## ch00 Introduction ### ch00p03 natural vs artificial selection is a false dichotomy > Describing artificial and natural selection separately is a false distinction. It doesn’t really matter that it’s humans — rather than the physical environment or other species – that are mediating the assortment of individuals into those more or less likely to successfully reproduce. You wouldn’t make this distinction for any other species. Take the selective pressure exerted by honeybees on flowers – which leads to changes in those flowers over time, making them more attractive to their pollinators. Have the honeybees been effecting artifical selections? Isn’t this just bee-mediated natural selection? I really appreciate this trend toward “humans are natural.” Bees, beavers, ants, birds — humans are just one of many. [[domestication]] is really just a particular type of symbiotic relationship, when you think about it. See also: [[classification is difficult]]. - Used for [[Review of Tamed by Alice Roberts]] ### ch00p05 classification of species is hard > The fact that populations undergo evolutionary change, over time, can make drawing boundaries around species quite difficult. We do like to put things in boxes, but biology seems to delight in breaking itself out of such constraints, as we shall learn again and again in this book. [[Article & Blog Idea]]: complain about how we force kids to put things in boxes, somewhat arbitrarily (see also primary vs secondary sourcing) and it takes so long to unlearn. A friend was asking me if I wanted to tell my son a particular color was yellow or orange – the CLASSIC! “it’s not a binary its a spectrum” and my answer was “it’s marigold.” I like to default to using a specific accurate descriptor rather than trying to shove something into a box. my rant about the colors of the rainbow including indigo I was talking to my dad about how when I read books to my son and the gender of the baby in the picture is ambiguous I just use “they.” Not because I think the child is trans, but because I think training him to think in binaries instead of being accurate does him a disservice. ## ch01 Dogs ### ch01p09 tipis in the arctic are much warmer than outside > The contrast in temperature was extreme. As the families retreated into their tipis for the night, fur coats and trousers and boots were discarded in a great pile by the door. Useful visual for [[(NL) By the Blood of Mountains]]. ### ch01p37 dogs were domesticated before agriculture by hunter-gathers probably. There’s some controversy still. But the latest genetic evidence from ancient & modern dogs points to a single origin just before the Ice Age between 21,000 & 17,000 BP. ### ch01p25 we don’t know whether humans or wolves drove domestication > What we don’t really know is who chose whom. Our instinct may be to assume that our own human ancestors chose wolves and deliberately moulded them into dogs over generatoins. In reality, conscious intent may have had very little to do with the transformation of certain wolves into domesticated species. It may have started as a gentle form of symbiosis, a loose partnership based on mutual benefit. Perhaps it was even the wolves that drove the process. By hanging around humans more and more, even if just picking over middens for scraps of food, wolves may have unconsciously trained humans into accepting them – first as neighbors, then as companions. This reminds me of the [[A Storytelling of Ravens by Betty Wheelwright]]. #pkm/synthesize ### ch01p36 the initial domestication of wolves into dogs could have been very fast This leans on the fox domestication experiment. #nonfic/article to find out whether it has been replicated (remember Anton’s comments about Russian science’s reliability). But generally the idea here is that because small changes in maternal cortisol and serotonin levels have big impacts on how different genes are expressed, it wouldn’t necessarily take long for selecting for docility and tolerance to have cascading impacts on coloration, metabolism, and shape, etc. ### ch01p39 domestication led to some dogs having omnivorous diets > most modern dogs have multiple copies of the amylase gene, which encodes the enzyme for digesting starch. The more copies a dog has, the more amylase it produces in the pancreas, making it easier for them to eat midden and table scraps. But the number of copies of the gene varies among modern dogs based on breed, probably due to their ancestor’s dietary habits. For example, Chinese dogs 9,000 years ago ate diets of up to 90% millet. Dogs with high copy numbers map neatly on to agrarian areas of the globe. ## ch02 Wheat ### ch02p47 what people focus on in history is skewed > History… celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the ploughed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly. > <div></div> > I FEEL SO SEEN. This is basically the entire premise of my approach to history. I don’t give a shit about WWII or the Persian generals that fought the Greeks. I want to know about things that _matter_ and _teach us things about our nature and our future_. It’s the same phenomenon the people at [[rAskHistorians]] talk about, where the vast majority of the questions they get are about slaves and Nazis and it’s