In How to Tame a Fox by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut, they say that a sign that they were beginning to succed in breeding tame foxes was when the foxes began to wag their tails and to bark, which wild foxes don't -- to begin to communicate, in other words, with their human companions.
Another enjoyable read. I was already a fan of bonobos and now even more so. I imagine Planet of the Bonobos wouldn't make for a blockbuster movie.
You ask: "people who run schools—who should be most concerned about developing the humanity of our children—are taking play time away from children to ever greater degrees. And for what? For more time to study for tests that have little to do with real life. Why do we let them do that? What is wrong with us?"
I imagine it has something to do with the benefits of short term wins versus that of long term wins. Educators, and the politicians and bureaucrats who often pull their strings, benefit from being able to point to increased test scores, which is perhaps the most important youth related measure to all three groups when it comes to their (not the kids') future prospects. And sadly, we the people (voters, parents) fall for it time and again. They (we the people) want to see quick improvement now; so they choose to focus on largely meaningless test scores, which can be gamed in the short run; instead of the humanity of children, which is most important but neither quick nor easily measured.
You write: "Even today, despite our relative within-group peacefulness compared to other primates, domestic violence is the leading cause of murder of women and young children everywhere. Women, especially, would do well to choose a mate who manifests playfulness, humility, willingness to cooperate."
Unfortunately, with our hyper-competitive schooling and economic systems, along with what seems to be a growing appeal among certain segments of young men for particularly toxic misogynistic identities (e.g., MRA, incels), I worry that the number of those who manifest playfulness, humility, and willingness to cooperate may be dwindling.
Side note, I've been reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow and if I remember correctly they argued that humans didn't domesticate wolves into dogs as much as the wolves domesticated themselves into dogs (or domesticated us). Of course, as you suggest, it seemed to be a process that consisted of willing participants on both sides. So perhaps the dogs example is somewhere in between human-induced domestication and self-domestication.
This question, what is wrong with us is one I often ask regarding the lack of play in schools. When did we decide to deny children the right to play in spite of the research that demonstrates its importance? (Thanks for sharing it in these letters.) When did we decide to invest in testing and curriculums to teach children to learn in a competitive way squeezing out time for play which is when children learn to cooperate and self-regulate? Why do we deny children the movement they need to stimulate their brains and maximize their learning capacity and what's more, develop their humanity? Play is the best stress reduction method available to children. So we increase the stress in school with high stakes testing then deny children the means of reducing stress. Not only the children suffer, but also society because it costs more to correct what we didn't get right in the first place. It does not make sense.
You are one of the few people I’ve have ever encountered who has observed, studied and described the remarkable prosocial behaviors of children and adolescents within a mixed-age—ages 4 to 18— social environment (Sudbury school). Thank you for your ongoing contributions
Concerning the lack of play time available for today’s children, I propose it’s not so much the people who run schools—nor the teachers, curriculums, testing, social media et.al— that is taking away the experience of play from children. I suggest that the decline in playfulness is primarily a function of the age-stratified social ecosystems which are ubiquitous within our “modern” (19th century) modality of “age-grade” public schooling.
At age 5, age-grade schools separate children into same-age groupings—within which they are destined to spend the duration of their childhoods and adolescence— nearly isolated from most other-aged people. They quickly become dependent on ‘fitting in’ with their same-age peer groups, which become increasingly competitive social environments. Social status is often based on levels of ‘popularity’; competitive sports replace ‘fun and games’; social inclusion/exclusion is based on adhering to ever-changing social alliances and ambiguous rules of conduct; and spontaneous joyful self-expression is often inexpressible.
Like you, on multiple occasions I have witnessed school kids shuck off their same-age peer personas within mixed-age (ages 2-14) social milieus, and gleefully play with kids younger and older than themselves. It’s a joy to behold; and begs the question: How can the social ecosystems within schools be rehumanized to better align with children’s and adolescent’s natural, playful, and amiable human nature?
