Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity (1)

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Synopsis
The 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.
Copyright:
2025

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
512 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780520405844
Related ISBNs:
9780520405837
Publisher:
University of California Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Robert N. Spengler
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Science, Cooking, Food and Wine, Social Studies
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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