The wolf evolved into the Pekingese, the wildcat into the tabby cat and the auroch into the milk-producing cow. This happened through the process called "domestication". Domesticated creatures have served us well— without them, civilisation as we know it would not exist.

Richard C. Francis weaves history, archaeology and anthropology, while seamlessly integrating the most cutting-edge ideas in twenty-first-century biology, to create a fascinating narrative. Each domesticated species is a case study in evolution, and two key themes emerge: that domestication often results in the retention of juvenile traits and that evolution remains fundamentally a conservative process. Francis also explores the ways in which these themes apply to human evolution.