Animal and Plant Domestication One Term Paper

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The geneticist must first identify the wild crop, to be utilized as a comparative, (99) stressing that such information to be considered accurate in time and space must be gleaned from archaeological record and only based on the genetic process determined from the modern research in plant and/or even animal genetics.

In regards to the animal domesticate the issues become much more complicated, sometimes offering a richer picture of the effects of domestication upon animals but more often offering a more laborious process with more missing pieces of information. The difference between the plant and animal studies is largely do to the complicated nature of the animal as compared to the plant. The variables associated with animal selection are far greater in number and far less predictable than with those of plants as within the genetic record of an animal far more variations occur and surprises are historically evident in the record, both genetic and archaeological. Therefore the study of how morphological changes occur, upon domestication requires a set of guidelines that can be judged through the process by archaeology and genetics to determine what occurred naturally and what occurred as a result of human and animal interaction. (Zeder 171) in short the archaeologist must look at many factors, some of which are no longer evident in the record but have to be mapped by some other aspect of the record, to determine if changes within the genetic makeup of the animal are as a result of environment, i.e. changes in weather food supplies water sources etc. exposure without true domestication i.e. animals coming in to contact with domesticated plants, changing patterns to avoid human populations, or even eating found scraps of human making, or actual domestication processes, shelter, domestic food or even active attempts by humans to select for certain traits in domesticated animals.

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(173) Another complication that can be found in the development of a set of rules, for judging the level of domestication of a species of animals has to do with the ample evidence that there is a great deal of diversity among wild populations in the same ecosystem and in different ecosystems, called phylogeographic discontinuities, that can potentially throw the researcher off the track of domestication. The difficulty then arises in that the set of rules can not be assumed to be translatable to every geographical location, and this can be regionally true in that a different herd or group, based on its history of breeding can be genetically and physically different than one, whose recognized territory is just a few miles away. (Bradley 273)

This work details a very brief introduction to the relatively new utilization of archaeology to the field of genetics and vice a versa. Both are tools that are attempting to create a holistic picture of domesticity of plants and animals. This work creates a starting point for understanding the archaeological record, as it applies to plants and animals, in comparison, and it is clear that both are sciences that require great skill and knowledge but that the nature of the animal, and its complicated biology in comparison to a plant creates a demonstrative difference in the complications of studying animals as apposed to plants using archeology and genetics.

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