Domestication

Here's what the Encyclopedia Brittannica, 15th edition (1990) has to say about the subject of Domestication

The process of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into domestic and cultivated forms according to the interests of people. In its strictest sense it refers to the initial stage of human mastery of wild animals and plants. The fundamental distinction of domesticated animals and plants from their wild ancestors is that they are created by human labour to meet specific requirements or whims and are adapted to the conditions of continuous care and solicitude people maintain for them.

Domestication has played an enormous part in the development of mankind and its material culture. It has resulted in the appearance of agriculture as a special form of animal and plant production. It is precisely those animals and plants that became objects of agricultural activity that have undergone the greatest changes when comparedwith their wild ancestors.

The first attempts at domestication of animals and plants apparently were made in the Old World by peoples of the Mesolithic Period. The tribes that engaged in hunting and in gathering wild edible plants made attempts to domesticate dogs, goats, and possibly sheep as early as 9000 BC. It was not until the Neolithic Period, however, that primitive agriculture appeared as a form of social activity, and domestication was well under way. Although the great majority of domesticated animals and plants that still serve man were selected and developed during the Neolithic Period, a few notable examples appeared later. The rabbit, for example, was not domesticated until the Middle Ages; the sugar beet came under cultivation as a sugar-yielding agricultural plant only in the 19th century; and mint became an object of agricultural production as recently as the 20th century. Also in the 20th century, a new branch of animal breeding was developed to obtain high-quality fur.

Domestication of vegetatively reproducing plants, such as those with tubers, probably preceded domestication of the seed plants--cereals, legumes, and other vegetables. Some plants were domesticated for the strong fibres in their stalks, which were used for such purposes as making fishing nets. Hemp, one of the most ancient plants domesticated in India, is an example of a multipurpose plant: oil is obtained from its seeds, fibres from its stalk, and the narcotic hashish from its flowers and leaves.

Some plants were domesticated especially for the production of narcotics; such a plant is tobacco, which was probably first used by American Indian tribes for the preparation of a narcotic drink and only later for smoking. The opium poppy is another example of a plant domesticated solely for a narcotic. Beverage plants of many kinds were discovered and cultivated, including tea, coffee, and cola. Only when humans reached a sufficiently high level of culture did they begin to domesticate to fulfill aesthetic requirements for the beautiful and the bizarre in both plants and animals.

For the sake of honey, the bee was domesticated at the end of the Neolithic Period. Honey has played an enormous role in human nutrition since ancient times; it ceased being the sole sweetening agent only about 200 years ago.

The process of domestication in the New World took place somewhat later than in the Old World and independently of the latter, since humans first appeared in the New World only during the Pleistocene, long after settlement of the Old World.

Traditionally, the main criteria for judging relationships between domestic or cultivated organisms and wild ancestors are similarities of structure and function, but cytogenetical examinations, particularly comparisons of chromosomes and chromosome sets, also are adding to the knowledge of the origins of domesticated organisms. With animals, morphological and biochemical (i.e., blood typing) studies are made.

During the 10,000 or 11,000 years that have passed since the beginning of domestication, the animals and plants that humans have selected as useful to them have undergone profound changes. The consequences of domestication are so great that the differences between breeds of animals or varieties of plants of the same species often exceed those between different species under natural conditions.

The most important consequence of domestication of animals consists of a sharp change in their seasonal biology. The wild ancestors of domesticated animals are characterized by strict seasonal reproduction and molting rhythms. Most domesticated species, on the contrary, can reproduce themselves at almost any season of the year and molt little or not at all. No less characteristic are the changes that occur in plants as a result of domestication. Their structure and general appearance may be drastically changed.

The elementary genetic mechanism that draws the recessive genes out from the cover of the wild genotype of the natural species also brings about the first domestication-dependent changes and the initial differentiation of a wild species into types that can serve as the basis for breed formation. Nature, in effect, has a store of various types and forms hidden as recessive mutations in every natural population of wild animals and plants. It is this accumulated mutation pool that is exploited by humans in breeding. Such interference, called artificial selection, plays a truly creative role in the formation of modern animal breeds and plant varieties to suit human needs.

Artificial selection differs considerably from natural selection, which creates stabilized biological systems that ensure the development of a normal, or so-called wild, phenotype; i.e., an organism containing a wealth of properties that preadapt it to a widevariety of environmental conditions and ensure continuation of the species. Artificial selection breaks down precisely these stabilized systems, thereby creating gene combinations that could not survive in nature and providing a range of new possibilities.

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