Editing Openai/6934c0ea-e6a8-800a-9441-f49cce9f1041 (section)

=== User: It's so simple, it's somehow stupid and elegant at the same time. ===
It's so simple, it's somehow stupid and elegant at the same time. Here's how it goes.                                                                              The first thing that needs to happen is that humans become intelligent. Then, these people must alter their environment for their own benefit. Hunter gatherers become part-time gardeners. In some great locations (e.g. fertile river valleys) they even become full time gardeners. And this is where the process of animal domestication starts.                                                                                                                                        The gardeners eat from their own gardens and some wild animals start to do the same thing. Some will also eat from the meal leftovers and garden garbage. The people can even leave these things out intentionally. The purpose is to facilitate dependency within the wild animal species. They become more dependent, but they can also increase in number. And the selection process favors the now-dependent animals that have the highest tolerance to "human proximity". They become tame.                            I can see this same process working for many different species. I'm not saying this is the only way domestication can happen. But it is one way that domestication can "co-occur" with the first permanent settlements.