The wolf evolved into the Pekingese, the wildcat into the tabby cat and the auroch into the milk-producing cow. This happened through the process called domestication . Domesticated creatures have served us well- without them, civilisation as we know it would not exist.

Richard C. Francis weaves history, archaeology and anthropology, while seamlessly integrating the most cutting-edge ideas in twenty-first-century biology, to create a fascinating narrative. Each domesticated species is a case study in evolution, and two key themes emerge: that domestication often results in the retention of juvenile traits and that evolution remains fundamentally a conservative process. Francis also explores the ways in which these themes apply to human evolution.