it is more in the personal slight-of-hand field, how to distract people from what's actually happening. Neither is taming of an animal domestication. One could not even tell if such an animal was domesticated or wild if their bones were found in a prehistoric setting. But we can clearly distinguish between them, because they have developed different morphological features in the process of domestication.

Here's some pop stuff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_animals

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/domesticated-animals

https://projectarchaeology.org/2021/09/10/humans-and-animals-domestication/

and, to the different packages in the different centres of neolithisation. Why not all animals can be domesticated.

https://www.livescience.com/33870-domesticated-animals-criteria.html

 

Plants are slightly different, but let's ignore that. Point is, and that from my first post to the matter, these things don't happen in a backyard, and it took thousands of years until humans learned how to deal with domestication and domesticated animals, with many obstacles in the way. As I said various times, domestication is a process that takes a long time, many generations. Please don't confuse that.

I admit, I have an agenda here. But that's not yet revealed until we agree on the science stuff.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Pixophir

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

33 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

I suggest studying geoscience and pre history

I have, fairly extensively 

33 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

publish some stuff.

I haven't - have you? 

34 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

. I have actually been to Catal Hüyük and Cayönü. I could write about differences between indigenous groups all around the world, North American, circumpolar, African, Australian

Great!  Tell us more! 

[kerbiloid]

***

To be brief.

***

The Moroccan peasants get up early in the morning, climb on the trees, lift the goats and put it there.

The goats have to stay on the branches until in late evening the peasants climb on the trees and take them off to the ground.

***

The caught cobras are exactly trained.

While the only thing you can train a snake is to associate your knocking with feeding.
But even this only snake skill is not used for dance training.

The snake charmer fixes the snake and  just starts beating its head with the flute.
The cobra is biting the flute, but to no avail, as the flute is immortal.

A couple of weeks later even the stupidest snake understand that the flute is evil, but you can't kill it, and it's just trying to evade from the flute.

When the snake is trained this way, the charmer bandages the arms and legs with strong leather bands, puts on a leather breastplate, and puts on a roomy white robe to hide them.

Then he's just sitting in front of the cobra, playing on flute, and dancing with upper body, from time to time poking the snake with the horrrible evil flute.
The cobra is extending the hood, hissing, imitating attacks, but just from fear. Actually it's panically afraid of the flute and is trying to evade from it, mirroring the charmer's movements.

So, the whole dance is made by the human, the snake has no idea about music, but see! it's dancing!

When the cobra had lost its marketable appearance and should be dismissed, the charmer just pokes with a sack into the cobra nose, it bites it, then he yanks the bag out together with the venoumous fangs sticking in it.

After that the cobra is send to arena with a mongoose to be defeated by the brave furry cutie.

It's a perfect example of how the absolutely illiterate and not full of wisdom persons can successfully solve an etological problem just by beating the trained species with a stick, and an absolutely simplistic, naive, and successfully working example of how do the simple village people can bypass any wise theory in practical life.
They just know from their own experience that a wooden stick is the best teacher if beat enough long.

Because the academic scientist just thinks different, and hardly can imagine that the working solution can be that stupid.

The whole domestication is from same opera.

[Pixophir]

16 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I haven't - have you? 

Yeah, but I value my privacy in a forum. And nothing Science or Nature.

  

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

To be brief.

[..]

What you describe has nothing to do with domestication. Pls. take a look at the pop science links, or to be brief, domestication is not training. Domestication is the process of taking over control of the reproduction, isolate a population from its wild colleagues, feed and raise them, select individuals that are favourable for further reproduction (you know, a male goat can be quite challenging, and a grown-up Aurochs is uncontrollable. That's not a cow of today.) and use their products, be it hide, wool, milk, meat, or even dung. That is not taming, that is an ongoing process, and one generation may not even see the change, specifically with crop domestication.

So, all those arguments along the line "I just pick an animal and then I have a civilization" are incorrect, and do not reflect an understanding of the process. I am not scoffing, I am saying you can understand, if you just want.