Peter and Steve both point to the role of language in self-domestication, which is surely correct. But Neanderthals and archaic humans also had the physiology to produce complex speech, most notably the hyoid bone in the throat. This makes it likely that language evolved gradually over time rather than suddenly appearing around 80,000 years ago when we see a fundamental shift in human behavior. What might be more compatible with the fossil record (and Peter's hypothesis) is that language was mostly functional in archaic humans and then, around 80,000 years ago became more playful. In other words, earlier humans used language to plan hunts, share information about food sourced, etc. while later humans used language to joke, make puns, recite poems, and tell complex stories and myths. We still admire and reward the ability to play with language and, as Peter pointed out, playful language is a major criterion for mate selection.
I've spent months fiddling with a post on this subject - thanks for offering this great platform to build upon! And thanks for providing a venue for me to sandbox the controversial embellishments that keep making me shelve my post.
The most important thing about the fox experiments is how shockingly fast the domestication process was. Same goes for dogs. The domestication process can be so fast that it makes me wonder whether all placental mammals are built with some sort of inducible genetic slider - perhaps something along the same lines as invertible promoters in bacteria https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30630933/ . The idea is that an animal lineage could move along a feral-domestic continuum in just a few generations - perhaps in response to environmental conditions. It's consistent with a hidden step that occurred before Belyaev's fox experiments - getting a fox lineage willing to breed in captivity apparently required an initial selection period where foxes were housed in a type of fox utopia for a few generations https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31810775/
If the genetic slider hypothesis is true, the implications for humans would be truly profound. It would mean that different human populations could, on average, go from one side of the continuum to another. It would mean that some individual humans might be genetically more feral than other individual humans. Maybe the more feral individuals and the more domestic individuals would have, on average, different skeletal traits?
The idea of shifted populational averages among humans - not to mention the possible phrenological implications - is such a third-rail topic that it could be career suicide to talk about it in public unless the nuts and bolts of the genetic mechanisms underlying domestication syndrome have been at least partly resolved. Someobody should do the genetic work using non-controversial animal models like rats https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28369080/
What if - and I'm borrowing from Desmond Morris' Naked Ape now - our playfulness and relative monogamy is an evolutionary thing?
As we learned to go further than 'some' vocal communication - read coordination during hunting - and starting to build a 'culture', the very young ones needed more and more attention from their parents. Like an orangutan child needs more attention than a chimpanzee of the same age because an orangutan needs to learn more than a chimpanzee before becoming autonomous enough to survive alone.
Similarly, a couple of parents would be more evolutionary adapted to raise human children than single mothers herded by a domineering alpha male who also needs to defend 'his herd' against the 'efforts' of other would be 'herders'.
Furthermore, being able to speak - as in exchange meaningful information - not only leads to becoming conscious. As in aware of one's own self. I'm sure you're familiar with Humberto Maturana's work. Being able to speak also makes it easier for the 'weaker' members of the community to become more 'productive'. To contribute more towards the well being and ultimate survival of the 'community'. This 'collective frame of mind' was in itself an evolutionary asset for the communities which shared it
So authoritarianism is more fundamentally regressive than we previously thought. Perhaps Americans are evolving faster than those in China, for example...
I heard tale that eyes in China watch the US carefully believing us to be the vanguards of civilization vs. barbarity.
Peter, as always, I find your ideas and hypotheses attractive.
Others who know this area better than me will state things more clearly, and with references, but I think your hypothesis does not give appropriate weight to the development of language.
Once we could communicate, less aggressive, perhaps more playful/nurturing males, could band together and collectively remove their more aggressive competitors (who were hogging mating opportunities), from the gene pool.
We see this in other species on occasion, but usually in males who are closely related (often brothers).
My guess would be that Peter was either directly friendly with Frans, or at least an admirer? I only met Frans once, after a seminar he gave at NIH. I'd be grateful for hearing any recollections - even if it's just an appreciation of whatever insights folks gleaned from reading Frans' books.
I had Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape on my home coffee table for literally about a decade. I'm pretty sure I could write an entire article about the insights *my houseguests* gleaned from Frans' work. I'm sad about the loss.
In How to Tame a Fox by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut, they say that a sign that they were beginning to succed in breeding tame foxes was when the foxes began to wag their tails and to bark, which wild foxes don't -- to begin to communicate, in other words, with their human companions.
Another enjoyable read. I was already a fan of bonobos and now even more so. I imagine Planet of the Bonobos wouldn't make for a blockbuster movie.
