Nature's greatest success : how plants evolved to exploit humanity / Robert N. Spengler III.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spengler, Robert N., III, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plants, Cultivated--History.

Plants, Cultivated.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

ix, 501 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2025]

Summary:

"The 15,000-year story of how grass seduced humanity into being its unwitting labor force--and the science behind it. Domesticated crops were not human creations, and agriculture was not simply invented. As Robert N. Spengler shows, domestication was the result of an evolutionary process in which people played a role only unwittingly and as actors in a numberless cast that spanned the plant and animal kingdoms. Nature's Greatest Success is the first book to bring together recent scientific discoveries and fascinating ongoing research to provide a systematic account of not only how agriculture really developed but why. Through fifteen chapters, this book dives deep into the complex processes that drove domestication and the various roles that plants and animals, including humans, played in bringing about those changes. At the intersection of popular history, archaeology, and evolutionary biology, Nature's Greatest Success offers a revolutionary account of humanity not at the apex of nature but deeply embedded in the natural world and the evolutionary processes that continue to guide it even today"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Preface

The domestication age

What is domestication?

Domestication is occurring all around you

Reframing domestication as evolution

Domestication was inevitable

Adaptability and domestication

Developmental plasticity

Weed domestication

Evolutionary origins of farming

Natura non facit saltum

Primate orchards

Megafruits

Small-seeded annuals

The insularity syndrome

Visualizing the origins

Afterword

Common and scientific names.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-487) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Spengler, Robert N., Nature's greatest success

ISBN:

9780520405837

0520405838

OCLC:

1459000885