Hi all
A perennial topic is whether HBs should be considered domesticated or not. This should throw a little light on it:

Dr Larson said: ‘The origins of many of our domestic animals make for great bed-time stories, but these myths need to be questioned so that we can really figure out how we got so close to so many pets and livestock’. His next project will re-examine the domestication of other plants and animals that our society relies upon, and will challenge whether humans intentionally set animal domestication in motion, or if it was more a natural consequence of something else.

Of why our knowledge of domestication has taken so long to take shape, Dr Larson suggests that the delay has a lot to do with how we tell stories, ‘What was really interesting to me was why nobody has really thought about it or been critical about it. We really have trouble appreciating slow, continuous change over long periods of time, even though that’s how most change happens. Our narrative structures work much better if you have a eureka moment.’

“We have been slightly arrogant,” said co-author and fellow Oxford archaeologist Evan Irving-Pease. “We know a hell of a lot less about the origins of the things that matter most to us than we think we do.”

See: Trends in Ecology & Evolution, March 2018, Vol. 33, No. 3

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