Joanne,

Since the woolly mammoth were in the north, practically along the southern boundary of the ice sheet, it is unlikely. Humans probably had enough to worry about staying alive in those frigid conditions. The Columbian mammoth would have been more feasible, since they had a southern range.

Genetic evidence suggest that dogs started diverging from wolves some 50,000 to 25,000 years ago. Dogs, and possibly cats too (complicated), were domesticated by association according to our best theory. It is suggested that wolves became familiar with humans as certain members of the pack, or even lone wolves, braved the periphery of human encampments in search of food scraps. This possibly is similar to how cats were domesticated, but the late date of ca. 4,000 BP for cats would argue against that assumption.

Columbian mammoth were much larger than woolly mammoth and likely harder to control. It is highly unlikely that either species or mastodons were tamed. While orphaned infants could have been taken in and raised, the highly mobile hunters of the Pleistocene would probably not have the patience to care for such infant until it could keep pace. Remember, mammoths and mastodons, like their cousins the elephants, require an enormous amount of biomass and eat most of the day. This browsing pattern would be incompatible with a mobile band of humans. Additionally, the day to day existence of hunters probably meant that sometimes they could face days of hunger. Not good for elephantine baby who is pain in the rear.

The other aspect is trapping and taming. Blind canyons could have been used to create game traps, like they were for slaughter and later in history capturing. However, to entrap mammoth or mastodon would require the creation of a stopper of some type, like a gate and palisades, in order to keep them in once trapped. This is unlikely with Pleistocene hunters. Then there was still the "domestication" part of the equation as it would take many weeks of working with the animals just to be able to gain their trust and learn some rudimentary commands. This also would require building separate isolated areas in order to work with an animal bereft the support of its herd. Goats and sheep were only domesticated ca. 12,000 BP in the Anatole region of Turkey when a few tribes settled into a more sedentary lifestyle. Camels started being domesticated, according to archaeological evidence, around 5,000 BP.

Although dogs are the exception, every animal that I am aware of was domesticated after humans switched from hunter-gatherer to a more settled lifestyle.

Very interesting thoughts James Green.  Thanks for responding.   Domestication is not the same thing as winning the trust of an animal, though.  Yes I agree that proboscideans require huge amounts of fodder.  Feeding of a proboscidean would not be too much of a stress for a mammoth whisperer. Some people are good at working with lions or bears, etc. and so I think it is possible.

Hi Joanne

I think it is very interesting question.

I don't think, that people use big fauna, but meybe I'm wrong. In my opinion they don't have to, couse they had a smaller animals like reindeers.

B. Gordon 2003; Rangifer and man: An ancient relationship, "Rangifer" 23, Special Issue 14: 15-28.

https://habricentral.org/resources/780/download/Rangifer_rangifer_gordon.pdf

Best Regards

Maciej Wawrzczak

Well indeed you'd require evidence of any sort but ancient people did domesticate horses and the Asian/ Indian elephant.

And indeed it's hard to see how to domesticate/tame these animals by catching them and trying to control them. I think that the first step could have been, raising orphaned calves in friendship. 

Thanks Maciej for your comments.  We do not have reindeer in North America but I will think about Europe too.

Meanwhile here is a man interacting with what appears to be a wild bear...  http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2015/11/18/video-man-splash-fight-wild-bear-stream/

Thanks Andre.    Here is a video of a man and a lion. He took care of this one as a cub.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2925670/Abandoned-lion-cub-best-friends-man-seen-leaping-grateful-hug-lioness-star-film-taught-hunt.html

Hi all,

It might be worth re-visiting the Paul Bahn/Mary Littauer debate on horse domestication in the Upper Palaeolithic:

http://search.proquest.com/openview/f6a748c06f0540eaae652818c7965a2f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1818741

http://rockartblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/paleolithic-horse-domestication.html

Cheers, Fred.

Thanks, Fred. Looks interesting. 

Joanne :-)

Happy to help, Fred.

Hi Joanne,

While I was looking for something else today I happened upon my old folder of Horse Domestication references. Just in case you haven't already found them, here they are:

Anthony, D.W. and Brown, D.R. 1991. The Origins of Horseback Riding. Antiquity. 65: 22-38.

Bahn, P.G. 1978. The ‘unacceptable face’ of the West European Palaeolithic. Antiquity. 52: 183-192.

Bahn, P.G. 1980a. Crib-biting: tethered horses in the Palaeolithic? World Archaeology. 12(2): 212-217. Plates 13-16. (Paper in ‘Early Man’ section).

Bahn, P.G. 1980b. Horse Sense or Nonsense? (Reply to Mary Littauer’s comments on his 1980a paper). Antiquity. 54: 139-140.

Littauer, M.A. 1980. Horse Sense or Nonsense? (Reply to Paul Bahn’s 1980a paper). Antiquity. 54: 140-142.

Cheers, Fred.

Sorry, I also meant to say that the recent research concerning a possible dual origin for domestic dogs was also especially interesting since it promoted the idea that domestication of the same animal can occur more than once. It got quite a lot of publicity at the time e.g.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36450258

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160602151723.htm

Similarly, as mentioned above, reindeer seem to have been domesticated several times in the far north of Eurasia, but not the caribou (same species - Rangifer tarandus) in North America. Until modern political divisions got in the way, members of several circumpolar civilizations used to cross regularly between Russia and Alaska, but I guess the idea either never reached them or never took off in the USA and Canada...

Thanks, Frederick John Owen!  This looks very interesting.

Joanne :-)

You're very welcome Joanne.

By the way it looks like the earliest domesticated animal was used more for hunting mammoths than trying to convince them that domestication was a good idea:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262453667_How_do_you_kill_86_mammoths_Taphonomic_investigations_of_mammoth_megasites

Or use them to see off your unwelcome neighbours!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273524666_How_we_hounded_out_the_Neanderthals

Cheers, Fred.

Article How do you kill 86 mammoths? Taphonomic investigations of ma...

