NOV 9, 2024
on whether plants domesticated homo sapiens
some thoughts on a particular section of yuval noah harari's sapiens.in sapiens, yuval noah harari makes an effort to avoid painting homo sapiens as innately separate from or more special than any other species. this was especially clear in harari’s claim that plants domesticated homo sapiens, not the other way around.
“the agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud. who was responsible? neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. the culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice, and potatoes. these plants domesticated homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.”
- sapiens by yuval noah harari, pg. 79-80
“we did not domesticate wheat. it domesticated us. the word ‘domesticate’ comes from the latin domus, which means ‘house’. who’s the one living in a house? not the wheat. it’s the sapiens.”
- sapiens by yuval noah harari, pg. 81
i agree that we should not think of ourselves as somehow distinct from or above other species. however, i think harari’s point here misses the intentional selective breeding aspect of domestication. while our genetics have definitely changed as a result of the agricultural revolution, it’s hard to argue that plants intentionally selectively bred homo sapiens to benefit themselves. did wheat choose which humans should reproduce, the same way we choose which chickens to breed?
i think harari could have better emphasized that humans are not separate from the natural world by referring to plants as a part of a successful evolutionary strategy[1]. i don’t think that reversing the domestication paradigm was necessary[2] to shift away from a human-centric view.