The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

by Richard Dawkins

A living creature is always in the business of surviving in its own environment. It is never unfinished—or, in another sense, it is always unfinished. So, presumably, are we.

Like Belyaev’s domesticated foxes, and like the domesticated wolves that we call dogs, have we become tamer, more lovable, with the human equivalents of floppy ears, soppy faces and wagging tails?

It is possible that we too have become genetically modified over the millennia to increase our tolerance of cereals, in a way parallel to our evolution of tolerance to milk. Starchy cereals such as wheat and oats cannot have featured prominently in our diets before the Agricultural Revolution. Unlike oranges and strawberries, cereal seeds do not ‘want’ to be eaten. Passing through an animal’s digestive tract is no part of their dispersal strategy,