Article How we hounded out the Neanderthals

Interesting recent overview of the reindeer/caribou question:

http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/reindeer.htm

Apparently, our relationship with dogs is all down to genetics:

Genes underlying dogs' social ability revealed

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160929092603.htm

I think they should have tested the owners' DNA too as I'm sure my dogs have me well trained!

Frederick,

On another thread I have noted that the human brain apparently slowly changed in response to flintknapping. The cognitive functions of knapping introduced things such as reading the rock, calculating the trajectory and force of the strike, improved coordination, etc. Over time these mental functions improved and along with the improvement so too did the lithic tool kit. This slow change in human mental synopses due to flintknapping suggests that canine brains changed as a result of association with man over time. These brain changes took canines from avoiding man to skulking around the fringes of the camp looking for scraps to being part of the human clan to being able to read humans.

The study reported in this link suggests that domestication may have enabled animals to communicate with us:

Horses can communicate with us

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37450952

The welfare implications for animals being able to communicate even simple requests is a very welcome outcome of this work.

Joanne's original question actually covers several very important aspects of domestication. The "when and where" aspects must be addressed via palaeontology and archaeology.

The big question of how domestication occurred:

through 'adopting' young animals;

by 'taming adults';

or even a combination of both for some species, is still undecided in my mind.

Personally, I lean more towards rearing young, but then you also have remarkable relationships between humans and wild animals such as the honeyguide. If you've never seen this, watch the first few minutes of this episode of "The Trials of Life" - you won't be disappointed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyYNCu9zbp0

Of course, not all of the species shown as capable of communicating with us (e.g. dolphins, great apes) have been domesticated, but rather have been tamed in captivity. Individuals, often reared from young, can be tamed. The extent of this relationship varies between individuals/species and often varies greatly with temperament. Some classic examples of this are horses (domesticated) and zebra (some tamed examples, but behaviourally they are very unsuitable for domestication). Furthermore, the effects of 'taming' often seem to wane as animals' juvenile behaviour is replaced by mature behavioural patterns. Sadly, this is tragically sometimes seen in the injuries inflicted on zookeepers, trainers, entertainers, etc. by adult animals, even if they hand-reared them.

There is still considerable debate over a truly meaningful definition of "domestication". Often aspects such as "modification of plant or animal species for human and/or mutual benefit/use" are emphasised, or even the rather grandiose "enfolding of species into human society"! Whatever definition you personally favour, it is very clear that domestication involves human control of reproduction at a population level.

Why did various civilizations domesticate particular plants and animals? As already stated, clearly not every species is equally suitable for domestication. Francis Galton (1865) listed several characteristics that are of vital importance in determining an animal’s suitability. These were updated by Juliet Clutton-Brock (1987):

1. They should be hardy - young animals should be capable of surviving removal from its mother and weaning.

2. They should possess the ability to adapt to new conditions - environmental, disease, parasite levels, etc.

3. Behaviourally - be social animals with a dominance hierarchy and therefore an ability to imprint on humans and accept them as ‘leaders’ within dominance hierarchies.

4. They should not be highly adapted for instant flight, as are many deer, antelope, etc.

5. They should provide food - be, in effect, ‘walking larders’ or serve some other useful function - beasts of burden, guarding, hunting, etc.

6. Be easy to breed - compare the successful reproduction of typical domesticated species to that of captive species in zoos.

7. Be easy to tend - be placid, eat a range of foodstuffs and be gregarious so that they can be relatively easily controlled by stockmen.

Domestication results in a number of physical changes in the animals compared to the wild and/or ancestral forms. This is due to the effects of selective breeding. These can be observed at the present time, and in the archaeological evidence for domestication, with the effects being reflected in bones, teeth and other remains of the animals:

1. Skeletal and dental changes of various forms - the animal may be altered in terms of its overall size, muzzle or limb length, etc. Due to genetic factors, the animal's teeth sometimes lag behind the skeleton of the animal - a domesticated animal of reduced stature may still possess teeth as large as the wild form for some time following domestication. Animals are very 'plastic' in terms of size change - rapid alterations can result in a few generations in response to changes in climate, food availability, etc.

2. Antlers or horns may be altered in form - or even lost as in many sheep and cattle breeds seen both today and in the past.

3. Artefacts used for rearing, handling or containing animals may also be found. For example, harnesses or saddles, tethers, whips, etc.

4. Iconographic evidence such as paintings and carvings of animals being ridden, pulling ploughs, etc. may also be unearthed.

5. Age structures of the death assemblages (or thanatocenoses). Some examples: large numbers of young sheep bones on an archaeological site may suggest that lambs were butchered for meat, whilst large numbers of adult sheep bones may suggest that adult sheep were tended for their wool.

6. Evidence of use of secondary products - textile remains (wool, silk, etc.) or looms or similar textile processing devices may be found.

7. Parasite presence - even in depositional environments where neither soft tissues nor bones or teeth will survive, insect remains or parasite egg cases may indicate the presence of domesticated species. Since many parasites are host specific, utilising only one, or occasionally a few very closely related, species - if you find the parasites, the hosts must have been there too!

8. Evidence of industrial use - as discussed in the case of textiles above, but bones, horn, ivory, etc. may also be used for carving and tool production and bones may also be used for glue whilst skins may be utilised for leather. Butchery marks on the bones may indicate usage e.g. sites containing few skulls and lower limbs suggest that animals were butchered and only the best, meat-bearing sections were utilised. Sites with many lower limb bones (carpals, tarsals and phalanges) will often show cut marks on these bones (and on the lower radius, ulna, tibia and fibula) indicating that these animals were skinned.

9. Domestication also causes alterations in the pelage (fur) - sometimes at a relatively superficial level (colour alterations or changes in patterns) but the size and density of the hair itself can also be altered. Ancient leather can be identified as wild or domesticated by microscopic examination - the hair follicle distribution is adjusted as a result of domestication.

References:

Clutton-Brock. J. 1987. A Natural History of Domesticated Animals. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Galton, F. 1865. The first steps towards the domestication of animals. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London. N. S. 3: 122 - 138.