exhausting. I know that part of it is because historians generally focus on things we have actual records for, and the archaeological record has enormous gaps, but some of it is the same thing that leads to boys playing cowboys and Indians and “war” and joining the SCA. Similar to the complaints [[Sean Manning]] was making about being [wrong about the HEMA movement](https://bookandsword.com/2016/03/19/i-was-wrong-about-the-hema-movement/) where it’s less about the history and more about feeling special while being a jock. #nonfic/article #nonfic/addendum ### ch02p49 alder trees grow on riverbanks like willows ### ch02p50 broad hypotheses are okay too > Much of genomics works this way—amassing large amounts of data and looking for patterns. In this case, the hypothesis was expansive: ‘ancient DNA from contemporary organisms will be found in the sample.’ Although it may be heretical to say it, I think it’s when you keep hypotheses as broad as possible, when you break away from any preconceptions and expectations, that you can have the best chance of finding something truly novel and exciting. I feel like this is sort of like the top-down vs. bottom-up approach to pkm. ### ch02p54 many domesticated species began as weeds > When the earliest farmers began growing wheat, they found that certain other plants seemed to enjoy living alongside the sown crop. They had discovered weeds. And some of those weeds would eventually become domesticated themselves. Wild rye and oats were both common as weeds in fields of wheat and barley. > > Flax started out as a weed amongst linseed crops. Garden rocket started as a weed in fields of flax. Wild carrots appeared as weeds in vineyards in Afghanistan. Cultivated vetches, peas and coriander probably originated from weeds in cereal crops. This reminds me of how tomato was a weed in cornfields in Latin America. I’m always amused when people talk about it being such a quintessentially Italian food. ### ch02p57 mortars made flour-making from wild grain possible > Based on their experiment, the archaeologists reasons that the Natufians at Huzuq Musa could easily have processed enough barley for this to have been the staple food for the hundred or so inhabitants, 12,500 years ago. And it was important that the conical mortars seemed to work so well for de-husking the cereal grains. Barley with husks on could have been made into groats, porridge, or coarse flour. But de-husked barley can be ground into much finer flour – and there really is only one reason for doing that: to make bread. This was about a thousand years before anyone started to grow cereal crops. ### ch02p58 tough rachis helps seeds stay on the ear <blockquote class=paraphrase> Wild cereals have a brittle rachis, which helps with seed dispersal because the seeds break off the “ear” into the wind, like dandelion fluff except brittle rachis shatters instead of just dislodging. The domestication process might not have consciously selected for tough rachis (i.e. where all the seeds stay on the ear), since it’s basically an inevitable consequence of harvesting and then moving the harvested cereals and then re-seeding a portion of the harvested grain; only the seeds that made it back to home base would get reseeded into fields and pampered with good soil and extra watering efforts. </blockquote> ### ch02p60 sickles were a matter of preference not necessity <blockquote class=paraphrase> hand harvesting is just as fast as stone sickle harvesting, it’s a matter of preference, for proof see the modern Bedul Bedouin in the Valley of Petra </blockquote> ### ch02p60 bigger seeds are more competitive in tight quarters <blockquote class=paraphrase> Larger grains are a sign of domesticated cereals, but it’s possible this wasn’t consciously selected for. Seedlings from large grains have more nutrients to work with and are more vigorous, but “cost” more for the parent plant to create. In the wild, seeds are far enough dispersed that it’s not worth the cost, but when densely packed into prepared fields, the cereals are mostly competing against sibling-plants and bigger ones do better. </blockquote> ### ch02p61 wheat seeds are similar to eggs <blockquote class="paraphrase"> A grain of domesticated wheat has three main components. The embryo is the seed, the bran that coats it (about 12% of the weight, probably comparable to eggshells), and then there’s the endosperm, which makes up 86% of the grain weight. The endosperm is where all the starch, oils, and proteins are. The endosperm is what got a lot bigger because of domestication. </blockquote> ### ch02p28 the Near East was well-connected > The human communities of the Near East were well connected: similarities in material culture show that ideas were traveling around. But goods were being exchanged as well – there’s evidence of the sought-after volcanic glass, obsidian, passing from one community to another, in a way that we might be brave enough to call trade. ### ch02p72 climate change led to cereal domestication <blockquote class=paraphrase> The timeline of human agriculture probably went something like: * after the peak of the last Ice Age, around 20,000 years ago things started to warm up, which was great for humans and the plants we eat because of the warmth