Mythology could help demystify dog domestication
sciencenews.org
sciencenews.org
It is quite a mystery to wonder how domestication happened at all, though seeing how modern wolves can be made (relatively) tame and biddable if you get them as pups, maybe it just took one person to have the idea. I imagine you would have been quite the badass in early human society with a tamed wolf at your side.
So maybe rather than some semi-spooky pan-human thousand year plus directed domestication effort it grew organically with people inter-breeding their captive tamed wolves?
What I also want to add is that some dog breeders in the late 19th century thought that introducing wolf genes into dog breeds would make better dogs. They ended up creating horrible dog breeds (that still exist) that have the shyness, anxiety, and distrust of wolves.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarloos_wolfdog
The goal here was to recreate a fictional original German Aryan dog, untainted by modern degeneracy. The breeder thought to recreate the original heroic character by introducing the wolf into the breed, resulting in unbalanced, untrainable hybrids.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog
This was supposed to be another version of a better German Shepherd, better suited to the mountains. The result was the same as above.
The takeaway message is that every dog breed has its purpose, and that its character is inherited. There are dangerous dog breeds just bred to kill dogs or bulls (pit bull terrier). Some dog breeds were created without regard for the dog’s physiology (pug). Others were created without taking into account the temperament.
Neighbor of mine brings his out to the flea market sometimes for socialization; when he hits the lot every real dog there knows it, and is upset about it. The wolfdog is very polite, and on a chain, the domestic dogs don't like his smell.
Seems more likely to me than someone having a long term plan to domesticate, or wolves accidentally slowly domesticating themselves by scavenging food from human settlements. I am no expert in this matter though.
I wouldn't be too dismissive of this - I'll use another domestication example to highlight why.
Given how modern chickens are so useful for cheap and easy-to-raise meat, you'd think that's why they were domesticated, but no. Chickens were domesticated for reasons much less utilitarian - they were domesticated for entertainment! Cockfighting.
I'd need to read more to understand properly, but from a glance it appears interesting and possible.
And it's much more probable that the dogs got their reputation guiding the souls after they were used to guide living people than before
It stands to firm reason that this symbiotic living was reached by humans at a similar point in our development.
Yudhishtira, known for never straying from the dharmic path, refuses to leave a dog behind (that has been with them on their long journey) and get entrance to heaven - with the connotation that he refuses to leave the path of righteousness even for heaven.
There is also a verse in the Mahabharata: dharmo rakṣati rakṣitaḥ - meaning, protect dharma, and dharma will protect you - which is interesting if you apply it to the mutual relationship between a man and his pet.
I don't see how this sheds light in demystifying domestication though, apart from that they were regarded as loyal and good companions whose feelings were reciprocated.
He also pretty explicitly analogizes the obligation a man has towards his dog as that which the Devas ought to have towards men. The well-being of the dog becomes his duty because it is utterly devoted to him and this obliges him to repay its devotion. In a way you can also read this as Yudhistira is also calling out the Devas, and Indra in particular, for being callous and falling down on holding up their end of the reciprocal bargain.
> D’Huy is applying these methods to study how ancient myths can inform what we know about our connection with other animals such as sheep — their mythological link with the sun could have led to domestication. Symbolic, rather than utilitarian, reasons for domestication could explain a lot of data, he says.
Why would hunter-gatherers in a resource-constrained environment keep food around and not eat it? I would rather bet that my ancestors had exactly the same mythological connection with their flock of sheep that I have with my freezer.
Association of dogs with Sirius far enough back to precede populating the Americas is pretty astounding. Apparently the river and ferryman elements associated with dying do, too.
The association of sisters with the Pleiades apparently goes back much farther, maybe to before we left Africa.
Speculating some myself, it's easy to see how a domesticated wolf could be useful for hunting, guard duty, or even offensive use. The nature of wolfs is that they are pack animals so they'd submit to a strong master. Probably, early hunter gatherers, would have encountered and occasionally killed wolfs in the wild. The chances of encountering a wolf with some pubs would have been non zero and it raises the question what a hunter would do with some pups after disposing of the mother.
Just speculating here but it seems that that's a story that just writes itself. From there to breeding animals is a small leap.
This is the same thing biologists use in teasing out genetic lineages of more or less related animal, plant, or fungus species. The output is a proposed "this one came first, and spawned this or these others", all down the line. Biologists cross-check this against a timeline and geography. It is easy for such an analysis to go wrong: garbage in, garbage out. Its results are always, "assuming (the input), (the output) is the best fit for paths of descent."
Different people invariably produce different input and get more or less different output. But often certain aspects of the analyses are robust across unrelated analyses: birds always show up in Dinosauria, mammals never.
For oral traditions, you generally expect to see a geographical progression from a central point of origin, with progressively different versions in oral traditions taken farther away. For something like the Pleiades, where once seven stars were discernable and later six, you may see details appear to account for the change. Such observationally shared details need not trace to a single parent myth, and so may introduce noise to the analysis. But where similar accountings appear, they might each be traced to an origin.
All this is very difficult to make rigorous, but often curious relationships emerge that no one had noticed before. These may then be checked against other data. One such is connections between stories told in Oceania and in South America, which need to be accounted for. Waves of migration may appear, as later arrivals may displace earlier versions except in less favored environments.
The same process is used in tracing language evolution, where instead of oral-tradition motifs, cognate words and pronunciation shifts are tracked. And, it is used to trace genetic relationships among groups of people who have migrated and settled the globe. Comparing genetic, language, and oral tradition analyses helps to strengthen all three.
Genetic similarities between people in Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America, and Australian aboriginals may be accounted for by these migration waves. Peculiarities in languages in western Europe and central Asia, likewise. In each case the details are presumed to have once matched throughout the range, but have been displaced by later forms except at the ends.
Anyway that is how I understand it. I have not performed any phylogenetic analyses, myself.
Still humans love to pet dogs, and dogs enjoy it. ;)
Always seems like 'predicting 17 of the last 3 recessions' - on the off-chance X thing is ever achieved/understood in some way using Y, get your claim in early that 'Y could be key for X'. If it's done via Z instead, no harm.