Unravelling domestication: introduction to the theme issue

Gillis, Rosalind; Corso, Marta Dal; Oliveira, Hugo; Spengler, Robert N.

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/27341

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Abstract(s)

The domestication of plants and animals is considered one of the key milestones of cultural evolution, on a par with the use of lithic technology and mastery of fire. Domesticated species are—and have been—fundamental to the growth and economic success of human societies. Millennia of herding and agricultural intensification have caused irreversible changes to natural environments, while the ability to accrue and control food surpluses has been linked with the development of complex societies as well as the exacerbation of socioeconomic inequalities. From the mid-Holocene onwards, domesticated plants and animals became integral to the maintenance of human populations and their social orders across a range of contrasting environments. In a few cases, this form of economic production stretches back to the Pleistocene–Hol ocene transition. The intensification of agricultural systems has led to a series of demographic expansion waves that traversed the globe, and ultimately resulted in the congregation of densely clustered populations [1,2].