and wet. There was also a rise in carbon dioxide levels. This led to a huge population boom for humans. * then the Younger Dryas period happens, around 12,900 and 11,700 years ago, and the cold snap reduced rainfall and warmth in the Fertile Crescent. This probably led to the cultivation of cereals, out of desperation, because why else would you eat something so tiny and fiddly? </blockquote> This answers my “why the hell would people bother making bread” question that’s been bothering me for ages; it’s not so much that “bread is a perfect food” as “there wasn’t enough food so people did what they had to do to make the available stuff edible.” Since there’s a lot more grass in the world than, say, fruit and nut trees. ### ch02p74 monumental architecture pre-dates agriculture <blockquote class=paraphrase> Gobelkli Tepe has around 20 megalithic monumental stone circles with T-shaped pillars and low-relief carving (of animals and geometric shapes) and three-dimensional sculptures. It’s unclear what their purpoes was, but archaeologists suspect the site was used for ritual feasts (there’s evidence for huge feasts) and gatherings of hunter-gatherers. The complex job duties requires to build such enormous monuments (quarrying, engineering, etc) indicate that complex societies and social hierarchies and job division pre-dates agriculture. There’s speculation that instead of eating the grain, they might have fermented it into beer and “paid” laborers that way. </blockquote> Something to bear in mind when teaching the neolithic revolution. ### ch02p75 feast culture may be responsible for agriculture > The importance of feasting in the Bronze Age and Iron Age – as a form of social glue, and a way in which elite individuals could demonstrate and enhance their high status – is widely accepted. But perhaps feasting has much more ancient roots – stretching right back to the dawn of the Neolithic. The improving climate after the end of the Ice Age may have provided the opportunity for individuals to accumulate wealth – in the form of surplus food – and influence – by providing lavish feasts. The scene was set for the emergence of stratified society. And so, Klaus Schmidt and his colleagues have argued, feasting – with or without beer – could have been the key stimulus for the development of agriculture. ### ch02p80 deep sea fishing in the Stone Age > Mesolithic lifestyles were quite variable: some communities seem to have been quite sedentary; others were developing seafaring – shown by the trade in obsidian around the Mediterranean as well as evidence for deep-sea fishing. #pkm/synthesize & #pkm/synthesize with [[seafaring]] ## Chapter 03 Cattle ### ch03p92 reindeer hunters eat raw organs and blood > In Siberia, I watched reindeer hunter cutting into the belly of a reindeer they'd just killed, cutting out pieces of the still-warm liver and eating those, raw, while dipping a cup into the cavity to bring out the blood to drink. #pkm/synthesize with the Siberian reindeer hunters who drink hallucinogenic Reindeer urine [[2021.06.21 Fungus#Pee Shrooms]] ### ch03p92 milk-filled antelope udders were delicacies > Anthropologist George Silberbauer, who spent more than a decade living amongst Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, described in great detail how these hunter-gatherers would utilise the carcass of a hunted antelope - including the udders: "The udders of lactating larger antelope are regarded as delicacies when baked over an open fire. If there is milk in the udder, it is squeezed out and drunk before flaying commences.' > > A traditional story from the Central Plains of North America suggests that antelope udders and milk were considered to be a prized delicacy amongst hunter-gatherers there too. After hunting and killing doe antelope, two Kiowa chiefs were said to have argued over who should have the 'milk bags'. One of the chiefs claimed both udders, and the other chief was so shamed by this affair that he upped sticks and took all his relatives with him, heading off to new territory in the north. ### ch03p93 Greenland Vikings died out due to economics > At 1000 CE, the early Greenland Vikings were eating plenty of dairy products. But four centuries later, they weren't eating domestic animals any longer, and they didn't even have any access to dairy products. The Greenlandic Vikings traded walrus and narwhal ivory — but as supplies of African ivory started to enter the market, their goods were no longer so valuable. #nonfic/addendum lessons from history, we're not so different, ancient towns fail for economic reasons and so do modern ones (like West Virginia and the rust belt) ### ch03p97 flesh herding usually predates milking > When numbers of young cattle are high, this suggests a focus on rearing animals for meat. The shift toward older animals suggests that 'secondary products' such as milk and traction are becoming important. The first cattle and sheep were domesticated for their meat, and milking came later... except for in the Balkans, which had goat meat as soon as they had milk from goats. ### ch03p101 herders worry about losing animals to wild herds > The reindeer herders I spoke to worried less about wild animals joining their herds, than about losing their reindeer