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

But, also, FWIW - you haven't shared much about your knowledge / expertise that I recall reading - so please don't take offense at my suggestion above.

No worries ;-)

Edited August 29, 2022 by Pixophir

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Yeah, but I value my privacy in a forum. And it was nothing Science or Nature. Methods of dating was one, early neolithic another, and my favourite upper palaeolithic stone tool ensembles. I turned some 12 thousand artefacts around and survived :-) Tried to introduce 3d-scanning but it wasn't the right thing at that time.

Good to know.  FWIW I talk fairly often about my Jar-headedness, and less so about being a Frozen-Caveman-Lawyer; means I respect privacy concerns.  But, also, FWIW - you haven't shared much about your knowledge / expertise that I recall reading - so please don't take offense at my suggestion above.  I'm (usually) far past trolling on forums for the sake of trolling (got that out of my system on the WOT forums circa 2014-2017!!!).

[kerbiloid]

38 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

and it took thousands of years until humans learned how to deal with domestication and domesticated animals

No problem. 

If it's for food (a goat), but you don't want to eat it immediately, you tie it by neck to the tree at your house to eat later.
In the morning you see the village children, poking it with sticks and throwing stones and laughing when it screams.

Later they get bored, and the goat tries to eat the grass.
The children see a new fun. They start bringing grass and feeding it.

Then you eat the goat.

Next time the old fun looks dull, and nobody wants to bother with grass, so they just untie the goat from the tree, drag by the stranglehold to another tree with grass and tie it there.

Then you eat the goat.

Once it became a usual practice, you keep several goats in a pen to eat them tomorrow on the village holiday.

And so on. 
Some day you decide to gather enough goats in the pen instead of hunting each time.

***

With dogs and cats it's even easier.

You kill big dogs which can bite you, but leave 20 kg ones which are afraid of you.
Because you need them only as sniffing and signalling tool, not as wolf killers.

If a dog tries to bite, you beat it with a stick.
If it's still trying to bite and hate you, you add it to soup.

Thus only the infantile specimens survive, with low male hormones, underdevloped, looking childish (from that the difference between the wolf and the dog comes; wolf is adult, dog is neothenic adult).

Some day later you have a pack of "human's friends" looking at their human owner like at god.

The same with cats, that's why the domestic cats look more childish, and why the wild cats aren't domesticated good.

***

Rural life is based on violence. Theories come later, when special people do the dirty job for you.

21 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Domestication is the process of taking over control of the reproduction, isolate a population from its wild colleagues, feed and raise them, select individuals that are favourable for further reproduction (you know, a male goat can be quite challenging, and a grown-up Aurochs is uncontrollable. That's not a cow of today.) and use their products, be it hide, wool, milk, meat, or even dung. That is not taming, that is an ongoing process, and one generation may not even see the change, specifically with crop domestication.

Domestication is a process of killing the dangerous, beating others, and killing those animals who are still dangerous.

When you get an infantile neothenic generation (dog, domestic cat, pig, cow, etc.), you start experimenting with selection.

All simple.

When you mostly a hunter/gatherer, and it's enough forest around you don't need to bother very much.
Thus, it took millenia.

Edited August 29, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pixophir]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

All simple.

Adding accuracy removes bias, or the other way round, removing accuracy from an argument adds bias, and that's what's happening here. An emotional bias ("all simple") stands against evidence and observation (archaeology).

This may be better explained by cognitive science as  motivated reasoning, as opposed to critical thinking.

The argument that everything is based on violence may be an outcome of regional political messaging, so that's out of bounds for me. But from observation, most people are peaceful. You can watch crowds move without anybody biting others ;-) Individuals, if they're not constantly staring at a small screen (a development of the past 1-2 decades), probably just ponder their lunch, their work, a hobby, a relationship, the release date of a computer game ...

Edited August 30, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Pixophir said:

critical thinking.

The critical thinking here is loudly whispering that by inventing the "domestication", its "reasons" and "methods", a historian falls into the unforgivable heresy of humanization of stochastic processes, like the evolution.

