I think it comes down to the individual and the situation in determining which response will be triggered, fight or flight, and both are similar in the release of adrenaline. Prey will likely specialize in either fight or flight, gazelles fly while a hippo may fight. Humans are interesting because individually we are prey, but as a group we are pack hunters. Depending on the situation we can run for our lives or attack in an adrenaline fueled frenzy.

Leashes aren’t just to protect people though, they can also be used to protect the animal. Some people would fear for their dog’s safety if they let it walk without a leash as it could hurt itself or get lost running off. I am playing devil’s advocate though. By and large the leash is a sign of a fear/control.

Deer could actually, as they are now, be analogous to pre-domesticated horses maybe. They are somewhat familiar with people, some probably keep them as pets. If we selectively bred them we probably could domesticate them. As is they are more tame than domesticated.

Asking whether we chose to take a spot at the top of the food chain is essentially asking whether we have free will or our actions are determined, in this case by a genetic imperative. I’d argue that while individuals may have consciously made choices to kill off competitors or predators, we were going to take our place on the food chain one way or another, by virtue of our adaptability to different climates and resource sets across the world.

I realized that this is off topic from the subject of domesticates, but More’s Utopia including slaves was hardly warped for the time. Being written it in the early 1500s, slavery was still an accepted part of life. Moreover, the slaves are criminals or imported from other nations. These slaves serve more or less as an analogue for our modern appliances and automation.

On the subject at hand, I think the changing relationship with animals may have contributed to changes in society’s habits and moral views, but there are likely many other contributing factors. In my post I talk about other factors that likely contributed to the increase in sexual fantasy material than distancing ourselves from animals.

I agree with Dunn that there is much that ties us to our ancestral plains and trees, but I think he romanticizes the old biomes in humans. Taking intestinal worms as an example, the worms provoke a body response to release chemicals that encourage healing not only in the intestines, but also in the lungs. In modern times, healing lungs could be done with different or even the same drugs, but without the damaging parasites. We’ve crafted an environment and a technology that either makes these kind of relationships obsolete, or co-opts their mechanisms and produces the same effects without the negative effects.

On Neanderthals, there seems to be some evidence of interbreeding (2), though to a small extent as would be expected since they could fall into a kind of uncanny valley, being both too much like us and too different for most people.

(1)http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110192721.htm

(2) http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals/interbreeding

I agree with Diamond’s theories as far as they deal with the prerequisite conditions for a developing civilization to arise. Part of his broader theory addresses why European powers gained dominance over the rest of the world, instead of say the Chinese or the Indians. That is where a number of the valid criticisms seem to come in. Europe was not the most advanced area throughout all of history, and the technological revolutions that gave Europe the power to dominate the globe could have happened in other areas. I’d argue that the domesticated animals and plants heavily influenced where developed civilizations would spawn, but past that point other factors began to take over.