doi: 10.1073/pnas.2304407120. Epub 2023 Apr 5.
Unearthing the origins of agriculture
- PMID:37018195
- PMCID: PMC10104519
- DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2304407120
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Unearthing the origins of agriculture
John Carey. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A..
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Big Agriculture has its roots in the advent of human farming activities that started nearly 12,000 years ago, an origin story that archaeobiologists and other researchers are still trying to parse. Image credit: Science Source/Stockr.
Fossil evidence like this, a young pregnant adult female dating to about 6,000 years ago, suggests that as farming expanded, the health of the population declined, including more periods of poor nutrition based on analyses of teeth. Image credit: From Reference 11.
Wild rice (left column) contrasts with domesticated rice (right) in terms of how they grow (top row), how they are harvested (second row), and their yields (bottom row). As domestication progresses, the rice plants get taller and straighter, and more plants can fit into the same size plot, meaning they require more nutrients and water—and become more dependent on people. Image credit: Rabi Mohanty and Dorian Q. Fuller.
References
- Fuller D. Q., Denham T., “Coevolution in the Arable battlefield: Pathways to crop domestication, cultural practices, and parasitic domesticoids” in The Convergent Evolution of Agriculture in Humans and Insects, Schultz T. R., Gawne R., Peregrine P. N., Eds. (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2021), pp. 177–208.
- Laskow S., America’s lost crops rewrite the history of farming. The Atlantic (1 October 2022)..https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/10/agricultural-revolut....
- Larsen C. S., Bioarchaeology in perspective: From classifications of the dead to conditions of the living. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 165, 865–878 (2018),10.1002/ajpa.23322. - DOI - PubMed
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