The imagination is drawing a peaceful pastoral picture of a tribal philosopher having a rest in chair near the campfire, dreamily watching the stars, and serenely inventing various inventions to make the people's life better, the world nicer, the peace more peaceful.
Then, "eureka!", he thinks out the idea "let the animals be our friends!", and the villagers, shocked by his geniality, start the hard work of implementation of his gorgeous dreams.

How are they doing this, it stays unclear, but finally we see the friendly dogs, cute cats, pink piglets, and other rural beauty.
And we start wondering, how could they do that? what were they doing? how had they gotten to the excellent idea to domesticate the animals?

***

In reality we are talking about the society where human death and injuries are a daily routine, and every day they kill more animals than a modern person can see in all his life.
When it's dinner, they don't go to supermarket, or call for pizza.
They just take the nearest lamb and slice its throat. In evening - they cut off a chicken's head.
When the favourite dog gets too old, they don't bother with its keeping, but just hang it on the closest branch or sink in the nearest lake. The cats are just expendable.
Their best teaching methodics is to hit with a stick, to let the pupil remember that he shouldn't skin the goat that way because its skin will get a hole.
Their women die as often during the childbirth (they do this since thirteen) as the man breaks a leg in the forest and dies from gangrene or is eaten by a bear.

The dreaming philosophers and inventors in such society are not tribal heroes.
They are village clowns, and their dreams are an object of fun, unless a practical suggestion can bring profit right here and now.
So, even if one had suggested to domesticate animals, they should first of all carefully ask him "You can talk to animals?! Say one to come here, we'll eat it and believe you."
After the negative answerr or a failed attempt he would be for the rest of life a village idiot, who is never taken into a hunting team, and will have two ways: either to become a shaman (so his mad speeches will be treated as spirits talk), or live short, die bright from the first wolf he met.

Because the remains of their former neighbor tribe who was softer in habits, are lost in the trash heap, together with other kitchen junk, or in more civilised times made the local wolves thicker, 

***

There was no such thing as "domestication", there was "co-evolution".

The human itself is an ancestor of a neotenic ape.
When the climate got dry, and the jungles shrank, the strong and hairy chimpanzee kicked out the weaker ape losers from forest into savannah with no bananas around.

They had to ward off the pigs digging for roots. and dig out those roots, and smash them with stones to eat.
They had to ward off the scavengers from uneaten remains of lion prey, steal big bones with marrow and brain inside,  and crash them with stones to eat.

They were carrying that cargo in the upper hands, holding the sticks by the upper hands, using stones by the upper hands.
And quickly run away to the shelter on rear hands.
Thus they were becoming bipedal and handy.

The hands usage forced the fine motorics center, and from gestures activity the speech center had splitted from the fine motorics center.
They got the ability to modulate their ape screams into voice and speech.

At the same time their food was poor, and dangers countless, so their lifetime got miserable compared to the happy chimps.
This totally changed their reproductive strategy. Instead of a big adult and hairy male with a harem of hairy wives (because he's much stronger), they moved to promisquity and a group family of teenagers where noone was able to ward off other males.
Also this meant that not that ape is the best who would be the strongest in 20 if not died in 10, but that one who is more or less strong in 14.
So, they were becoming more and more pedomorphic.

The human is an ape, but it looks not like an adult ape, but like an overgrown and underdeveloped ape child.
Thin hair (though their number stayed same), soft face, flat eyebrows, hair on on top of the head and in some other places, flat face (not adult ape jaws), and so on.

Thus, the chimp-like ape became the neotenic ape called human.

***

When the human was catching (or gathering from the lair) wild species and had enough food to not eat them immediately, they were staying in the trib camp (or escaped to forest to be eaten by the wild relatives).

The captured animals with habits and body of wild ones, were living between the humans.

The more often the animal was uncomfy for a random human, the sooner it received a fatal hit with a wooden stick and went to the soup.

The more childish and cute was the animal looking, the more chances it had to get owned by some human wishing to pet and protect it.

Thus, just a blind stochastic natural selection process was washing out too aggressive and too uncute species from the population.