Thanks James Green. Thanks Fred.  I appreciate your input.  I will read this in more detail later, but I wonder about horns altering due to domestication when horns/antlers/tusks have modified over time without likely human domestication.  See gomphotheres and other elephant types.  Steppe mammoth, southern mammoth, woolly mammoth etc.

Yes I would like to find artefacts such as a mammoth bridle! :-)  But even if it preserved would we recognize it as such?

Yes I agree there could be some sort of communication (Horse whisperers, mammoth whisperers, etc.)

It is important to note that taming and domestication are two different things. ...

No problem.

Of course, horns, antlers, etc. have altered due to natural or sexual selection, but there is also plenty of evidence of horns being bred into multiple or bizarre forms, or entirely lost, through domestication. It can be done quite quickly via selective breeding.

Just seen this - what happens when domesticated animals become feral?

Feral chickens spread light on evolution

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160930085816.htm

Frederick,

Look at pigs. In only a couple of generations the domestic pig in the wild can revert back to the feral hog.

Early horse domestication? A useful reference I forgot earlier - sorry!

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0033589488900737

You should see what happens to goldfish when returned to the natural environment.

They apparently revert back to the wild colors 

http://wdfw.wa.gov/ais/carassius_auratus/

There are reports of goldfish returned to the wild becoming  huge.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/monster-goldfish-lake-tahoe-aquarium-dumping_n_2727290.html

Goldfish (carp) in aquariums, like most fish, are limited in growth size due to several environmental factors. When these limitations are removed, as in release into freshwater ponds or streams, they normally grow larger. A number of years ago an acquaintance of mine caught a 15.2 lb. butterfly koy in Toledo Bend Reservoir.

Don't leave home without your dog - even in the Mesolithic:

Dog tooth found near Stonehenge 'evidence of earliest journey'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-37574881

James, that is a huge koi!  Thanks for your comments.  Hi Fred, yes I just saw that.

Thanks for sharing. 

Good, general history/overview of the classic experiment:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world

Shame it has run into financial troubles over the last few years.

Frederick,

I have always had a problem with the biologists/zoologists statement that you cannot breed the "wild" out of wild animals, even those that are bred from birth or are generational. First, humans have tamed many animals throughout history, including wolves (dogs), cats, ducks, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, etc., and these animals are usually not inclined to attack us. However, any of those "tamed" species, once removed from human interact, likely will become feral after a while. The first generation born in the wild will be as if never tamed.

That is an excellent article of taming of foxes, and how their morphology and coat color changed rather rapidly...I've shared this on Facebook with some paleontologist friends there.  Thanks Fred, Thanks James. 

No problem -  a far more detailed account (from 1999, but still well worth a read as it's by current project director Lyudmila Trut) can be found here:

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/early-canid-domestication-the-farm-fox-experiment/1

A quick Internet search will provide plenty of updates, YouTube clips, etc.

Dog's dinner: DNA clue to how dogs became our friends:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37913860

 Interesting to see a cause-and-effect change in DNA in that short a period of time. Could be a mutation that slowly got into the gene pool?

A botanical example for a change - ancient history of maize domestication:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37999506

Just in time for Christmas (or Thanksgiving in the USA):

Archaeological excavation unearths evidence of turkey domestication 1,500 years ago

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161121115523.htm

Native Americans raised turkeys long before first Thanksgiving

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161121111328.htm

Season's Greetings to all followers of this domestication thread!

Thanks, Fred!  These are great additions to this thread!  I just visited Victoria on Vancouver Island and learned about the "Spirit Bears" of British Columbia. They are the mammals of the province now.  THese are white black bears but they are not albino.  I think I will have to start a separate thread on this topic of animal coat color and other mutations (horns, antlers, etc).   The spirit bears are Ursus americanus kermodei and there are an estimated 400 in BC Canada

Hi Joanne,

Sounds like a great visit and a good idea.

Something to wash that turkey down with:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161130-why-the-stone-age-could-be-when-brits-first-brewed-beer

The Emperor's new coats: History of horse coat colours:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161207091114.htm

FJO,

It really is amazing how domestication has changed the coloration and patterning of many domesticated animals, including horses, cats, dogs, pigeons, and cattle. And all of this over the past 6,000 years or so.

Earliest evidence for processing plant material:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38366109

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161219134457.htm

Still wild plants at this time, but an important stepping-stone to domestication.

Fred, I am going to digress a bit from the earliest evidence of plant material (which is very interesting) --this green Sahara (African Humid Period) is just fascinating.

"The pottery fragments were found at two sites in the Libyan Sahara, which was then green and fertile. [10,000 years ago]"  from your link http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38366109       How did a lush green jungle become a desert?  Shifting latitudes to shift the 30 degree N & S  latitude where high pressure cells cause deserts to form

USGS on Paleodeserts: 

"Paleodeserts

Data on ancient sand seas (vast regions of sand dunes), changing lake basins, archaeology, and vegetation analyses indicate that climatic conditions have changed considerably over vast areas of the Earth in the recent geologic past. During the last 12,500 years, for example, parts of the deserts were more arid than they are today. About 10 percent of the land between 30? N. and 30? S. is covered now by sand seas. Nearly 18,000 years ago, sand seas in two vast belts occupied almost 50 percent of this land area. As is the case today, tropical rain forests and savannahs were between the two belts.Fossil desert sediments that are as much as 500 million years old have been found in many parts of the world. Sand dune-like patterns have been recognized in presently nonarid environments. Many such relict dunes now receive from 80 to 150 millimeters of rain each year. Some ancient dunes are in areas now occupied by tropical rain forests.

The Nebraska Sand Hills is an inactive 57,000 square kilometer dune field in central Nebraska. The largest sand sea in the Western Hemisphere, it is now stabilized by vegetation and receives about 500 millimeters of rain each year. Dunes in the Sand Hills are up to 120 meters high."

https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/types/

I should post this in its own thread.  I want to know how this has happened in a relatively short space of time.

