>From:    Edward Lipinski <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: 450 BC or 2500 years ago the ferret "domesticated?"
 
I should know better than to respond to Mr. Lipinski but well I'm not
always right nor always smart....
 
>Oh, and by the way, I would most certainly invite unimpassioned discussion
>of the pros and cons of my thesis that the use of the term, "domesticated"
>applies to only a dead ferret.
 
The state of being alive or of being dead has no bearing upon the
domestication of any animal be it ferret, elephant or retro-virus.  A
domesticated animal is no more or less domesticated upon the moment of
its death.  Nor is a wild animal suddenly more or less non-domesticated
upon its death.
 
Back a bit...
 
>Such ferret is no longer capable of adapting further and has obviously
>reached the pinnacle of its adaptation and can no longer ascend to greater
>heights of development.
 
Domestication refers to adaption being under the control of man not
whether further adaption will continue.  Once modifed through controlled
breeding by man a species is domesticated.
 
Evolution is not a goal oriented thing.  There is no 'final stage' of
evolution.  There is no master plan upon which one can 'measure' the
'degree' of evolution.  The exact same is true of domestication.  Those
that domesticated various species hundreds and thousands of years ago had
no part of a master plan for the eventual destination of the species that
was domesticated.  'Oog' (for lack of a better name) who kept a wolves in
his cave for food, warmth and protection did not envision the chihuahua.
Those wolves after a few years were different that the wolves that ran wild
and were 'domesticated' so became what we call dogs.  But they were on a
great master plan that was envisioned as the way toward great danes and
minature poodles.  Domestication has no starting goal and end goal way in
the future.  Its 'completed' actually rather quickly.  As few as a handful
of generations.  But that isn't the end of human tinkering with the new
species that is all along considered domesticated.
 
The calender as you describe Bob Church's efforts to pinpoint the time of
domestication mark when the new species is just that.  A new species that
is domesticated.  Once its a new species it is domesticated no matter what
changes will occur after that point.
 
>Thusly with the subtrahend of 2500 and the minuend of 1998 a difference of
>502 negative is differenced, or -502.  Does this appear reasonable?
 
No.  Its basically meaningless playing with numbers.  Other than any
religious implications in Anno Domine there is no real significance to a
calender year except as a relative marker.  If you EVER see anything with
an integral date inscription on it saying it was made in some year BC or
some small number AD, its a fake.  Folks before Christ didn't have years
that went backwards.  Further time preceding the creation of the earth and
its settling into a somewhat stable rotational and revolutional spinnings
amek it really hard to justify any great significance to 'years' before
that except as a relative thing with a fixed uit of measure.  Is the great
cosmological year 0 some time before even the existance of the thing upon
which a year is based?  Forget 'year 1' in relation to ferrets and there
domestication.  All of Bob's dates and time intervals are approximations.
Forget the exact years or number of years as they aren't known 'precisely'
in most cases.
 
-bill
 
--
bill and diane killian
zen and the art of ferrets
http://www.zenferret.com/
mailto:[log in to unmask]
[Posted in FML issue 2576]