In contrast, geneticists investigating animal domestication
do so within the context of a clearly defined process: the genetic response
to the managed breeding of animals. As genetic information is transmitted
to succeeding generations, modern populations carry in their genome
the signatures of past demographic processes and the evolutionary forces
that have shaped these. Consequently, all modern domesticates have descended,
with modification, from the wild animals that were incorporated
into a finite genetic pool at various stages within the time frame of domestication.
Modern domestic populations, therefore, are at the endpoint
of a temporal genetic continuum that stretches from the initial phases of
animal domestication and includes only those influential interactions between
human and animals that have left a genetic legacy