Humans domesticated dogs, cows and sheep. But wheat domesticated humans. amirite?

(to be pendantic - we absolutely also domesticated wheat and pretty much anything else we eat)

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Domesticate is the right word for wheat, we didn't domesticated it we cultivated it.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

In this context they are synonymous. Though I'm assuming you *meant* to say "is not the right word".

by Anonymous 10 months ago

How can a crop like wheat domesticate humans, in much of the same way said humans did dogs, cows, and sheep?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

He took it from the book sapiens. The justification is that wheat has to do nothing and it went from a population of thousands a few thousand years ago to billions with an entire species growing, cultivating and protecting it as much as possible

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Yeah, the same thing was done by sheep, and dogs and cows. Basically anything which propagated due to us.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Ask op not me...

by Anonymous 10 months ago

It's more the argument that humans settled in specific locations (near rivers and bodies of water) where they could grow wheat. Whereas domesticated animals were brought to wherever the humans were located.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Early population centers were nearly all *marshland* near rivers. Marshes are not ideal for growing grain, but they do offer a lot of biodiversity. Grain was farmed on flood plains, but only after floods. Rivers were key to travel and were also a source of food. The idea that people settled down near rivers specifically to farm wheat is bunk. Grain was just one of many things you could grow, gather, fish, or hunt around riverbanks. This idea of Harari's is just reductionist story telling that reeks of hindsight bias.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

That's a stupid argument. Humans ALWAYS settle near fresh water, because duhh. And domestication is the act of breeding for desired traits. Wheat did not breed us. This entire idea is a big stupid misuse of the word "domesticate".

by Anonymous 10 months ago

"Fresh water domesticated humans"

by Anonymous 10 months ago

But that's not the case anymore, as we just bring the water to the fields

by Anonymous 10 months ago

But to be able to do that we first had to start where the water was

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Yeah, meanwhile, Harari isn't an anthropologist and anthropologists take him seriously enough to criticize him in their works but that's it. Historians need to stick to recorded history.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Don't ants do the same with fungus? I wouldn't call them particularly domesticated.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Did you se the series the Last of us?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

It's not so much the crop doing the domestication. It's humans domesticating themselves via technological and societal advancements.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

The wheat we have today is from from thousands of years of selective breeding of wild grasses. Humans domesticated wheat.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Einkorn was the original wheat, and had better nutrition value, but many fewer seeds

by Anonymous 10 months ago

How to tell you don't understand domestication without saying you don't understand domestication.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Oh yeah I read that book. "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. Good stuff.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

I was going to say the same but didn't remember which Harari book it was.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Haha reading this now and know exactly where this comes from

by Anonymous 10 months ago

I'm not sure if this is a typo or not. I'm gonna go with no. Wheat tamed us all.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Wheat made humans take care of wheat from dawn to dusk. Sounds like domestication, wheat is smarter than us

by Anonymous 10 months ago

I mean, we also talk care of dogs, cows and sheep from dawn to dusk?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

That's not what domestication is. It's not like cows and sheep take care of us.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

What about sheepdogs and horses?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

We still look after those animals, not the other way around. The fact that they perform a job for us doesn't mean they look after us.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

*We* take care of domesticated animals for our own benefit, not the other way around. Exactly the same as wheat.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Wheat and all the farmed crops were domesticated. Originally, wheat reproduced by blowing the grain in the wind so it could spread far. For that to work the end part that the wheat grain forms on needs to shatter. Wheat that is grown for agriculture the grain stays on allowing it to be harvested.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Well, farmers call things like wheat grass, which might explain why we have oppressed weed. But wheat is also a cereal, so make your kids have a good breakfast and is there not something about sowing wild cereals

