Table of Contents
This lecture says that Babylonian writings preserve a story in which people were tamed. He names Gilgamesh, a creation tale he calls the Enuma Alish, and tablets he calls Artraasis. He then describes a USSR fox program that bred animals only for calmer conduct near humans and for crowded captive life. No coaching was used, he says. Early generations barely shifted, but later foxes sought contact, grew patchy coats and floppy ears, carried less stress, and developed smaller teeth, crowded jaws, and youthful faces. He claims the same cluster separates modern humans from earlier relatives and from other apes: weaker bites, longer childhood, more play, and reduced aggression. Bonobos, in his account, already live a gentler version, with close bonds and no seen attacks inside the group. Humans, he says, show that pattern more strongly. He asks whether people produced it alone. Those tablets, he claims, cast farming and dense towns as a way to simplify rule, including for nonhuman governors. He finds a blunt exploiter tale less subtle than those writers and still asks who did the shaping.
Key points
- He says Babylonian texts tell of humans being tamed.
- He says a fox program changed bodies by keeping only calmer animals.
- He claims modern people show lower aggression and more juvenile traits.
- He says bonobos already hint at a gentler social version of that pattern.
- He claims dense farming life made people easier for nonhuman beings to direct.
- He treats the identity of whoever applied that pressure as still open.
Topics on this site
- A pressurized environment changes the human body
- Manohara belongs to the kinnari, mythical beings that are half-human and half-bird
- Nereids are beings often depicted as half-human, half-fish creatures
Short quotes
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The 5th Kind, We Were Engineered to Obey
The 5th Kind is the person speaking in this part of the talk. Watch at 1:24
Blev and his team selected the 130 that seemed best adapted by their own behavior to higher density living and proximity to human beings.
The 5th Kind, We Were Engineered to Obey
The 5th Kind is the person speaking in this part of the talk. Watch at 4:06
And from the 10th generation on, ears began to become floppy.
The 5th Kind, We Were Engineered to Obey
The 5th Kind is the person speaking in this part of the talk. Watch at 6:37
In short, they had been domesticated purely by selecting for behavior.
The 5th Kind, We Were Engineered to Obey
The 5th Kind is the person speaking in this part of the talk. Watch at 9:29
Video by The 5th Kind. Watch on YouTube.