The more childish and friendly was the animal, the more chances it had to reproduce, while too rough and adult one was accidentally killed and eaten by humans.

The rough constitution, thick hair, thick bones, and aggressive manners are forced by the male hormones.

So, the low level of male hormones was dramatically critical for the probability of the animal survival.
The masculinity was really toxic for them, lol!

Also, the childish animal has softer meat, so humans were appreciating when the cute pink she-pig was bringing more pink soft piglets, and cared about her.

As a result the captured animal population was turning into a population of neotenic species derived from the wild ones.

On the other hand, these neotenic species were alien for the wild species and were treated by them only as food.

Thus, a pure blind evoultion has developed the set of neotenic species (dogs, cats, pigs, cows, etc.), and then the human took care of elimination of their wild ancestors to clean the room for the "domesticated" ones.

So, no "domestication" idea was ever implemented. It was just an evolution with no plan, and the human cruel aggressiveness was the main factor forcing it
The more aggressive were humans, the faster the surviving captured species was being "domesticated".

No need to search for romantics in rural reality, it doesn't have it.

2 hours ago, Pixophir said:

But from observation, most people are peaceful.

When they don't have to slice some animal throat before every meal. 

When they do, they treat the animals like things and don't care of their feelings.
They are still peaceful, because what's a problem to kill a thing?

A good illustration is the set of noun cases in the Indoeuropean languages, derived from the active-stative language.
A full set of cases for the active entities, a linited set for the objects that are always objects.
(Not very clear for the modern English speaker (due to reduced cases), but clearly visible for a Slavic one).

(That's why I'm suggesting the village practice.)

Edited August 30, 2022 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, Pixophir said:

But from observation, most people are peaceful.

It’s all relative. Placed into the right circumstances, the average person can probably make the most gruesome predators pale in comparison. Only with immense moral discipline can one successfully fight against this and this is lacking IMO.

In addition it has only been through immense violence that the current very “cushy” world we live in today has come about. If a billion* died in the process of making the world peaceful, is the world really peaceful?

If X tribe conquered every land on Earth and exterminated the other tribes, but upon completion of that endeavor brought “peace” to society, I would certainly not suddenly classify X tribe as “peaceful”.

It is, of course, important to note that this is more of a philosophical question and one that has nothing to do with anthropology or anything.

Reading his above spiel kerbiloid make an interesting argument but the lack of sources makes it impossible to take seriously.

*Arbitrary hypothetical example number, not a real figure

[kerbiloid]

52 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Reading his above spiel kerbiloid make an interesting argument but the lack of sources makes it impossible to take seriously.

This argument doesn't bring new entities like "domestication", "intention", etc. So, Occam blessed it to be the default one.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

the lack of sources makes it impossible to take seriously.

Its actually derivative of many diverse sources.  I've read a lot in this area, and while he's using absurdism and reductionism as humor - there are numerous papers out there that (if you read enough of them) do provide sufficient threads that can weave this particular shpiel.  

