Domestication: A Major Turning Point in Human History

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Recommended: Evolution of human beings

The human way of living has changed from what it was 12,000 years ago. Humans used to have a "precarious journey through a hostile world in an unceasing search for food". Gone are the days when humans migrated looking for food and being hunter gatherers. They have changed from being hunter gatherers to being herdsmen and presently being farmers, which is a major turning point in history. The change to herding in humans meant that they had to domesticate.

Domestication is the taming of an organism to convert it to domestic use. Domestication however differs from taming in a sense that with domestication, both the behaviour and the physical characteristics of an organism can change. Domesticated organisms live in close contact with humans, mainly
This means that some organisms are better equipped to survive than others and those with the favourable traits survive to reproduce and a population of organisms with favourable traits is apparent. Mutation in this regard plays a role in changing the DNA of the organisms, we have to note that mutations are either harmful, favourable or neutral. Another argument is that had been practising domestication years before the end of the Pleistocene.

The first site of domestication is said to be in the Mediterranean Basin and that it spread to other regions from here. The tribes of people here gathered edible wild plants and started trying to dogs, sheep and goats amongst others. Fossil evidence show the remains of a dog found in northern Europe and southwest Asia which are over 10,000 years old. In wheat and barley, the grain changes as the shape changes and the size starts to increase, perhaps because humans started removing weeds in the way of plants.
Domestication took a long process in organisms. For organisms to be fully domesticated, which is being in a state where they cannot survive in the wild without human intervention, there has to be semi-domestication which will eventually lead to full

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