You ask: "people who run schools—who should be most concerned about developing the humanity of our children—are taking play time away from children to ever greater degrees. And for what? For more time to study for tests that have little to do with real life. Why do we let them do that? What is wrong with us?"
I imagine it has something to do with the benefits of short term wins versus that of long term wins. Educators, and the politicians and bureaucrats who often pull their strings, benefit from being able to point to increased test scores, which is perhaps the most important youth related measure to all three groups when it comes to their (not the kids') future prospects. And sadly, we the people (voters, parents) fall for it time and again. They (we the people) want to see quick improvement now; so they choose to focus on largely meaningless test scores, which can be gamed in the short run; instead of the humanity of children, which is most important but neither quick nor easily measured.
You write: "Even today, despite our relative within-group peacefulness compared to other primates, domestic violence is the leading cause of murder of women and young children everywhere. Women, especially, would do well to choose a mate who manifests playfulness, humility, willingness to cooperate."
Unfortunately, with our hyper-competitive schooling and economic systems, along with what seems to be a growing appeal among certain segments of young men for particularly toxic misogynistic identities (e.g., MRA, incels), I worry that the number of those who manifest playfulness, humility, and willingness to cooperate may be dwindling.
Side note, I've been reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow and if I remember correctly they argued that humans didn't domesticate wolves into dogs as much as the wolves domesticated themselves into dogs (or domesticated us). Of course, as you suggest, it seemed to be a process that consisted of willing participants on both sides. So perhaps the dogs example is somewhere in between human-induced domestication and self-domestication.
This question, what is wrong with us is one I often ask regarding the lack of play in schools. When did we decide to deny children the right to play in spite of the research that demonstrates its importance? (Thanks for sharing it in these letters.) When did we decide to invest in testing and curriculums to teach children to learn in a competitive way squeezing out time for play which is when children learn to cooperate and self-regulate? Why do we deny children the movement they need to stimulate their brains and maximize their learning capacity and what's more, develop their humanity? Play is the best stress reduction method available to children. So we increase the stress in school with high stakes testing then deny children the means of reducing stress. Not only the children suffer, but also society because it costs more to correct what we didn't get right in the first place. It does not make sense.
You are one of the few people I’ve have ever encountered who has observed, studied and described the remarkable prosocial behaviors of children and adolescents within a mixed-age—ages 4 to 18— social environment (Sudbury school). Thank you for your ongoing contributions
Concerning the lack of play time available for today’s children, I propose it’s not so much the people who run schools—nor the teachers, curriculums, testing, social media et.al— that is taking away the experience of play from children. I suggest that the decline in playfulness is primarily a function of the age-stratified social ecosystems which are ubiquitous within our “modern” (19th century) modality of “age-grade” public schooling.
At age 5, age-grade schools separate children into same-age groupings—within which they are destined to spend the duration of their childhoods and adolescence— nearly isolated from most other-aged people. They quickly become dependent on ‘fitting in’ with their same-age peer groups, which become increasingly competitive social environments. Social status is often based on levels of ‘popularity’; competitive sports replace ‘fun and games’; social inclusion/exclusion is based on adhering to ever-changing social alliances and ambiguous rules of conduct; and spontaneous joyful self-expression is often inexpressible.
Like you, on multiple occasions I have witnessed school kids shuck off their same-age peer personas within mixed-age (ages 2-14) social milieus, and gleefully play with kids younger and older than themselves. It’s a joy to behold; and begs the question: How can the social ecosystems within schools be rehumanized to better align with children’s and adolescent’s natural, playful, and amiable human nature?
Peter and Steve both point to the role of language in self-domestication, which is surely correct. But Neanderthals and archaic humans also had the physiology to produce complex speech, most notably the hyoid bone in the throat. This makes it likely that language evolved gradually over time rather than suddenly appearing around 80,000 years ago when we see a fundamental shift in human behavior. What might be more compatible with the fossil record (and Peter's hypothesis) is that language was mostly functional in archaic humans and then, around 80,000 years ago became more playful. In other words, earlier humans used language to plan hunts, share information about food sourced, etc. while later humans used language to joke, make puns, recite poems, and tell complex stories and myths. We still admire and reward the ability to play with language and, as Peter pointed out, playful language is a major criterion for mate selection.
