Recent Sámi reindeer herders and other boreal folk find reindeer so docile it seems that they 'like' people. They like having people pet and groom them. They allow themselves to be milked, dehorned, and even castrated. They eagerly work with skilled sled drivers. Why, then, were reindeer domesticated so late? The answer must be that Paleolithic culture was only capable of dealing with reindeer as targets. Paleolithic hunters had become adept at killing animals as big and mobile as reindeer, but they had no way of keeping up with them, much less using their movements. They simply could not work with them alive, even individuals who might be tamable, until human behavioral capabilities had expanded to include things like harnesses and ideas like deferred harvests.
...The assertion that people are responsible for agriculture may be comparable to saying that petri dishes developed penicillin. There is theoretical and academic utility in looking at "domesticates" not as passive resources, but as influential occupants of a dynamic set of opportunities afforded by the people.
Peter Bleed. 2006. Living in the human niche. Evolutionary Anthropology 15:8-10.