Joanne,

Climate, or in this case Paleoclimate, is a most complicated and fascinating beast. Gunn and Brown (1982 Eagle Hill report) discussed the Paleoclimate of the south and central US and how the pine biome of eastern Texas, albeit drier and sparser than today, extended hundreds of miles westward during the Late Pleistocene. I also remember seeing recently that in the DelMar region of the Atlantic Coast during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene the constant northwest winds and subsequent dust picked up from the glacial outwash made that area basically uninhabitable.

If I remember correctly, concerning the Sahara Desert, I believe it has been proposed that it only took a 5 degree latitudinal shift of the jet stream in order to cutoff the storm-producing moisture to that area.

I have been looking at the weather patterns in the US over the past several decades and it seems that the dips in the jet stream that brings fronts from the Northwest and Arctic to the Southeast are shifting eastward. This perceived pattern has resulted in less rain for the Southeast and more rain and snow for the Midwest and Northeast. A permanent shift of these dips eastward only a few hundred miles could move the post oak savanna and prairies into eastern Texas and Louisiana, replacing the dense pine forests.

Several scientific studies, including one just published, have shown positive proof that tropical systems have been shifting northeastward over the past 500 years or so based on stalagmite isotope analysis. Where rainfall indicative of tropical weather systems was frequent and more intense in the past, those areas now receive decreased and less frequent rainfall. Researchers were able to follow and date this northeastward trend in increased and decreased rainfall from the Yucatan to Bermuda. This too is having and will have an affect on climate in the Southeastern US. Additionally, current observations, confirmed by NOAA, is a shift in Atlantic hurricane tracks from a westward trend into the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, to a northward to northwestward trend in the past decade. This is causing less rainfall in the Southeast and more impact to the East Coast and Northeast.

The gist of it all is that we could see a real change in vegetative biomes even in a couple of generations if these climate trends become long-term or permanent.

JAG

Happy New Year everyone!

Here's a news story on human impact/urbanization causing rapid evolutionary changes - should be of interest to you Joanne:

New global evidence of the role of humans, urbanization in rapid evolution

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170103152500.htm

James thanks for your awesome post.  DelMar I think is the DelMarVa Peninsula.  I seem to recall there are black layers in the sand there...the late glacial Parsonburg Sand: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1067b/report.pdf    THis paper hypothesizes strong NW winds to account for the sand deposit

Also, I wonder if the dark layers in this Parsonburg sand is the  US variation of the charcoal rich Bolling Allerod/Younger Dryas age Usselo Horizon..

-----

Thanks for your interesting post, Fred.   Happy New year, everyone!

I am wondering how the urbanization compares to non-anthropogenic extinction events...I will think about it...

Joanne

I do not know. I only recently became aware of that charcoal horizon. The one paper that I read did not convince me.

Thanks, James, I am checking on it.   I know a researcher who has studied those sands...

Joanne,

The paper I read (sorry, cannot remember the author) basically tried to make a case for a continent-wide, if not hemispheric, fire that deposited a layer of ash/carbon over the entire continent(s). I thought that the 6 or 7 widely spaced locations where the lens had been found insufficient evidence of a continental conflagration.

Well that is basically what my disseration results are, from 5 of 6 sites in eastern North Amerca, evidence of wood ash during the late glacial, but it is a start, and more work needs to be done to use a new technique to look for this - siliceous aggregates in thin sections, which we found in late glacial age sediments.  Also to look for a total nitriogen signal with perturbations in d15N.  

Have you seen the black mat paper of Vance Haynes?  Those are mostly in the southwest but there are some scattered elsewhere across North America

If I remember correctly, the paper I read was concerning sites in the West. However, the complexity of wind patterns continent-wide would argue that these events are not concurrent. While I can see a huge states-wide forest fire or grass fire spreading soot and ash over a large area, the many locations attributed to this supposed event are too widely spaced and have too much areal spread to possibly be caused by one event. There is always a chance that a particularly long and electrically-charged storm front touched off numerous fires, but considering the wind patterns of the time, I do not see potential source locations for some of those SW sites. Now, a world-wide cloud of ash, like that from a significant volcanic eruption injected into the upper atmosphere could spread a layer across the continent, but that should be correlated with a change in word-wide temperatures during that same period due to the increased concentration of particulates in the atmosphere.

That said, I know you have posited the possibility that prairie fires could have been man-made. While I do not think that migratory Pleistocene hunters were that insensitive to their environment, there is the possibility that fires generated by the influx of humans into the continent could be identified in deposits. However, I see this as a series of events, not one single event. But consider the number of humans on the continent during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene versus the number of inhabitants just prior to historic contact. How apparent is the continent-wide use of fire in the archaeological record for the Woodland period?

Hi James. Thanks for your post.   I am not proposing wildfire or ash from a volcanic event.  During the late glacial, pines and spruce dominated over most of eastern North America.  These are highly flammable species and need fire to thrive. The source of the late glacial wildfire would have been cosmic in origin and large scale in extent (hemispheric).   Possibly a comet fragment.   I have charcoal evidence for fires in the lateglacial, not just at the Younger Dryas onset, but during the Bolling Allerod and earlier.  The reasons I think that there was a catastrophic, widespread wildfire event (and yes, more research needs to be done to see if my hypotheses can be tested) is 1. the presence of siliceous aggregates in the late glacial sediments but not in the Holocene. 2. There is evidence of melt glass and fused quartz grains in the charcoal rich strata in coversands in The Netherlands and Belgium. This dark layer  is referred to as the Usselo Horizon.  The layer below the dark horizon looks bleached.  Following an extraterrestrial impact event, the associated shock wave would result in nitric acid rain (see Prinn & Fegley 1987 for details), which would in turn, bleach the iron oxide coatings from the sand grains.  In addition, this would be a nutrient pulse which would trigger widespread algal blooms, and the evidence for that is there, and in the black mats of the US Southwest.. 

I have heard of the proposed theory that a comet exploded in the atmosphere over Canada. I am not up on that subject though.

