Nat Geo: Were Humans Domesticated?
While it certainly wasn’t the focus or intention of the article, this is how part of it reads:
If Andersson’s theory is correct, it may turn out to have intriguing implications for our own species. Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham has theorized that we, too, went through a domestication process that altered our biology. “The question of what is the difference between the domestic pig and a wild boar, or the distinction between a broiler chicken and a wild jungle fowl,” Andersson told me, “is very similar to the question of what is the difference between a human and a chimpanzee.”
That is some suggestion. Obviously it is coming from the direction of “did we somehow evolve via processes of domestication”, yet anyone who has read Sitchin would read it as “aliens have messed with us”.
I don’t quite know what to make of this next part, but it is very interesting, and it brought up a human disorder I had not heard of before:
The finding that made headlines was that dogs originated from gray wolves not in East Asia, as other researchers had argued, but in the Middle East. Less noticed by the press was a brief aside in which Wayne and his colleagues identified a particular short DNA sequence, located near a gene called WBSCR17, that was very different in the two species. That region of the genome, they suggested, could be a potential target for “genes that are important in the early domestication of dogs.” In humans, the researchers went on to note, WBSCR17 is at least partly responsible for a rare genetic disorder called Williams-Beuren syndrome. Williams-Beuren is characterized by elfin features, a shortened nose bridge, and “exceptional gregariousness”—its sufferers are often overly friendly and trusting of strangers.
After the paper was published, Wayne says, “the number one email we got was from parents of children suffering from Williams-Beuren. They said, Actually our children remind us of dogs in terms of their ability to read behavior and their lack of social barriers in their behavior.”
So, for those who are into alien intervention theories, the implication is clear – DNA manipulation was used to domesticate dogs/wolves, and the same techniques were used to make humans more compliant. Personally I prefer a combination of cosmic rays and self-determining genes that selectively repair or not repair mutations. Regardless, something seems to have happened.
