Kevin Kelly at The Long Now:
What’s distinctive about humans is that homo sapiens domesticated themselves. We are self-domesticated apes. Anthropologist Brian Hare characterizes recent human evolution (Late Pleistocene) as “Survival of the Friendliest”, arguing that in our self-domestication we favored prosociality — the tendency to be friendly, cooperative, and empathetic. We chose the most cooperative, the least aggressive, the less bullying types, and that trust in others resulted in greater prosperity, which in turn spread neoteny genes, and other domestication traits, into our populations.
Domesticated species often show increased playfulness, extended juvenile behavior, and even enhanced social learning abilities. Humans continued to extend their childhood far later than almost any other animal. This extended childhood enabled an extended time to learn beyond inherent instincts, but it also demanded greater parental resources and nuanced social bonds. We are the first animals we domesticated. Not dogs. We first domesticated ourselves, and then we were able to domesticate dogs. Our domestication is not just about neoteny and reduced aggression and increased sociability. We also altered other genes and traits.
more here.
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