<Learn Our Very Essence>
24 March 2024
Houston, Texas
★#{◆}#★
How do man's children learn self control?
With tricks & candy, as a conned troll?
Or mind's stability,
Heart's creativity? —
For there is the role of a kind soul.
A limerick upon watching children play & pondering neoteny.
I've spent months fiddling with a post on this subject - thanks for offering this great platform to build upon! And thanks for providing a venue for me to sandbox the controversial embellishments that keep making me shelve my post.
The most important thing about the fox experiments is how shockingly fast the domestication process was. Same goes for dogs. The domestication process can be so fast that it makes me wonder whether all placental mammals are built with some sort of inducible genetic slider - perhaps something along the same lines as invertible promoters in bacteria https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30630933/ . The idea is that an animal lineage could move along a feral-domestic continuum in just a few generations - perhaps in response to environmental conditions. It's consistent with a hidden step that occurred before Belyaev's fox experiments - getting a fox lineage willing to breed in captivity apparently required an initial selection period where foxes were housed in a type of fox utopia for a few generations https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31810775/
If the genetic slider hypothesis is true, the implications for humans would be truly profound. It would mean that different human populations could, on average, go from one side of the continuum to another. It would mean that some individual humans might be genetically more feral than other individual humans. Maybe the more feral individuals and the more domestic individuals would have, on average, different skeletal traits?
The idea of shifted populational averages among humans - not to mention the possible phrenological implications - is such a third-rail topic that it could be career suicide to talk about it in public unless the nuts and bolts of the genetic mechanisms underlying domestication syndrome have been at least partly resolved. Someobody should do the genetic work using non-controversial animal models like rats https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28369080/
Thank you for sharing!
What if - and I'm borrowing from Desmond Morris' Naked Ape now - our playfulness and relative monogamy is an evolutionary thing?
As we learned to go further than 'some' vocal communication - read coordination during hunting - and starting to build a 'culture', the very young ones needed more and more attention from their parents. Like an orangutan child needs more attention than a chimpanzee of the same age because an orangutan needs to learn more than a chimpanzee before becoming autonomous enough to survive alone.
Similarly, a couple of parents would be more evolutionary adapted to raise human children than single mothers herded by a domineering alpha male who also needs to defend 'his herd' against the 'efforts' of other would be 'herders'.
Furthermore, being able to speak - as in exchange meaningful information - not only leads to becoming conscious. As in aware of one's own self. I'm sure you're familiar with Humberto Maturana's work. Being able to speak also makes it easier for the 'weaker' members of the community to become more 'productive'. To contribute more towards the well being and ultimate survival of the 'community'. This 'collective frame of mind' was in itself an evolutionary asset for the communities which shared it
So authoritarianism is more fundamentally regressive than we previously thought. Perhaps Americans are evolving faster than those in China, for example...
I heard tale that eyes in China watch the US carefully believing us to be the vanguards of civilization vs. barbarity.
Peter, as always, I find your ideas and hypotheses attractive.
Others who know this area better than me will state things more clearly, and with references, but I think your hypothesis does not give appropriate weight to the development of language.
Once we could communicate, less aggressive, perhaps more playful/nurturing males, could band together and collectively remove their more aggressive competitors (who were hogging mating opportunities), from the gene pool.
We see this in other species on occasion, but usually in males who are closely related (often brothers).
As always, it is unlikely all one thing.
Thanks for the article.
Steve
In one of my two responses to this article, I mourned the loss of Frans de Waal
https://open.substack.com/pub/cbuck/p/why-i-love-domestic-jesus
My guess would be that Peter was either directly friendly with Frans, or at least an admirer? I only met Frans once, after a seminar he gave at NIH. I'd be grateful for hearing any recollections - even if it's just an appreciation of whatever insights folks gleaned from reading Frans' books.
I had Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape on my home coffee table for literally about a decade. I'm pretty sure I could write an entire article about the insights *my houseguests* gleaned from Frans' work. I'm sad about the loss.
Peter, thanks for the heads up. I’m a new subscriber… and will read those posts.
Thank you. Excellent post raising a profound concern.
The way forward involves a little bit of going back.