You would need to read Firestone et al. 2007.    Many more papers have been published since then.   Fayek et al 2012.  Israde-Alcantara et al 2013.  Wittke et al. 2013.  LeCompte et al 2013.  Wu et al. 2013. Van Hoesel 2012.  Kurbatov et al. 2010. Overholt et al.; Bement et al.;  Petaev et al. 2013 is about the Pt spike in the Greenland ice cores around the onset of the Younger Dryas.

Firestone, Richard B., et al. "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.41 (2007): 16016-16021.

Fayek, Mostafa, et al. "Framboidal iron oxide: Chondrite-like material from the black mat, Murray Springs, Arizona." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 319 (2012): 251-258.

LeCompte, Malcolm A., et al. "Independent evaluation of conflicting microspherule results from different investigations of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.44 (2012): E2960-E2969.

Wu, Yingzhe, et al. "Origin and provenance of spherules and magnetic grains at the Younger Dryas boundary." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.38 (2013): E3557-E3566.

Wittke, James H., et al. "Evidence for deposition of 10 million tonnes of impact spherules across four continents 12,800 y ago." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.23 (2013): E2088-E2097.

Kurbatov, Andrei V., et al. "Discovery of a nanodiamond-rich layer in the Greenland ice sheet." Journal of Glaciology 56.199 (2010): 747-757.

Israde-Alcántara, Isabel, et al. "Evidence from central Mexico supporting the Younger Dryas extraterrestrial impact hypothesis." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.13 (2012): E738-E747.

van Hoesel, Annelies, et al. "Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.20 (2012): 7648-7653.

Bement, Leland C., et al. "Quantifying the distribution of nanodiamonds in pre-Younger Dryas to recent age deposits along Bull Creek, Oklahoma Panhandle, USA." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.5 (2014): 1726-1731.

Overholt, Andrew C., and Adrian L. Melott. "Cosmogenic nuclide enhancement via deposition from long-period comets as a test of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 377 (2013): 55-61.

Petaev, Michail I., et al. "Large Pt anomaly in the Greenland ice core points to a cataclysm at the onset of Younger Dryas." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.32 (2013): 12917-12920.

Fred, the urbanization paper is quite interesting.   An excerpt:

"  "The significance of these changes is that they affect the functioning of ecosystems," Alberti said. "They may inhibit the ability of seeds to disperse, cause exposure to infectious diseases, or even change the migratory patterns of some species."

Some examples of this include:

*human-caused global warming is prompting the seasonal onset of reproduction to occur earlier in 65 species of migratory birds in Western Europe

*the use of galvanized (zinc-coated) transmission towers creates "novel habitats" characterized by high zinc tolerance in multiple plant species

*the size of brown trout is being affected by fish ladders, which subsequently affects predators and prey"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that nature will win out in the end.  There are extremophiles living near hot sulfur rich, seafloor vents (e.g. tubeworms).  Fish near Antarctica have adapted to live in such extreme cold conditions by evolving a sort of antifreeze in their blood.    Species have evolved to live on serpentine soils (high in Mg and Ni) which are toxic to most species.  THe advantage is that they have very little competition.  Here diversity flourishes.  NW Greece and parts of California have such soils, and endeimic plants and butterflies associated with them.

 Unexpected effects on ecosystems can occur, such as veterinarians giving painkillers to livestock in India, which subsequently die; vultures feeding on the carcasses die from the effects of the pharmaceuticals.

I wonder what drives the very high biodiversity in the Amazon, and perhaps it is low nutrients causing niche development.  We know the soils there are very thin and poor, highly leached. Rainfall is very high.    Eutrophication of ponds drives down biodiversity.  Typically algae proliferates and sucks up the oxygen and nutrients, to the detriment of other species, including fish.

As far as rapid evolution, one of the most remarkable occurrences is the number of different cichlid species in the Great African Lakes (such as Victoria) that have evolved over a short time.   There is an intermittent interconnectedness of those lakes, and the changing conditions from low water stands to high and movement of fish between the lakes seem to be factors in this phenomenon.

Hi again James,  RE: your earlier post:

"Several scientific studies, including one just published, have shown positive proof that tropical systems have been shifting northeastward over the past 500 years or so based on stalagmite isotope analysis. Where rainfall indicative of tropical weather systems was frequent and more intense in the past, those areas now receive decreased and less frequent rainfall. Researchers were able to follow and date this northeastward trend in increased and decreased rainfall from the Yucatan to Bermuda. This too is having and will have an affect on climate in the Southeastern US. Additionally, current observations, confirmed by NOAA, is a shift in Atlantic hurricane tracks from a westward trend into the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, to a northward to northwestward trend in the past decade. This is causing less rainfall in the Southeast and more impact to the East Coast and Northeast.

The gist of it all is that we could see a real change in vegetative biomes even in a couple of generations if these climate trends become long-term or permanent."

I think these shifts may have a geomagnetic component to them. Cor Langereis published an article about the decline of the Mayans relating to climate and geomagnetism.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007EO110001/pdf

Re. urbanization paper/climate change.

I remember reading last year where the growing season has changed in the United States because of global warming. If I remember correctly, the growing season is now about 18 days longer now than in the 1970s. The last frost date has steadily gotten earlier and the first frost date has gotten later. The report noted that this has resulted in plant species that bloom earlier, thereby having longer to mature and seed. This also is causing a northward migration of some species. These changing conditions are requiring farmers to shift planting schedules and in some areas they are getting two crops per year where previously they could only produce one. Changes in temperatures of only a few degrees also has effect on wildlife species and their ranges.

Many thanks for that Joanne - and I love the idea of research on the effects of an exploding comet being conducted by Firestone et al.!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFW6yUlgGdI

Sorry!

Back to the science:

Hidden seeds reveal Canary Islands history

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170109092548.htm

So the environment must not have changed much in the 2,000 years, or the plants would be evolving/adapting to compensate for that...People also may inadvertently or deliberately shape plant evolution with some of their agriculture practices.

Yes caves can be good places to find seeds. I recall that in Dust Cave, Alabama, a pouch of Lambs Quarters' seeds were found (Chenopodium).