• Hairless ape: modern human's advantage in heat-management through eccrine sweating (10x the amount of sweat glands of our nearest cousin) allowed us to become the premier endurance hunter... a trait we have leveraged into the ability to be productive throughout the day (not just chasing game, but plowing fields).
  • The Chillest Ape: How Humans Evolved A Super-High Cooling Capacity - Penn Medicine 
  • Sweaty primates give clues about the evolution of human sweating (kamilarlab.org)
  •  Persistence Hunting by Modern Hunter‐Gatherers on JSTOR 
  • Humans hot, sweaty, natural-born runners – Harvard Gazette
• Enduring friend:  Dogs and wolves could keep up with us and scavenge / share kills (likely that early humans scavenged from them as much as they scavenged from us)
  • Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas | PNAS
  • Energy cost and return for hunting in African wild dogs and cheetahs | Nature Communications
  • Horses were food:  'Horses were a late addition to the barnyard. Dogs were domesticated 15,000 years ago; sheep, pigs and cattle, about 8,000 to 11,000 years ago. But clear evidence of horse domestication doesn’t appear in the archaeological record until about 5,500 years ago.'  When Did Humans Domesticate the Horse? | Science| Smithsonian Magazine
• Hand tools: our ancestors, again after divergence from Chimps, used hands in unique ways that set them apart from their arboreal cousins:
  • they looked at metacarpals from four Australopithecus africanus individuals, up to 3 million years old. This revealed that their owners had been tree swingers but had also spent a lot of energy tightly pinching small objects, suggesting they were indeed early tool users Human ancestors got a grip on tools 3 million years ago | New Scientist
• Many different methods: Persistence hunting wasn't our only or best trait.  We gathered, fished, etc.
  • The World's First Fish Supper | Science | AAAS
  • Homo erectus ate crunchy food › News in Science (ABC Science)  "In his recent book A Brief History of the Mind Calvin writes that H. erectus "not only attained meat-eating but transport of food and raw materials and the sharing of food ... Perhaps they had learned to delay food consumption as well as to hunt, to prepare plant foods by pounding and soaking them first", making H. erectus, perhaps, the world's first cook"
• Domestication isn't a peaceful process:  Too often you read 'selective breeding' and think its some kind of benign thing where we merely chose favorable qualities - but the truth is we had to kill the ones we did not want to breed. 
  • 'The animals that were domesticated usually had flexible diets that didn’t require much work on the human’s part, manageable temperaments, changeable social hierarchy, and would be easily bred in captivity. ' The Domestication of Species and the Effect on Human Life | Real Archaeology (vassar.edu)
  • "Neolithic peoples exploited this dominance hierarchy by, in effect, supplanting the alpha individual and thereby gaining control of the herd."  "Artificial selection is unique in that, as the name suggests, it is wholly unnatural. That insight seems at first trivial, but reflection reveals just how extraordinary and fundamental artificial selection (manifest as domestication) has been to human success as a species. It was no more than 12,000 years ago that humankind began to consciously harness the 4-billion-year evolutionary patrimony of life on Earth. Exploiting the genetic diversity of living plants and animals for our own benefit gave humans a leading role in the evolutionary process for the first time. Agricultural food production (sensu lato, including animal husbandry) has allowed the human population to grow from an estimated 10 million in the Neolithic to 6.9 billion today"... Sexual selection is a natural process of intraspecific competition for mating rights. Artificial selection, generally the motive force behind domestication, is often equated with selective breeding. This often amounts to prezygotic selection (where mates are chosen by humans) versus postzygotic selection (where the most fit progeny reproduce differentially) as in natural selection. Although natural selection plays a considerable role in the evolution of many traits (e.g., disease resistance) during the animal domestication process, sexual selection is effectively trumped by the human-imposed arrangements...  The predecessors of today's farm animals were undoubtedly selectively managed in hunts in natural habitats (corresponding to our weak artificial selection) before individuals were taken into captivity and bred (6, 17, 24, 25). Animals that bred well could then be selected (either consciously or unconsciously) for favorable traits (corresponding to our strong artificial selection). Domestication in these cases is a mixture of artificial selection (both weak and strong) for favorable traits and natural selection for adaptation to captivity, with artificial selection being the prime mover. From wild animals to domestic pets, an evolutionary view of domestication | PNAS
• Agriculture arose from necessity and opportunity
  • Between 13,000 and 11,000 B.P. the Natufian hunter-gatherers developed tools such as the sickle and grinding stones to harvest and process wild grains (4). Subsequently (11,000 to 10,300 B.P.), a cold and dry period reduced the available wild plant food and increased the Natufian's dependence on cultivated grasses and legumes (the founder crops mentioned above). This climatic shift, called the Younger Dryas event, may have been the trigger for a change in emphasis away from hunting-gathering and toward true agriculture via improvised cultivation. With a reliable food source, human populations begin to rise, technology for collecting grains further improved, and settlements initially encouraged by naturally abundant food led to larger settlements. Although hunter-gatherers throughout the world had long manipulated plants and animals (for instance by using fire to encourage edible plants or animals that thrive on disturbed land), Neolithic agriculture moved well beyond the raising and harvesting of plants and animals and into an entrenched economic system enforced by labor demands and ecological transformations. Productive land, now the predominant venue for food supply and valued at a premium, would be cultivated and defended year round. This commitment to an agricultural life entailed permanent buildings and facilities for storing surpluses of food, and it created the first farm communities.  From wild animals to domestic pets, an evolutionary view of domestication | PNAS
  • There was no single factor, or combination of factors, that led people to take up farming in different parts of the world. In the Near East, for example, it’s thought that climatic changes at the end of the last ice age brought seasonal conditions that favored annual plants like wild cereals. Elsewhere, such as in East Asia, increased pressure on natural food resources may have forced people to find homegrown solutions. But whatever the reasons for its independent origins, farming sowed the seeds for the modern ageThe Development of Agriculture | National Geographic Society

