Alternate centers of domestication
 

Graeber / Wengrow: "Geographers and historians used to believe that plants and animals were first domesticated in just a few 'nuclear' zones: the same areas in which large-scale, politically centralized societies later appeared."
 
(China, Peru, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia)
 
"Anthropological science has changed all this. Experts now identify between fifteen and twenty independent centres of domestication, many of which followed very different paths of development"
 
For instance: "the Indian subcontinent [...] the grasslands of West Africa [...] the central highlands of New Guinea [...] the tropical forests of South America [...] and the Eastern Woodlands of North America"
 
"None followed a linear trajectory from food production to state formation"

> from David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021)

> tagged with #government, #agriculture

> created Apr 26, 2025 at 8:40:35 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

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