Human civilization would not have been possible without the domestication of plants and animals. Domestication is responsible for our clothes, food, and pets, and was also a necessary prerequisite for the development of written language, mathematics, architecture, and every technological breakthrough since stone tools. The study of domestication is therefore the study of the development of humankind over the past 10,000 years. Thus, by understanding how, when, and where animals were domesticated, we gain deeper insights into the foundations of modern society. In addition, domestication is an ideal model for understanding the process of change within evolutionary biology and for understanding the relationship between differences at the DNA level, and the ramifications those differences have on the physical, behavioral, and developmental characteristics of the organism itself.