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This entry is published on Medium. You can find the entry here:
https://medium.com/@alwinian/dogs-in-the-wild-b67e9ac95a2e
A recent encounter with a bobcat while jogging had me thinking about how we must have domesticated our closest friends, dogs.
While we can’t say for certain, deeper thinking about the circumstances can shift the probability in favor of one scenario over another.
Dogs probably were not domesticated at a campfire as you would have seen frequently in movies or in portrayals of ice age ancestors. There would not have been a bridging moment where a human extends out their hand to have a hungry wolf take up a meal as theorized by countless of people and which is accepted as the conventional account of things.
There would have been no smooth transition in the final stages of bringing our species together, but rather a jump.
Here’s why I believe so:
While it is true that the two species (wolves and humans) must have inhabited the same territories and likely pursued the same prey. When a wolf is tossed a piece of meat, it is similar to tossing a meal to a coyote or to a raccoon, bear or to a seagull for that matter. It is giving a wild animal that lives in close proximity to humans food. They live near us, we live near them. We toss them food, they run away to eat dinner.
With repeated interaction, a specific pack or specific animal might have created a bond with a specific human group. That bond happens with all sorts of animals each and every day.
At the end of the day, an animal that is fed would have likely run off to eat the meal, perhaps going back to share that meal with its kin. It may have grown unafraid of humans and may have trailed a group of benevolent humans, but not likely would have crossed the final line into domestication and living with humans through simple feeding.
I would love for the narrative to be redrawn in a similar way that it has been for Columbus’ discovery of the Americas and other such events.
What seems more likely to be true, during the pivotal event that leads to domestication, is that humans came upon a young wolf pup(s) and they were raised with humans. Another piece of empirical evidence that points me in this direction is the fact that nearly half of the world’s dogs today are not pets and once on the street it is very hard to domesticate them.
The critical ingredients I believe in creating an initial bridge between the two species would have been:
I believe all circumstances for which a wolf would come into a human group are on the table, if satisfying those two conditions. While it is true that an orphaned, hungry wolf pup may have approached humans at a campfire and decided on its own to join the human group, most likely, it would have had to be (1) young and (2) isolated.
The first domesticated animal would have needed to find a mate too in order to reproduce, in the wild or with kin in this first generation. Coming upon a litter, may have satisfied this.
It was almost certainly not an adult animal as seen in so many representations of this event. Humans, more likely than not would have found a pup, a litter or known the mother of the pup and raised it, either as a pet or for food etc as we have with other domesticated animals.
Once the dog is raised in the human group, its subsequent progeny are subject to selection pressure by humans, and that is how we get the cute and cuddly dogs we know today.
As a last point, there are cases where the reverse happens, feral children are raised with animals, and it is almost always the case that a child is lost to human society and is raised with another species. It is not by increments but by jumps that a feral child ends up with a pack.
With over 471 million pet dogs and 900 million dogs on the planet, I wanted to share this and rewrite the narrative, as there seems so many speculations and misrepresentations about this event: the domestication of dogs.
The last step was not smooth, but rather a jump.
Not sure how I went so far without coming across this concept, it is an ancient one: Arete.
Having run across it – it really is my favorite word in the world.
Some things about it:
I simply love this word and what it represents. It is an aspiration and symbol for what is important in life (personally speaking).
Enjoy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arete
is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to “excellence” of any kind.[1] The term may also mean “moral virtue”.[1] In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one’s full potential.
The term from Homeric times onwards isn’t gender specific. Homer applies the term to both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures, such as Penelope, the wife of Greek hero Odysseus. In the Homeric poems, Arete is frequently associated with bravery, but more often with effectiveness. The person of Arete is of the highest effectiveness; they use all of their faculties—strength, bravery, and wit—to achieve real results. In the Homeric world, Arete involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans.
In some contexts, Arete is explicitly linked with human knowledge, where the expressions “virtue is knowledge” and “Arete is knowledge” are used interchangeably. The highest human potential is knowledge, and all other human abilities are derived from this central capacity. If Arete is knowledge and study, the highest human knowledge is knowledge about knowledge itself. In this light, the theoretical study of human knowledge, which Aristotle called “contemplation”, is the highest human ability and happiness.[2]
With the decline of both libraries and bookstores. It makes sense to consider that:
1. Lifelong learning and retraining of skills is more important than ever
2. Bookstores often are burdened by bricks and mortar (ie. rent) for an otherwise favorable public good
3. Libraries suffer from low user bases and are becoming obsolete in the age of the internet.
Enter the LifelongLearning Center (LLLC).
Something like an YMCA with a bookstore attached. A place where you can go take classes, borrow books (both free and premium) or if you like the ones that you are reading buy them. You can browse and reserve everything online, like in modern libraries too.
Super highspeed internet and workstations, as well as break out rooms for people to study.
Some form of this could potentially bring back the need for space, book economy and relearning. Just an idea.
Blast from the Past!!
http://murmurtoronto.ca/place.php?277649
Circa 2003.. Interactive Cell Phone Audio Tours. Was recently contacted by a tourism dot com and reminded about what people like Gabe Sawhney were up to in 2003. Ahh…
I recorded one for Future’s Bakery, a hang out of hangouts where my roommates used to work. A ton of chess stories from this time, such as that of Jim from Cleveland, a 100% biker/smoker/likely hell’s angel operative who always played the dutch stonewall.
#nostalgia #nostalgia #nostalgia
The cord juts out on the current model in a not-so-subtle way that makes it prone to break.
A. This version would wrap the cord around a middle groove.
B. The cord coming out would be angled in such a way that it never needs to point in any other direction.
For anyone that knows me, they know that I am a huge van gogh fan. I learned something about van gogh today which was very moving. His variations seem never to be shown together, ever, one beside the other.
Just like all his series: the sunflowers, potato eaters, violets, fields, shoes, etc. all seem to be shown in singles. Single ones, because they are so valuable and are spread everywhere. Like a deck of cards or a calendar, make much more sense when part of a suite or series.
The Mme Roulin, is a perfect example. Each great museum seems to own just one. much of the meaning however seem to be aesthetic beauty from the variations on a theme that he uses.
Why are some organizations efficient and others not?
It occurred that possibly the best way of analyzing and finding inefficiencies in an organization is to use vectors. Like electricity, macro-economics and swimming, aggregate/net action is really the most important thing. Measurement of energy versus application is easily seen with vector relationships. If bureacracy brings you in a circle, your net vector will be zero, but energy applied, will be much higher. The organizations with the greatest absolute vector magnitude divided by energy applied will be the strongest most efficient organization. This ratio, M/E call it should be as important as P/E for finance. It seems that this is the easiest way to create metrics, for bureacracies and to eliminate ‘circles’.
If you have not read any of his work, James Burke is a historian, who mostly writes about the history of science and innovation. He is known for his Connections 1 / 2 / 3 series on BBC. His work is always web-like and built off tangents.
In this book Pinball Effect, he writes about the interconnectedness of the world and how one chance incident triggers another. The style is non-fictional, but he is always telling a story along the way. Think of Umberto Eco coming to your highschool and teaching science class.
This is the fourth book I have read by him, and it is the best in my opinion. James Burke respects no real bounds to speak of, except one: the topic of the first sentence always comes back to finish the chapter. recommended.