Abstract
Jack Harlan was a hero to many of us, not only for his great contributions to plant science and agronomy but also for his equally important insights into ethnobotany. His studies of einkorn harvesting in eastern Turkey, for example, put a human face on crops and a botanical face on humans by revealing that domestication is a process, not an event, simultaneously simple and complex.
This volume, the product of the Harlan II Symposium, held 14–18 September 2008 at the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that much has been learned about domestication in the past few decades, and that the topic will be vibrant for decades to come. As per the subtitle, domestication is not about the past, it is actually about the future! To wit, there are probably no two terms more in vogue today than biodiversity and sustainability.
The contributors to this volume are all-stars from a myriad of fields. Geographers, ecologists, geneticists, archaeologists, economists, entomologists and ethnobotanists, each approach various dimensions of the topic with their unique but complementary perspectives, techniques and methods. Recognizing their disciplinary differences, contributors came into this venture with common goals. The introduction, jointly penned by the volume editors, raises 10 unanswered questions. To one degree or another, each contributor addresses one or more of these questions. Some of the questions are old (but seemingly never outdated), such as ‘Why did agriculture originate where it did?’ Some are relatively recent, such as ‘How did agricultural ecosystems develop?’ And, some are new, such as ‘How can biodiversity be maintained and enhanced in agroecosystems?’ I found two issues to be particularly intriguing for strangely similar reasons: characteristics that might predispose plants to domestication, and California. Worldwide, there are more than 400,000 plant species, fewer than 500 of which have been domesticated or are going through the process. California, in contrast, is a veritable cornucopia today but not a centre of domestication in the traditional sense of the term. Remarkably though, its indigenous people have been intimately involved in the husbandry of scores of plant species for centuries. Domestication, it seems, is not something humans do to plants, but something certain plants go through with human (and in some cases other animals) involvement. It is unlikely that our ancient ancestors originally intended to domesticate any species. With millennia of accumulated knowledge, however, we have reached a point where the process can be directed quite easily (e.g. GMOs).
Taken as a whole, the individual contributions to this volume illuminate this transition from unintended consequences to deliberate manipulation. A total of 27 chapters are divided into five sections, ‘Early Steps in Agricultural Domestication’, ‘Domestication of Animals and Impacts on Humans’, ‘Issues in Plant Domestication’, ‘Traditional Management of Biodiversity’ and ‘Uses of Biodiversity and New and Future Domestications’. Each chapter stands alone in its own right, and together they form a compelling case that ancient and contemporary agriculture are more alike than dissimilar, and that agriculture is not at odds with environment. Biodiversity and sustainability may be relatively new academic concepts (and terms that unfortunately are sometimes politically charged in today’s popular climate), but there is nothing new or abstract about the underlying reality.
As with any edited volume, especially one with as many contributions from such a diversity of fields as this one, there is plenty of room for disagreement and debate. A few authors overstate their claims a bit, most notably one of the more prominent personalities whose perspective is decidedly environmental deterministic. Two authors accept uncritically, and one relies on a technique for assessing palaeoenvironmental/agricultural evidence that has questioned protocol. Given that conflict is the basis of narrative, one should embrace challenges and appreciate that what remains to be known is far greater than what we already know. Indeed, Jack Harlan (1992) knew this better than anyone, as he noted, ‘Every model proposed so far for agricultural origins or plant domestication has generated evidence against it’ (p. 46).
If ‘success is a journey, not the destination’ as tennis great Arthur Ashe stated, this volume is a magnificent step in the long journey of scholarship on people–plant interdependencies. It is an ideal text for graduate seminars on the subject, in no small way because it is sure to inspire, and attract, a new generation of scholars to the field. Although it probably won’t be, it also should be read by agricultural and environmental policy-makers whose decisions ultimately determine the existence of our destination. Until then, I look forward to the Harlan III Symposium and its volume.