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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Ask op not me...

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

"Fresh water domesticated humans"

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Did you se the series the Last of us?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Haha reading this now and know exactly where this comes from

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

What about sheepdogs and horses?

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I, for one, welcome my feline overloads

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

Feral

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

by Anonymous 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago