Link: Plant domestication: early and often .
Plant domestication: early and often
By John Timmer | Published: June 29, 2007 - 04:11PM CT
"The domestication of plant species was a major step along the way to our current culture. It was once thought that the practice had two origins (the Fertile Crescent and Central/South America), and spread culturally from there, picking up further crops as it went. Evidence has poured in, however, that crop domestication developed separately in a number of locations around the globe. The latest issue of Science has two research papers that look at different aspects of the process, along with a perspective that presents the big picture. (...)
"It ends up with the big mystery: why did people suddenly think domesticating plants was a good idea? The 10,000 year figure is suspiciously close to the rapid climactic changes that accompanied the end of the last ice age, suggesting that changing temperatures might have disrupted food supplies enough to make domestic plants essential. The end of the ice age also pushed atmospheric carbon levels up by nearly 50 percent, which may have triggered favorable changes in the plants themselves. But it ends on an enigmatic note: maybe there was something cultural going on that we may never be able to reconstruct...."
