Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit HumanityThe 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. |
Contents
The Domestication Age | 1 |
What Is Domestication? | 22 |
Domestication Is Occurring All around You | 41 |
Reframing Domestication as Evolution | 75 |
Domestication Was Inevitable | 116 |
Adaptability and Domestication | 154 |
Developmental Plasticity | 183 |
Weed Domestication | 211 |
Primate Orchards | 272 |
Megafruits | 288 |
SmallSeeded Annuals | 310 |
The Insularity Syndrome | 347 |
Visualizing the Origins | 377 |
Common and Scientific Names | 407 |
Notes | 413 |
References | 433 |
Other editions - View all
Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity Robert N. Spengler III Limited preview - 2025 |
Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity Robert N. Spengler, III No preview available - 2026 |
Common terms and phrases
adaptation Additionally agricultural American ancient angiosperms annual anthropogenic apple archaeological behavioral Biology birds bison breeding chapter clade commensal cultivation Darwin deer discussed dispersal mechanism diversity dogs domestica domesticated plants domestication process domestication traits dormancy earliest early ecological release ecologists Ecology ecosystems endozoochoric Europe evolution evolutionary change example exaptation extinction farmers farming Fertile Crescent fields flowering plants foraging forest founder effect gene flow genetic genetic bottleneck genetic drift genome germination grass harvesting Holocene humans hybridization increased insularity island isolated Journal landscape larger seeds lineage mammals megafaunal megafruits millennia morphotypes Mueller mutualistic natural niche North America organisms origins parallel phenotypic plant domestication plants and animals Pleistocene population predators primates progenitors quinoa rapid rates response result Rindos rodents scholars Science seed coat seed dispersal seed saving seed-dispersal mechanism selective pressures small-seeded species Spengler suggest syndrome theory thousand tication tion traits of domestication trees vegetation weeds weedy wild