Interesting in itself, and with application to worldbuilding. Via Adriel Wiggins.

Originally shared by Jeff Baker

This is a very well-written and interesting article about how DNA is changing our perception of domestication of both plants and animals. I’m wondering if part of the issue with rice in India may be that after domesticated rice was imported from China, if a wild version of rice in India was cross-bred with the Chinese rice. This could have been either intentional or accidental. It is possible that the ancient Indians may have been cultivating a wild rice (and not having domesticated it yet). I don’t know if wild rices in India are/were fertile with the Chinese rice, but, in the Americas, there is some suggestion that maize was crossbred with wild strains of teosinte that were not present in the Balsa River Valley (where maize was first domesticated).

I was completely unaware of how recently rabbits were domesticated (nor why), nor the even more recent domestication of hamsters.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-evidence-rewriting-domestication-origin-stories