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Logos01 comments on Rationality Quotes September 2011 - Less Wrong
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Selective breeding isn't necessarily the same as artificial selection, however. The taming of dogs and cats was largely considered accidental; the neotenous animals were more human-friendly and thus able to access greater amounts of food supplies from humans until eventually they could directly interact, whereupon (at least in dogs) "usefulness" became a valued trait.
There wasn't purposefulness in this; people just fed the better dogs more and disliked the 'worse' dogs. It wasn't until the mid-1700's that dog 'breeds' became a concept.
There were certainly attempts to breed specific traits earlier than that. But they were hindered by a poor understanding of inheritance. For example, in the Bible, Jacob tried to breed speckled cattle by putting speckled rods in front of the cattle when they are trying to mate. Problems with understanding genetics works at a basic level was an issue even for much later and some of them still impact what are officially considered purebreds now.
I think that deliberate breeding of stronger horses dates back prior to the 1700s, at least to the early Middle Ages, but I don't have a source for that.
Absolutely. Even the dog-breeding practitioners were unaware of how inheritence operates; that didn't come about until Gregor Mendel. We really do take for granted the vast sums of understanding about the topic we are inculcated with simply through cultural osmosis.