The Accelerated Systems Model of Cognitive Evolution: Overcoming Domestication Bottlenecks Through Human-Environment Integration

Standard evolutionary models posit that domestic and human-adjacent urban mammals (e.g., Canis lupus familiaris, Felis catus, Procyon lotor) are subject to a "domestication trap," a paradigm wherein the decoupling of survival from intelligence halts or reverses neocortical expansion. This report proposes an alternative theoretical framework: The Accelerated Systems Model. By analyzing self-awareness as an evolutionary attractor within complex biological networks, the analysis hypothesizes that the modern anthropogenic environment acts as a massive biological accelerator. By removing ancestral survival bottlenecks—specifically caloric deficits and environmental instability—and enforcing highly rigid circadian rhythms, these species are provided the optimal biological conditions for rapid, unbottlenecked cognitive evolution. Under this accelerated model, the timeline for achieving hominid-level metacognition is theoretically compressed to a span of 25,000 to 30,000 years.