Sus scrofa

I think I know what left this behind:

Yes, there’s one now. Massive, aren’t they?

I love their delicate trotters. Humans captured them and turned them into domestic pigs: hairless, docile and relatively non-violent animals with flat faces, small teeth and young which stay with their parents an inordinately long time before independence. Much like ourselves.

It’s quite likely that humans domesticated themselves and eventually produced the same physical and behavioural changes we see in domesticated livestock in modern humans. We achieved the domestication of livestock by only breeding from the non-violent ones. It’s much safer that way. We achieved human domestication by not allowing violent men to breed. It’s the same result.

The development of language, culture, justice and punishment has changed our species so we are hairless, docile and relatively non-violent animals with flat faces, small teeth and young which stay with their parents an inordinately long time. All those characteristics go together, along with changes in out neural crest cells which influence our development.

Humans without language would be pretty wild.

Wild Boar, Sus scrofa.

Beautiful and wild, aren’t they?

The only things humans haven’t got which domesticated animals have are floppy ears and large body spots or patterns. Just look at sheep, goats, pigs, cows and dogs for a full range of what we’ve achieved. Humans clearly aren’t fully domesticated and non-violent yet.

Maybe communicating to ensure violent men were punished and didn’t breed was a necessary step to human civilisation. How many more steps do you think we need to take to become a truly civilised species? And how do we achieve it?