Joanne,

Complicated. The short answer is that plants are more prone to migration from generation to generation as the environment around them changes rather than evolve or adapt. There are mutations and hybridization that could provide defense against environmental changes, but those are not as common as migration. Evolution in plants is usually a very slow process through survival of the fittest, like the creosote bush evolving to emit a poison that prevents other plants from growing near it.

Hybridization in the wild often is a dead-end path. Plants created through human hybridization and human selection is an artifact of civilization. However, as you say, this can be inadvertent.

Perhaps you are right.

Soil and precipitation conditions are also important in allowing some species of trees (e.g.) to dominate, where once others did. I am thinking of jack pine and spruce in Tennessee during the ice ages.  Their range today is the boreal forests of Canada, in a cooler climate.  Jack pine outcompetes other species on a nutrient poor substrate.  Was there an influx of nutrients during the late glacial that facilitated this shift to hardwood dominance in the eastern U.S.  after the late glacial? 

As I have pointed out before, there are a few enclaves of spruce pine in southeast Louisiana. spruce pines occurs in pockets from SE Louisiana to South Carolina. A botany professor told me once that spruce pine used to be prevalent in the mid latitudes of the United States, but its growing range was pushed southward during the Pleistocene. It has been very slow to migrate back to its original range. Then, as you say, their is the fluctuation of the spruce/pine line. The further south that we have archaeological/geological evidence for the migration of white spruce is Kansas City, Missouri.

The northern portion of southeast Louisiana also is home to several Appalachian plant and animal species that stayed after the retreat of the ice sheets in North America.

This story may be of interest to you both:

Tree-bark thickness indicates fire-resistance in a hotter future

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170111091429.htm

Frederick,

Basically, those trees that survived fire because of having thicker bark passed that trait on.

It is interesting to note, James, that southern pines have replaced the spruce and pines that were here in the Southeast during the last glacial....What was their range during glacial times?  On the continental shelves?

Jack pine was grown outside its native range in the central states and Alaska  https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/pinban/all.html

See:

Lafleur, B., Pare, D., Munson, A. D., & Bergeron, Y. (2010). Response of northeastern North American forests to climate change: Will soil conditions constrain tree species migration?. Environmental Reviews, 18(NA), 279-289.

I am not sure. Since the exposed shelf along the Gulf Coast was supposed to be more prairie like the Attakapa Prairie when the settlers arrived, I assume that spruce pine (Pinus glabra) migrated to the southern margin of the coastal plain hills where the Prairie Terrace began. Basically where it now resides.

What was the range of the other southern pines during the glacial?

Slash pine (P. elliottii), Virginia pine (P. virginiana), longleaf pine (P. palustris), loblolly pine (P. taeda), shortleaf pine (P. echinata), Table Mountain pine (P. pungens), sand pine (P. clausa), pond pine (P. serotina), pitch pine (P. rigida).

I'll have to look in Gunn and Brown in the morning. They might mention some of the species. I know they talk about biomes during the later part of the Pleistocene.

Gunn and Brown (1983) do not name specific species of pine. They do note on Page 77, "lag factors reside in...vegetation migration (Whitehead 1982), which may result in lags of hundreds or thousands of years." They also talk about the position of the normal "standing wave" of the jet stream being different during the Pleistocene and that the dry prairies were present in western Pennsylvania during the Hypsithermal. This, they say, shrank "precipitation on the western and northern periphery of the Southeast (Gunn and Brown 1983:81)."

On Page 105 they state that along a study transect A-A, at the foot of the glacial front at the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee existed a boreal pine and spruce forest, while the coast of southern Alabama had a xeric oak and pine biome. They further states that there was little change in pollen records along the coast until the end of the Hypsithermal about 5,000 B.P. However, in Tennessee jack pine and spruce pollen changes to deciduous pollen between 16,300 and 12,500 B.P. Then ca. 8,000 to 4,500 B.P. there is indication of a warmer and drier Hypsithermal likely tied in to the Prairie Peninsula Phenomenon seen in western Pennsylvania.

It is noted that in northern Mississippi mesic forests in the lowlands are reduced in scope from ca. 7,300 to 3,500 B.P. and is replaced by xeric oak and hickory forests. Ca. 3,500 moisture returns, peaking ca. 2,300 B.P. They state (Page 106) that since the moisture returned there has been a "general increase in pine on the Gulf Coastal Plain" in the last 2,500 years. This increase in pine started as early as 5,000 B.P. in southern Alabama. There are some indications that the upper Tombigbee drainage was wet during the warmer years of the Hypsithermal, while the middle valley region of the drainage basin experienced dry conditions.

Gunn, Joel, and David O. Brown. 1983. Eagle Hill: A Late Quaternary Upland Site in Western Louisiana. Special Report 12. Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio.

Seeds offer clue to domesticated plants' larger size:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38770646

Well, Fred, I suppose they have factored in the effect of the use of fertilizers by farmers?

On a similar topic,  I was just discussing with my brother about chicken breeding. Banties have small eggs.  If a banty hen and a standard size rooster mated, would there be problems?  Well the egg size is pretty much fixed with the hens. According to this Illinois extension office publications, little is known of the history of bantams (how did they become miniature, or stay miniature?)  https://extension.illinois.edu/eggs/res10-breedhistory.html#12

Regarding the other end of the spectrum, gigantism, here is a Dec 20, 2016 article on why some researchers think dinosaurs got so huge--biting power  https://phys.org/news/2016-12-sauropods-gobbled-gigantism.html

However, this is not helpful in applying towards the gigantism of the woolly mammoths, and why the males evolved such massive tusks.  They were herbivors also, but they would have been getting their food by tearing off grass with their trunks, all day long. 500 lbs of vegetation a day or 15X a bale of hay. This exhibit was in the Royal BC Museum on Vancouver Island.

For some reason, this did not appear to attach in my answer above.  JPB

Evidence for a gradual switch to farming/domestication:

Baltic hunter-gatherers began farming without influence of migration, ancient DNA suggests

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170202122800.htm

Didn't agriculture begin around 13,000 years ago in the fertile crescent?

