Further to your interview with Brian Hare on the importance of
dog domestication to our own evolution (2 March, p 30). We know
that human lifestyles changed from hunter-gatherer to
pastoralism. This was a crucial step in human cultural
evolution. The practical possibility, and hence probability, of
the advent of pastoralism must have increased when dogs were
able to follow human hand and voice signals to help control
livestock. In the past, as now, such working dogs would have
been valued and bred, producing selective advantages. To
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