Did humans domesticate plants or us?
This provocative question may not be the way we learn about agricultural history in high school, but it fuels current archaeological research. At stake is the issue of perspective. That is, how we, as a species, see our place in nature and nature’s place in our own evolution.
Few places on earth have this problem more than in Çatalhüyuk, the nearly 9,000-year-old ruins of Turkey, one of the places where agriculture was invented. Archaeologist Ian Hodder has been excavating this ancient city for decades and is careful with the simplistic story. He argues that the traditional narrative of “human civilization”, in which our ancestors learned to tame nature through breeding crops and livestock, creating feedback loops for progress, has the nuances that modern science reveals. I say it’s missing.
Hodder calls the early interactions between humans and domesticated plants “the first entanglement”, which inspired the title of a short film about the secrets Çatalhöyük is uncovering. As a filmmaker, he is drawn to stories that make him rethink the way he sees the world. And in this early outpost of human habitation, we are learning timely lessons about how major innovations such as agriculture can have unexpected long-term consequences. The repercussions of the times are serious.
Those who study places like Çatalhüyük see a complex interplay between human behavior and the workings of nature and genetics. Botanical archaeologist Selene Kabukchu, who studies ancient plant specimens, explains how random mutations in wild wheat delighted early farmers, and many times until the mutated plants were domesticated. It explains how many times they produced the traits that chose those plants. But that was not all. Domesticated wheat has evolved to the point where it cannot reproduce without the help of human hands. Much of what we eat today is rooted in this codependency.
Hodder calls this relationship between humans and plants “entanglement.” And he says that along with our desire to dominate the natural world, it sealed our destiny as a species constantly seeking technological solutions to the problems it created. However, the work of planting and harvesting crops was so difficult that it required more labor and new technologies to sustain these growing societies. I got
It is a never-ending spiral that has led us to the modern age of clearing the earth’s forests for mechanized agriculture to feed an exploding world population. I’m thinking of what I can do to get it back. Again, our instinct is primarily to look to new technologies.
Our times are defined by the anxiety of how to prepare for an uncertain future. Catalhüyuk teaches us that the long-term impact of our actions is immense. Those who first tried to plant crops could not have imagined the power of change they unleashed.We now live in the world they created. For better or worse, there is no going back. But as we try to fix what’s broken, we must pause to consider the lessons from the past.
first tangle is the production of Science Communication Laboratorypartner with Scientific American, The Science Communication Lab is an innovative non-profit organization dedicated to using multimedia storytelling to engage the public in the journey and wonders of science.