to untamed herds. ### ch03p103 theory of why domestic cattle are smaller > Young cattle grow quickly. You do'n't gain much more meat by keeping a mature animal alive, so you cull more animals before or just after they research maturity — and the proportion of juvenile bones in the middnes around your settlement goes up. On its own this doesn't explain the size reduction from wild to domesticated cattle and over time, since they've only been evaluating the sizes of adult cows, but maybe it's because juvenile cows are the only ones giving birth, and juvenile cows tend to have lower weight babies than mature cows, which grow up into lower weight babies. She doesn't address the idea that they might have been artificially selecting for size by slaughtering once they _reach_ a certain size, sort of like how in the Chesapeake Bay we've inadvertently selected for crabs and fish that stay smaller for longer by having size limits on legal catches. #nonfic/addendum ### ch03p108 cattle are very inbred > Geneticists are worried about the future of cattle — and our food security — if the fragmentation of populations and inbreeding continues. They're worried about domestic sheep and goats too, but the situation for these animals differs from cattle as there aer several species for each, and wild species still exists as well. Reminds me of the way we lost "og" bananas and American chestnuts to blights. #nonfic/addendum ## Chapter 04 Maize ### ch04p136 maize benefits from phenotype plasticity > Metzger's tropical maize, transplated into a temperate climate, is a fantastic example of how malleable the phenotype can be. Pheontype plasticity (when environment changes how genes are expressed) is similar (but actually super different) to the way octopods can change their RNA. #pkm/synthesize #nonfic/article ## Chapter 05 Potatoes ### ch05p144-147 humans are similar to mole rats > The larger, well-armored teeth of our forebears could represent an adaptation to this new fallback food — tubers, bulbs, corms and rhizomes. The African savannah has many more of these plants that store their food underground. They're tough and hard to get at a low-quality food, but they're plentiful and reliable in times of need. Many can be eaten raw, like ginger, and then cooked to softness like a sweet potato. ### ch05p149 enzymes for eating tubers helped human brains expand > Although it's often been argued that the advent of regular meat-eating provided the energy needed for our ancestors to evolve bigger brains, some researchers have recently suggested that plant foods -- and in particular, starchy plant foods, like tubers -- have been rather overlooked. Two key developments -- one cultural, and one genetic -- would have been hugely helped to unlock the energy bound up in starch. The cultural development was cooking; the genetic one was the multipication of a gene that produces an enzyme in saliva to break down starch. Salivary amylase works better on cooked starch than raw starch. ### ch05p154 freeze-dried potatoes became Incan currency > By night, potatoes were laid out on the ground to freeze. During the day the'd thaw out and would be trodden on, to squeeze out water. Then they'd left out to freeze again. After three or four days and nights the potaro ow the pc Eu freeze-dried potatoes. As well as were transformed into chuño dehydrating the tubers, this processing would also drive our glycoalkaloids from the chuño, making it less bitter than fresh potatoes. While domestication would have involved the selection of the most palatable potatoes cultivation- some potatoes remained a little too bitter. Another way of reducing bitterness was to eat the potatoes with clay, which binds to the glycoalkaloids. Around Lake Titicaca today, there are still some Aymara people who eat their potatoes this way. Perhaps even more importantly, making chuño transformed potatoes into a form that could be stored for extended periods, sometimes years. While the elite amongst agricultural societies in the Fertile Crescent grew wealthy amassing stores of wheat and herds of cattle, the Inca chiefs grew and fat on their stores of dried potatoes. Chunk became a currency in its own right. Peasants paid their taxes with it, and laborers and mercenaries were paid in it. #pkm/synthesize with [[2021.06.28 Food Preservation]] & the Romans paying soldiers in flour rations for bread making and using salt as currency. ### ch05p160 elite Catholics spread potatoes > Having been introduced and spread within Europe via seemingly elite networks that involved the Catholic Church. #nonfic/addendum to support the [[Ancient Priests]] article. ### ch05p161 potatoes are army-resistant > In the mid-eighteenth century, the fallout from the Seven Years' War demonstrated another advantage of the potato: lurking underground, this crop -- unlike cereals -- could survive in fields that had been burned and trampled. Useful for medieval fantasy. #nonfic/addendum to tweet for worldbuilding detail. ### ch05p164 cloning is bad for adaptability > genetic diversity, as opposed to cloning-first reproduction, is nature's way of future-proofing species by giving them the tools to adapt to environmental problems. Interesting analogy to Obsidian-style "future proofing," which tends