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Waaaay oversimplified. There are at least a half dozen cultures that independently developed an "advanced civilization" based on various agricultural practices entirely independently. It's fascinating! A goodly chunk of the world still don't rely primarily on wheat, and never have in their history.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Didn't wheat change DRAMATICALLY from contact with humans? I seem to recall reading that wild wheat has much smaller grains than cultivated wheat.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Fun fact, dogs, pigs, and cats were all considered self domesticated. In essence, they all hung around human settlements scrounging for the scraps we left. Compared to sheep and cows where we had to herd them all into fenced areas.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Would you rather be domesticated by wheat or enslaved by cats?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

I, for one, welcome my feline overloads

by Anonymous 10 months ago

And just like we did to the cows and chickens, it made us fat, silly animals.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Wrong again, humans domesticated wheat to maximize bounty per season and flavor per grain.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Not wheat but barley for making beer. Humans grew grain for at about 1000 years before bread was invented. This is why Samarian fairy tales, rather than starting out with "once upon a time", start out "before the first bread ovens were lit". This is also where written language comes from (to handle accounting).

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Actually no it didn't. Until we learned about crop rotation we would be nomadic and move around to plant crops and so on.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Yeh, also read the same in Yuval Noah Harari book The Sapiens.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Agriculture domesticated humans. We went from loving on the land roaming eating whatever to sitting in a house tending to our crops.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

My wife domesticated me (well, she tried anyway) and my dog has been training me.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Dogs may be mostly domesticed But I think humans are still Ferrell. There aren't NEARLY as many dog robberies/murders/assaults as humans.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Feral

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Isn't this just a very reduced synopsis of a Michael Pollan book?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Pollan said it about corn. As others have pointed out, Harari said this about wheat.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Welfare/The Dole. Now smoke your pot, watch sportsball,, play video games. "We will take care of you"

by Anonymous 10 months ago

the Americas didn't have wheat native to it, or is this some political statement that native americans were undomesticated and you stand with the history of the church.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Yes, cultivation of wheat is what triggered shift from relatively flat, hunter-gatherer societies to hierarchical agricultural societies. Eventually, this shift extended our lifespans while reducing our standard of living.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Everything we have is domesticated. Man we domesticated Sand into Glas and Concrete...

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Do you mean "What"? Anyway. my guess: 1. Cats 2. Other humsns, though we call that slavery, and that of course is bad.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

No, I mean wheat, the plant. It made humans stay in one place.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Humans domesticated humans. From the first stone tool, we've been on a path of self -domestication through advancements in technology and society. This was actually a thesis I wanted to write a paper on. Although I'm not an expert in the field. Eventually, we will become "pets" to technology. Which is a good thing. There are some other primates that exhibit a similar self domestication. Though I forget the names at the moment. I think the bonobo is on that list. But I remember there being a smaller primate that was a better example.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

I fight a loaf of bread every week for being responsible for me having to pay taxes.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

How? We raise and slaughter wheat the same as we do to animals.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

In Sapiens, the argument is that to domesticate is to put something in a house. While we have put animals in houses, wheat has put us in a house.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

lmao, I mean, I guess it could be taken that way, though reality is that we domesticated ourselves (as much as we did to wheat and other plants). But I mean, technically

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Couldn't you say the same about dogs, cows, and sheep, though?

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Except for some, those who are poisoned by it, those gluten-free ones. They will not bend to the...hold up, those poor bastards.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Actually, dogs essentially domesticated themselves by coming to eat our food scraps. And wheat was only the base crop for some ancient groups. Ancient Americans had corn. Southern Asia had rice. Oceania had taro and yams. Etc.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

Humans domesticated humans, or more aptly women domesticated humans. Feral children are those children raised without any form of parenting. Examples include children who survived in the wild in isolation after their parents died. After being rescued they are effectively mentally disabled as a result of what they went through. Their language center is less developed and it takes longer to teach them. Essentially without parents or communities children bypass that domestication.

by Anonymous 10 months ago

There is a theory saying that plants are actually cultivating humans and other animals in order to use them as fertilizer to grow...

by Anonymous 10 months ago