[RyanMcGreal]

Humans are domesticated primates, and like all domesticated animals we demonstrate the canonical properties of neoteny, or the adult retention of childlike traits: physical traits like rounder heads, flatter faces, shorter noses, bigger eyes and shorter jaws, of course; but also and more importantly the cognitive traits of playfulness, curiosity, creativity and innovation.

Indeed, it is in many ways the explosion of cultural innovation and exchange approximately 50 thousand years ago that marks the distinction between archaic humans and modern homo sapiens sapiens, who spread to every habitable continent on earth and developed a wide variety of inventions to facilitate living in diverse climates. Archaic humans also had culture, of course, but nothing like the innovation curve that has characterized the period since then.

[Pamar]

Domesticated by whom, exactly? (assuming your theory is correct, the physical traits are advantageous because these make us cuter, but then again, cuter for whom? while other traits like playfulness come from not needing to fight/work for food because... someone else is providing it for us).

[ue_]

> and like all domesticated animals we demonstrate the canonical properties of neoteny, or the adult retention of childlike traits

What does domestication have to do with that? Artificial selection of those animals which retain such features? Why?

It's also worth noting that, at least according to my observation and what I've read on Wikipedia[0], human Asian people have various neotenous features too, from what I can tell more frequently or greater in number than people of other genetic make up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans#Mongoloids