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created by [deleted] on 30/11/2024 at 20:35 UTC
12 upvotes, 2 top-level comments (showing 2)
[deleted]
Comment by alizayback at 30/11/2024 at 21:18 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think that the new evidence shows that we had a rather long transition into agriculture. We didn’t just develop it overnight. We started domesticating plants perhaps even as early as 15,000 years ago, but we spent most of the time between then and now doing what might more properly be termed as “horticulture”: gardening mixed with hunting and gathering.
Given this new view, I don’t think animal domestication developed before plant domestication. Rather, they were both long and drawn out processes that happened more or less simultaneously.
Dogs were indeed domesticated very early, because they were very good at helping us hunt. They were for sure domesticated around 15,000 years ago. But most animals were only domesticates around 11,000 years ago, while plants started being domesticated at least 13,000 years ago. The horse, which is a major component of most pastoral societies, was only domesticated around 5-6,000 years ago.
It’s worth pointing out in this context that even old human texts such as the Bible tend to situate pastoralists and agriculturalists as contemporaries.
Comment by Smart-Difficulty-454 at 01/12/2024 at 03:30 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Evidence is lacking but dogs likely domesticated humans 20,000 or more years ago. I think it makes more sense that help with hunting came later. Perhaps the biggest threat to semi nomadic clans was raids from other humans. There's a delicate balance between small enough to forage efficiently and large enough to defend. Dogs tipped the balance. If you were encouraging dogs to hang around you had an early warning system of approaching danger. There is nothing more valuable that a dog can do and the result would have been affection, respect and value. Only the clans that had dogs could really prosper, and only the dogs that had clans had additional food and a safe haven for puppies.