[pwmtr]

I read something similar on Yuval Harari's Homo Sapiens, where he suggests wheat domesticated humans not the other way around. An excerpt can be found here [1]. Whole essay is great but I especially liked this part:

> The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

[1] https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/

[kqr]

I don't remember the details of their arguments, but Graeber and Wengrow think this is a misleading image. IIRC one of their main thrusts was that over long periods of history, groups of humans have adopted and abandoned stationary agriculture at will, as conditions indicate.

I suppose that makes us as domesticated as e.g. lions or chimpanzees, which have been known to e.g. share food with humans ("work for them") in the wild but it's not their reason for existence.

[dmwilcox]

I lent out my copy of the Dawn of Everything so I can't get exact quotes or pages but this reminded me of a point in the book (which I highly recommend) which I'll attempt to summarize:

Domestication of plants was "easy" when tested in a controlled setting selecting seeds carefully at a university. Estimated that wheat in the agricultural "revolution" (a much scoffed about term in the book) could have been domesticated in 200 years if purposeful. Instead agriculture took something like 3000 years to become dominant versus mixed food sources (mostly gathering, fishing and hunting, with some low-effort planting on riverbanks).

And yes to your point, the idea that there is some sort of progression in human societies is contradicted by the recent decades of evidence in archeology -- every arrangement you can imagine seems to have been tried (stationary+hunter/gather, nomadic farmer, alternating back and forth, shifts toward farming for hundreds of years and then back to fishing for thousands). Humans time on the earth has been much longer than our recorded history, with more variety and less boring than we usually assume.

Anyway I hope that inspires someone to pick up the book, it really is a good read.

[floydnoel]

thanks for sharing, I will check out that book for sure!

[coldtea]

>IIRC one of their main thrusts was that over long periods of history, groups of humans have adopted and abandoned stationary agriculture at will, as conditions indicate.

In general they still totally depend on it.

So this would be like saying dogs aren't domesticated, because some left their owners or bit them, or there are groups of stray dogs here and there.

[kqr]

What makes you say they still totally depended on it? I can easily imagine groups of humans having a period of settled agriculture for convenience rather than necessity.

[BobbyTables2]

If you are claiming that a hot buttered dinner roll made from wheat can actually domesticate ME…

… then you’re damn right.

[coldtea]

>The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

Etymology never made for very compelling arguments.

[hollerith]

"Free" derives from an Indo-European word that means "one of the loved ones".

[actionfromafar]

Something about this free-wheeling non sequitur, if you even can call it that, is incredibly hilarious to me!

[mullingitover]

My theory is that multicellular life itself was developed because viruses wanted a more effective way to travel. Humans are the pinnacle of virus transportation technology, and they've developed very successful behavioral override countermeasures against our pesky use of vaccines.

[ccozan]

Not only that, but they ( or some parts of it) have been incorporated in the other species, human included, DNA as well!

The code just wants to survive.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

"all things strive"

[tabokie]

He also talked about this "reverse chain of command" in the recent talk at Peking university:

Human evolves from worm. Human brain is originally a bunch of neurons centered around the worm's mouth to search for food. It is natural to think human is still controlled by stomach to this day (or spinal cord for that matter).

[baxtr]

Do you have a link?

[tabokie]

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1YLdPYyEPX?t=1852.7

[triceratops]

It's not up to wheat. Humans invented Latin and get to define domestication.

[actionfromafar]

Whoever gets to Latin first defines it!

[EpiMath]

Also Edgar Anderson's "Plants, Man, and Life" on a similar theme.

[latortuga]

Love this book and immediately thought of the same section!