If there is no evidence of t he DNA of the middle easterners  in the Baltic,

they are suggesting agriculture became common independently?  But much later (8 - 5k yr )

Hi Joanne,

Agriculture, or the so-called 'Neolithic Revolution' must have occurred independently several times. The very familiar story of agriculture having its roots (sorry!) in the 'fertile crescent', and its subsequent spread into Europe, often mask the fact that this region can't possibly have influenced it's development in the Americas, China, Japan, etc., etc.

I find it fascinating that some cultures, even to this very day, never developed/adopted it and remain confirmed hunter-gatherers. There were also some very successful cultures/large settlements based purely on hunter-gathering - so much for the 'Neolithic Revolution'!

There must be many reasons to explain why people made the switch from hunter-gathering to agriculture. They often focus on aspects such as climate change, megafauna extinction and increasing population. I suspect that there are also many complicating factors and local issues at play to explain where and when different cultures made the switch.

As I said, a fascinating field of study.

Sorry Joanne, I've also just seen your photograph of the mammoth and its daily food supply - great illustration.

If you want to learn more about mammoths and their tusks (or deer and their antlers), I'd recommend that you read Adrian Lister's books ("Mammoths" - a 'popular science' book and "Mammoths - Ice Age Giants" - written to accompany the display he organised recently at London's NHM) or some of his many, many papers on elephantids and cervids, many of which you can download from here:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adrian_Lister

Of course, we're alternating between natural selection when talking about mammoths and artificial selection when considering domestication, so perhaps you should consider splitting these threads/questions Joanne?

Hi Fred, If I split off domestication and natural selection, I'd have to find both threads back again, and there is some overlap. I think I'd prefer to keep them together since I started off musing about early humans gaining the trust of woolly mammoths (and maybe other wild animals) and perhaps riding around on them. What a great way to travel, and maybe they could also have helped with defense and status.  Who wouldn't be impressed if I rode in on a mammoth, esp. if I decked him out in beads and other eye-catching trappings.  In this view, it is not domestication, per se, but the role of mammoth whispherer.

I have the Mammoths Ice age giants book and I would love to come visit the Nat. History Museum for a behind the scenes tour.  I have been in touch with Adrian Lister about the Tell-Tale Tusk project.   :-)

You're the boss Joanne - it's entirely up to you how you wish to maintain your threads. I'll keep posting anything of note I come across on my regular news trawls...

Great to hear that you are already aware of Adrian's work. What's the Tell-Tale Tusk project please? (I just Googled it, but only found an English folk band!)

Persistent tropical foraging in the highlands of terminal Pleistocene/Holocene New Guinea: Foraging lifestyles persisted in New Guinean tropical forest environments even after the advent of farming 8,000 years ago

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207105340.htm

Hi Fred,

The Tell-Tale Tusk is a female mammoth tusk found in Siberia,  that Dick Mol, a Dutch Paleontologist showed me in 2004.  It has strange etching near  the tusk socket.  The part of the tusk up in the socket is pristine.  I asked Dick at the time if it could be mouse gnawings, but there were not actually teeth grooves. He said no, this has occurred while the animal was alive, because further away from the tusk socket the dissolved ivory is smoothed, which would have happened while the animal moved around in its environment and brushed the tusks against grasses, trees, rocks etc.

Fast forward to 2014 while I was working on nitrogen isotope results from sediment cores from six lake sites in eastern North America.  I was seeing some perturbations in the d15N and total nitrogen and was sifting the literature to find out more about nitrogen.  According to Prinn and Fegley (1987), following an extraterrestrial impact (bolide, comet fragment etc), the shock wave to the atmosphere dissociates the nitrogen (N2) in the atmosphere, and the ozone layer is disrupted (O3)  These two types of ions combine to create nitrates (NO3).  The nitrates cycle out of the atmosphere as nitric acid rain.  Prinn and Fegley were focused on the K/T impact and what they were seeing in the sediment record.    Now we have a hypothesis by Firestone et al 2007, that an extraterrestrial impact occurred around 13,000 years ago, which destroyed the Laurentide ice sheet, caused massive wildfires and killed off the megafauna.

So, if acid rain followed this hypothesized event, we should see massive algal blooms from the input of nitrogen (fertilizer). However increased sunlight may trigger algal blooms in shallow water.  We should also expect destruction of land plants from the acid rain releasing toxic metals in the soil, and also directly damaging the foliage. This aspect has been well studied in the 70s, when the forests, fish and other aquatic wildlife in the Smoky Mountains and in Scandinavia were being hard hit by the effects of acid rain from industrial pollution (SOx and NOx).   Diatomists showed definitively that acidification began with the Industrial age and was a direct result of the pollutants from factories. That provided the impetus to pass the Clean Air Act. Currently the Smokies have 3 air quality monitoring stations. 

So now, can I apply diatom techniques to the Younger Dryas to determine acidification input? I have not conducted diatom analyses; I had already done six other types of analyses.  For my limited study (6 lakes)  I did see perturbations in total nitrogen and d15N, which suggests a nitric acid rain input.  But more lake sediments need to be analyzed to see how regionally widespread this signal is.  Also, many paleoenvironments papers report massive algal blooms at onset Younger Dryas (around 13,000 years ago), and an open landscape (sun-loving herbaceous flora was dominant). Following a massive wildfire, you typically get wildflower blooms, but if you also have nitric acid rain, this could suppress re-population of trees and shrubs by killing any propagules that survived the catastrophe.  Now seeds would have to be transported in by agents of seed dispersal such as birds and animals.

Now turning to any woolly mammoths who might have survived this event over North America (but Europe and Asia and South America were also affected), what would happen to these great tuskers if they were showered with acid rain, the strength of lemon juice (ph 2)?  We (colleague Andre Bijkerk) did an experiment using ivory blocks in different strengths of nitric acid, and ph 2 seems the closest by looking at mass lost.      With lemon juice rain or nitric acid rain of pH2, the surface of the ivory tusks would dissolve. The tusk ivory away from the mammoths face would be softened but then get polished as the animal bumped into things in his/her environment.  The part of the tusk near the animal's face has a skin flap over it and the acid would just eat into the ivory and etch it.  It could not be polished, as it is protected from mechanical abrasion.  However, as the animal stuffs acid-soaked forage into its mouth, that acid fluid would get under this skin flap.  This is the pattern we see.  Now I am looking for other dissolved tusks to see if I can pin down a date for the event.  We have a date on the Tell-Tale Tusk, but I want to get a few more specimens before I publish on it.