to rely on a trust in a LACK of variation in the Markdown standard...but in a way, it's the extensibility of markdown and its ability to hybridize (logseq+obsidian) that make it future proof in the same way as animals. #nonfic/addendum similar vein to the analogy made in the one about [[Practical Gardening Tweetstorm]] ## Chapter 06 Chickens ### ch06p187 China has looser genetic engineering regulations than the USA > With the FDA now keen to label any genetic modification -- even to a single base pair -- as requiring the same level of regulation as a new drug, the technology is unlikely to take off in America. China will probably be responsible for the first genetically modified chickens. This goes really well to [[Scott Alexander]]'s points about the FDA being problematic and also his separate article referring to how the Asian sphere thinks the West is dying. ### ch06p194 early Britons kept chickens for fighting not eating > It's likely that the arrival of chickens in Britain wasn't about meat or eggs and was instead more about blood sport because people liked watching cock fights. Caesar says so in the _Gallic Wars_ 'the Britons regard it as unlawful to eat the cock but they breed them for amusement and pleasure.' The rest of Europe seems mostly to have eaten pheasant and geese, based on their menus. Reminds me of [[Joel Baden]]'s point (and mine from [[2020.11.09 Pigs]]) about how culture has more to do with dietary restrictions than anything inherent to disease or animals, and that sometimes the restrictions are illogical and have no clear consistency. ### ch06p195 the Benedictine Reforms led to fatter chickens > The sudden spread of a gene for plumpness coincides with an equally sudden and significant increase of chicken bones at European archaeological sites in the 10th century, from 5% to almost 15% of animal bones. This seems to tie in with the Benedictine Reform that prohibited the consumption of four-legged animals during fasts, but permitted wo-legged creatures, as well as eggs and fish, to be eaten. ### ch06p176 we eat irradiated mutants > The majority of groundnuts grown in Argentina are bred from irradiated mutants. The majority of rice grown in Australia is bred from an irradiated mutant type. I had no idea that comic book super hero mutants were based on a real thing that actually happened. [[Backwards Mapping Fiction]]! ## Chapter 07 Rice ### ch07p216 climate change drove cereal domestication > It's a very different view of human history than perhaps we're used to. Not a series of triumphant advances, driven by sheer ingenuity and inventiveness, but a story of misfortune and accidents, contingency and serendipity. People falling on hard times and being forced to change their lifestyles, to adapt and accommodate to a changing environment. The circumstances which led to cereals becoming staples, and then being cultivated, at opposite ends of Asia, make more sense if we see it as less of a choice and more of a necessity driven by a climactic downturn. This reminds me of how a lot of great technological leaps forward are driven not by random scientists being chill and smart and more by the necessity of war. But then again, some neat stuff does come out of economic competition and teenagers doing contents. ## Chapter 08 Horses ### ch08p232 Panama didn't always connect the Americas > At the beginning of the Miocene, North and South America were separated by a large body of water called the Great American Seaway. Volcanoes created islands, then sediment gathered around the islands to create the isthmus of Panama. This let horses (among other things) spread to South America around 3 million years ago. ## Chapter 09 Apples ### ch09p266 delicious fruit is native to Kazakhstan > Big, sweet apples were probably originally from Almaty in the foothills of Tian Shan, in Kazakhstan in Asia. They then likely hybridized with more tart/bitter/sour crabapples as they spread to Europe. Yummy apple orchards probably came to Europe via the Romans. See also: https://www.salon.com/2011/10/25/how_the_apple_took_over_the_planet/ ### ch09p270 apples were not the Biblical forbidden fruit > The forbidden fruit growing in the Garden was *tappuah*. This meaning of the Hebrew word is still debated, but apples only recently started being grown in Palestine. ### ch09p272 willows and figs make living yurt frames > You can make a shelter from slender, living trees, bending them into a basic yurt-like frame. Even if you cut withies to make such a structure, they may take root and grow -- especially if you're using willow or fig -- and over time, the withies will merge and meld with each other where they cross. ## Chapter 10 Humans ### ch10p311 adult lactose tolerance was rare in Ancient Rome > The gastrointestinal effects of drinking fresh milk -- for people who don't have the lactase persistence -- were still well known in the first century BCE, when the Roman scholar Varro wrote that mares' milk acted as a good laxative (if that was the effect you were after), followed by donkey's milk, cow's milk, and finally goat's milk. It seems that lactose tolerance was unusual in Italy even just two thousand years ago. It's very common in Europe now, but only about 27% of Kazakhstan folks are lactose tolerant.