From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 24 2003 - 16:10:32 MDT
On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 12:39:11PM -0700, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> It was only when some individuals got the bright idea of selecting
> grains from the most fruitful plants to grow in isolation that the long
> process of domestication occured. The development of this technology
This "bright idea" seems very unlikely to me. Much more plausible is that
people were eating grains casually already, possibly even engaging in a bit of
low-effort horticulture, and selection happened naturally. Fatter grains got
gathered more often, allowing for more of their seeds to be dropped near the
village (hunter-gatherer mobility is inversely correlated with local
productivity; they're not necessarily nomadic, just when they have to be.
Which would have been less in the Fertile Crescent back then.) to be gathered
and brought back all over again. Do this long enough and you've got major
changes in the grains, ready to fall back on when the rising sea levels cause
sudden crowding along with the climate-change disruptions in food supply.
Jane Jacobs had her own twist on this, with lots of people going to an early
trade city like Catalhuyuk, bringing their own foods with them and a jump in
hybridization around the city.
-xx- Damien X-)
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