If you go to my main page, you can see my powerpoints and some high-resolution photographs of the tell-tale tusk.  Featured Research/Contributions

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joanne_Ballard

There is also a video on youtube with the owner of the Tell-Tale Tusk, Paleontologist Dick Mol demonstrating how the acid-softened tusks got smoothed, while the animal was alive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K1iFNvY3v0

Thanks for that Joanne - I'll check the details out ASAP (Snowed under with marking at the moment!) and discuss it with Adrian when I see him next. I have come across Dick Mol's work/tv appearances from time to time, so I've probably heard of this tusk previously, but I have an awful memory!

Cheers, Fred.

Hi Fred,

No you probably have not heard of it in Dick Mol's talks.  I presented my results at a conference he helped orgainized in Grevena & Siatista, NW Greece, in 2015. It was a fantastic conference.  I am also snowed under with marking. ARGH!!!

NEW DNA study on cats.  Apparently the Vikings took cats with them on ships (to manage the rodents perhaps).    http://www.sciencealert.com/cats-sailed-with-vikings-to-conquer-the-world-genetic-study-reveals

Free online course on extinctions, starts March 20th:  https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/extinctions-past-present/1/welcome

Bones, teeth reveal the harsh conditions endured by the ancestors of indigenous Finnish cattle and sheep breeds, particularly in the Middle Ages:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170310091946.htm

Rice goes feral!

Domesticated rice goes rogue: Weedy rice, which differs genetically from wild and crop rice, is adapted for undercover life in agricultural fields

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170403123536.htm 

The redomestication of wolves: Large predators are reoccupying former ranges, where they often rely on newly available human foods

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170405131009.htm 

I see that. Quite a different story from the wolves reintroduced after 70 yrs to Yellowstone and improving the quality of the rivers (by keeping populations of grazers from overgrazing).   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

Prehistoric alpine farming in the Bernese Oberland

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406152313.htm

Sorry, I meant to say that that's a very nice summary of the Yellowstone wolves 'rewilding' project.

New DNA research shows true migration route of early farming in Europe 8,000 years ago: Spread of agriculture throughout Europe followed migration into the Mediterranean from the Near East - thousands of years earlier than widely believed

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406102603.htm 

How domestication can change animals' facial features

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410085152.htm 

In search of the wild fava bean

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410095649.htm 

Precision chronology sheds new light on the origins of Mongolia's nomadic horse culture

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411130816.htm

Thanks Fred.  Here is a fascinating topic ---giant ground sloths and the huge burrows they dug in rock in Argentina, North and South Brazil.  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburrows-south-america/#.WPOqBYgrKUn

"The paleoburrows found in Brazil were dug into sedimentary rock, or more rarely, volcanic rock, and are located in hillsides not far from water. Amazingly, some are dug into sandstone.

Paleoburrows in Brazil and Argentina were dug into rock, and this is why they are so well preserved. In North America burrows were dug into soil where they likely collapsed and disappeared soon after ground sloths became extinct"

See also this site with many studies, but it's in Portuguese http://www.ufrgs.br/paleotocas/Portugues.htm

and some blogs

https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/some-giant-ground-sloths-dug-long-burrows/

It is possible they did not need to dig caves in North America if limestone caves were pre-existing.   Giant ground sloths are members of the primitive mammal family, Edentates. "The edentates originated in the tropics and have poorly developed thermoregulatory systems. To survive, they had to escape from the hot midday sun and from freezing temperatures. Although no paleoburrows have been found in North America, their fossorial habit explains how one species, Jefferson’s ground sloth, was able to live as far north as Alaska. It must have dug deep burrows where it was safe from hard freezes."

https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/new-studies-of-giant-ground-sloth-burrows-in-brazil/

Photo: Looking into a large paleoburrow in Brazil. (Photo by: Heinrich Frank)

Fred, re your article on the horsemanship in Mongolia 3000 years ago, apparently climate is thought to have been a factor, but there is disagreement (boldface is mine): 

"The study has important consequences for our understanding of human responses to climate change. For example, one particularly influential hypothesis argues that horse riding and nomadic herding societies developed during the late second millennium BCE, as a response to drought and a worsening climate. Taylor and colleagues' results indicate instead that early horsemanship took place during a wetter, more productive climate period -- which may have given herders more room to experiment with horse breeding and transport.

In recent years, scholars have become increasingly aware of the role played by Inner Asian nomads in early waves of globalization. A key article by Dr. Michael Frachetti and colleagues, published this month in Nature argues that nomadic movement patterns shaped the early trans-Eurasian trade networks that would eventually move goods, people, and information across the continent. The development of horsemanship by Mongolian cultures might have been one of the most influential changes in Eurasian prehistory -- laying the groundwork for the economic and ecological exchange networks that defined the Old World for centuries to come."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411130816.htm

Joanne,

Did not know if you had seen The Telegraph article below. Interestingly, the wiki article on Gobekli Tepe neither mentions nor shows the complex carved column depicted in The Telegraph article.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Hi James, THanks for the alert.  You can get the journal article for free here.It might provide better information than the Telegraph article

http://maajournal.com/Issues/2017/Vol17-1/Sweatman%20and%20Tsikritsis%2017(1).pdf

Family tree of dogs reveals secret history of canines

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39705103

Scythian horse breeding unveiled: Lessons for animal domestication

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170427141740.htm 

And why is it that some animals take to domestication, while others are said to be untameable or will revert back to the wild, even those born in captivity? Is this modern bias?

Bless my soul! Turns out God DID have something to do with domestication...

Holy chickens: Did Medieval religious rules drive domestic chicken evolution?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170502204556.htm