HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Psychol., 13 September 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.695116

Did Dog Domestication Contribute to Language Evolution?

Antonio Benítez-Burraco1*, Daniela Pörtl2 and Christoph Jung3

1Department of Spanish, Linguistics, and Theory of Literature (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

2Psychiatric Department, Saale-Unstrut Klinikum, Teaching Hospital Leipzig and Jena Universities, Naumburg, Germany

3Petwatch, Halle, Germany

Different factors seemingly
account for the emergence of present-day languages in our species. Human self-domestication has been recently invoked as one important force favoring language complexity mostly via a cultural mechanism. Because our self-domestication ultimately resulted
from selection for less aggressive behavior and increased prosocial behavior, any evolutionary or cultural change impacting on aggression levels is expected to have fostered this process. Here, we hypothesize about a parallel domestication of humans and
dogs, and more specifically, about a positive effect of our interaction with dogs on human self-domestication, and ultimately, on aspects of language evolution, through the mechanisms involved in the control of aggression. We review evidence of diverse
sort (ethological mostly, but also archeological, genetic, and physiological) supporting such an effect and propose some ways of testing our hypothesis.

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