Harlan's crops and man : people, plants and their domestication / H. Tomas Stalker, Marilyn Warburton, and Jack Harlan.

Table of Contents
Preface viii

1 Prologue: The Golden Age 1

Crop Evolution 2

The Hunter-Gatherer Stereotype 3

What Do Gatherers Eat? 11

Understanding Life Cycles of Plants 20

General Botanical Knowledge 23

Manipulation of Vegatation 25

Food Plants in Ritual and Ceremony 26

On Sharing the Bounty 27

Population Control and the Aged 29

Conclusions 30

References 31

2 Views on Agricultural Origins 37

Agriculture as Divine Gift 37

Domestication for Religious Reasons 43

Domestication by Crowding 45

Agriculture as Discovery 46

Agriculture by Stress 49

Agriculture as an Extension of Gathering 50

Domestication by Perception 53

A No-Model Model 56

Geography of Plant Domestication 59

An Ecological Approach 63

Conclusions 73

References 73

3 What Is a Crop? 79

Definitions 80

Intermediate States 81

A Short List of Cultivated Plants 86

Crops That Feed the World 106

References 107

4 What Is a Weed? 109

Definitions 110

Intermediate States 113

Crop–Weed Complexes 116

Some Weed Adaptations 120

Weeds and History 122

Conclusions 127

References 127

5 Classification of Cultivated Plants 131

Botanical Descriptions and Names 132

Problems of Formal Taxonomy 134

The Gene Pool System 136

Evolutionary Implications 143

Conclusions 145

References 145

6 The Dynamics of Domestication 147

Domestication of Seed Crops 147

Domestication of Vegetatively Reproduced Crops 163

Conclusions 167

References 167

7 Space, Time, and Variation 171

Kinds of Patterns of Variation 171

Noncentric Crops 175

Diffuse Origins 178

Microcenters 180

Landrace Populations 181

Implications for Plant Breeding 183

Conclusions 190

References 190

8 The Near East 195

Introduction 196

Archaeological Prelude 200

A Note About Dating Archaeological Sites 202

Archaeological Sequence of Village Sites 204

Spread of Agriculture Out of the Nuclear Area 210

Recorded History 211`

Conclusions 212

References 213

9 Indigenous African Agriculture 216

Introduction 217

Archaeological Prelude 217

A Savanna Complex 223

Crop Competition and Distribution 227

Recorded History 228

Décrue Agriculture 230

Conclusions 232

References 233

10 The Far East 236

Archaeological Prelude 237

Recorded History 240

Far Eastern Crops 241

Hunter-Gatherers of Japan 257

Plant Domestication in India 258

Conclusions 259

References 259

11 The Americas 263

Archaeology 263

The Crops 269

Indigenous Americans as Biochemists 283

Conclusions 287

References 288

12 Epilogue: Who’s in Charge Here? 295

References 302

About the Author
Thomas Stalker is an Emeritus Professor of peanut breeding at North Carolina State University. During the past 27 years he has traveled in South America, Asia, and Africa to collect plant genetic resources and to improve peanut production as part of a USAID international cooperative support program. His principal responsibilities have been to preserve wild peanut germplasm and to incorporate useful genes from the Arachis species into the cultivated peanut.

Marilyn Warburton is a research geneticist at Mississippi State and the USDA-ARS Corn Host Plant Resistance Research Unit. She is the editor of Crop Science journal.