Recent selection of candidate genes for mammal domestication in Europeans and language change in Europe: a hypothesis

Benítez‐Burraco, Antonio; Chekalin, Evgeny; Брускин, С. А.; Morozova, Irina

doi:10.1101/684621

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Interestingly enough, candidate genes for mammal domestication are overrepresented among the genes under positive selection in AMHs compared to Neanderthals and Denisovans (Theofanopoulou et al, 2017). More precisely, different sets of candidate genes for animal domestication seem to have been selected at different moments during human evolution, suggesting that human self-domestication might be an ongoing process in our species (Benítez-Burraco et al, 2019). Supporting this view, features of self-domestication appear in different degrees in different human groups, depending on environmental and cultural factors.…”

Section: Human Self-domestication and Dog Domestication Vis-a-vismentioning

confidence: 74%

Did Dog Domestication Contribute to Language Evolution?

Benítez‐Burraco

Pörtl²,

Jung³

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Different factors seemingly account for the emergence of present-day languages in our species. Human self-domestication has been recently invoked as one important force favoring language complexity mostly via a cultural mechanism. Because our self-domestication ultimately resulted from selection for less aggressive behavior and increased prosocial behavior, any evolutionary or cultural change impacting on aggression levels is expected to have fostered this process. Here, we hypothesize about a parallel domestication of humans and dogs, and more specifically, about a positive effect of our interaction with dogs on human self-domestication, and ultimately, on aspects of language evolution, through the mechanisms involved in the control of aggression. We review evidence of diverse sort (ethological mostly, but also archeological, genetic, and physiological) supporting such an effect and propose some ways of testing our hypothesis.

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Section: Human Self-domestication and Dog Domestication Vis-a-vismentioning

confidence: 74%

Did Dog Domestication Contribute to Language Evolution?

Benítez‐Burraco

Pörtl²,

Jung³

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Supporting this view, distinctive features of "self-domestication," particularly craniofacial feminization, reached its peak at the end of Upper Paleolithic, and are attenuated in present-day populations [290]. At the same time, selected candidate genes for mammal domestication show evidence of positive selection in Europe as recently as 6 kya [291]. The latter is a time of important social changes in Eurasia, including a notable increase in population density, the development of complex trading networks, and the spread of sedentism.…”

Section: Aggression Management Through the Course Of Human Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…According to our model, members of esoteric language/music communities should exhibit more marked features of conspecific sympathy as compared to exoteric language/music users, and such communities without the history of animal domestication are likely to feature higher levels of reactive aggression. Eventually, as candidates for mammal domestication seem to have been positively selected recently in Europe [291], one could expect as well some genetic differences between esoteric and exoteric communities. But this idea needs careful examination.…”

Section: Testing the Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of human music in light of increased prosocial behavior: a new model

Nikolsky¹,

Benítez‐Burraco²

2022

Preprint

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Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of paleolinguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of self-domestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, proto-music gave rise to personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable contribution to the understanding of transition from animal communication to human music and language is the theory of so-called “personal song”, described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. The emergence of personal song and its development into a social institution are interlinked with the evolution of kinship and placed into the timeline of cultural evolution, based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.

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“…Interestingly, changes in the dopamine systems have been regularly documented in domesticated animals (Komiyama et al, 2014;Sato et al, 2020). Evidence of selection of pathways related to dopaminergic synapse have been found in European samples during the last 6,000 years (Chekalin et al, 2019), a time period when genes involved in animal domestication have been selected too (Benítez-Burraco et al 2019). Overall, including self-domestication in the equation could help the authors address what they anticipate the key criticism to the MSB hypothesis, namely, the degree to which the evolution of musicality and social bonding are causally linked.…”

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confidence: 99%