Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "Stefan Milo" channel.

This "outcast hypothesis", it got me thinking. I mean, who was the outcast, the wolf or the human? Nobody apparently considered, that it could've been the human who had do make do on his own. I mean, nobody in his right mind would want to keep even a tame wolf around his babies. But an outcast human has no babies, does he? So the following is a scenario, which is all speculation, but I believe it's still useful, because it's an imaginable and coherent picture. Let's assume, that some guy was banished from his tribe and forced to survive on his own. It's doable, because Ishi could do it. He's pathologically lonely, that's a given. What if he kills a she-wolf and finds the cubs? Free meal, but he's so lonely, that he decides to keep one of the cubs for later. The cub grows fond of him and vice versa. His success in hunting improves, because the wolf helps him track the game. If the wolf is a female, it's likely that he's capable of prolonging this relationship for two or three generations, always selecting for the cubs which are the most suitable for his needs. Finally he grows old and sickly, nothing to lose anymore, so he approaches some tribe together with his companion. Just like Ishi did. They get the pre-selected tame wolves almost for free. Even if those wolves are still very wild in their ways, the tribe gets all the knowledge from an already experienced handler. Much easier. In the end, domestication might not have been a prolonged process (hundreds of generations, as they propose), but an event. At least in evolutionary timescales.
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