With all of this - citations provided - you can begin to draw out threads and tell a story.  What story you choose to tell is up to the teller.

 

 

Edit: Fundamentally, I'm with @kerbiloid in his snarky perception of some folk's view of ancient humans as peaceful pastoralists or that wandering hunter-gatherers were any less competitive (read: kinder or less wasteful or better in some romantic way) than modern humans.  They lived in a rough and tumble world, where ultimately, the only competition they'd allow was 'themselves' - even then, they 'othered' other people and took care of their own.

Frankly - if we want to be judgmental about it; today's humans are probably among the most kind and altruistic that have ever existed on this planet.

Edited August 30, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[wumpus]

On 8/30/2022 at 11:02 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

"Neolithic peoples exploited this dominance hierarchy by, in effect, supplanting the alpha individual and thereby gaining control of the herd."  "Artificial selection is unique in that, as the name suggests, it is wholly unnatural. That insight seems at first trivial, but reflection reveals just how extraordinary and fundamental artificial selection (manifest as domestication) has been to human success as a species. It was no more than 12,000 years ago that humankind began to consciously harness the 4-billion-year evolutionary patrimony of life on Earth. Exploiting the genetic diversity of living plants and animals for our own benefit gave humans a leading role in the evolutionary process for the first time. Agricultural food production (sensu lato, including animal husbandry) has allowed the human population to grow from an estimated 10 million in the Neolithic to 6.9 billion today"... Sexual selection is a natural process of intraspecific competition for mating rights. Artificial selection, generally the motive force behind domestication, is often equated with selective breeding. This often amounts to prezygotic selection (where mates are chosen by humans) versus postzygotic selection (where the most fit progeny reproduce differentially) as in natural selection. Although natural selection plays a considerable role in the evolution of many traits (e.g., disease resistance) during the animal domestication process, sexual selection is effectively trumped by the human-imposed arrangements...  The predecessors of today's farm animals were undoubtedly selectively managed in hunts in natural habitats (corresponding to our weak artificial selection) before individuals were taken into captivity and bred (6, 17, 24, 25). Animals that bred well could then be selected (either consciously or unconsciously) for favorable traits (corresponding to our strong artificial selection). Domestication in these cases is a mixture of artificial selection (both weak and strong) for favorable traits and natural selection for adaptation to captivity, with artificial selection being the prime mover. From wild animals to domestic pets, an evolutionary view of domestication | PNAS

Domestication was a long process.  Some have speculated that the cat was the first domesticated species, which more or less "self domesticated" by hunting mice around granaries.  The cats that tolerated humans being close were more likely to thrive in such places, outcompeting more human-averse strains.  On the other hand, dogs were likely domesticated pre-agriculture (wolves, like humans, are persistence hunters see Joe's first notes.  So wolves were much more useful for less agrarian people), although humans lived using both technologies (direct food production and hunter/gathering) for a long, long time.  Often with peoples shifting back and forth over the years. 

In either event, starting with an easier animal lead people to try to domesticate anything that appeared useful.  There is even a painting from ancient Egypt (presumably from a temple/pyramid/tomb) of somebody attempting to train/domesticate(?) a jackal.

[kerbiloid]

The first really domesticated species.

They just can't live without humans. Literally.

Spoiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediculus_humanus