An Edible History of Humanity

Many creation stories and religions are centered on agriculture and domesticated plants. The Popul Vuh, a sacred book of the Maya of southern Mexico, tells the story of the creation of man. The gods try repeatedly to make man from materials like mud and wood, but each time, the new creatures fail to honor the gods. In their last attempt, they fashion humans from maize. In one Chinese myth, the goddess Guan Yin saves starving humans by producing rice. Despite these myths, Standage asserts that domesticated crops are a modern invention and say more about the development of modern society than they do about the origin of humanity.

He opens his exploration of agriculture and early civilization by unpacking the history of maize. An ear of corn, the symbol of bounty, provides a perfect example of the relationship between nature and human engineering: “A cultivated field of maize, or any other crop, is as man-made as a microchip, a magazine, or a missile” (3). Humans often view farming as a more natural way of life, but Standage explains that humans have only been utilizing agricultural techniques for around 10,000 years. Humans’ use of agriculture is one example of how the species differs from those around it. Maize, as it exists today, is a human-made product, unable to survive on its own without agricultural assistance.

The plant descends from a wild grass called teosinte that is indigenous to Mexico. Farmers and scientists have used selective breeding and genetic modification to eliminate the tough casings that surrounded the kernels of teosinte and to increase the size and number of the kernels. Proto-farmers originally accomplished this by keeping the plants with exposed kernels and sowing the seeds. These farmers also favored plants that held larger ears on a single stalk rather than the multi-branch structure of teosinte. The invention of nixtamalization allowed maize to become a dietary staple.

Similarly, both wheat and rice are products of human innovation. These domesticated grains are shatterproof, meaning that the grains that would ordinarily be blown by the wind to spread seed instead remain fixed to the central axis, making the grains easier for farmers to harvest. Seed dormancy allows wild grasses to complete the growth cycle at different times, ensuring that some of the grasses will survive variances in climate during the growing season. However, grains like wheat ripen simultaneously, making for easy harvest. Domesticated crops are also genetically mutated to remove seed dormancy so that seeds will begin to grow as soon as they are planted. The domestication of wheat took approximately 200 years.

For domesticated plants—as well as domesticated animals, such as cattle and sheep—human engineering is part of a mutually beneficial relationship. Standage asserts that the relationship also means that both parties become dependent upon one another. Domesticated plants and animals would not survive in the wild without human care. Humans, in turn, rely on these resources.

For most of their existence, modern Homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers. Standage asks why humans abandoned this lifestyle for agriculture: “It is mysterious because the switch made people significantly worse off, from a nutritional perspective and in many other ways” (16). Anthropological studies of modern hunter-gatherers reveal that these groups spend far less time sourcing food than cultures that have adopted farming spend tending domesticated crops and animals. This finding challenges the myth that humans began to farm to carve out more time for innovation and art. Additionally, farming is much more strenuous work than hunting and gathering.

Standage also challenges the notion that farming eliminated concerns about starvation and malnutrition, creating healthier societies. Fossil records reveal that early farmers had more diseases and nutritional stress than their hunter-gatherer counterparts. While grains like maize, wheat, and rice provide sustainable calories, they do not provide all the nutrients humans need to survive. Standage suggests that the development of agriculture was so gradual that people were not fully aware of what was happening.

Multiple factors caused humans to begin cultivating crops and domesticating animals, including the sedentism of some hunter-gatherer groups and the warmer climate that began around 9500 B.C. Another factor may be that sedentism among formerly nomadic hunter-gatherer groups would have led to population growth. The nomadic lifestyle makes it difficult to care for multiple young children at once, but settled communities gave women the opportunity to have more children. Some historians assert that the discovery of alcohol through the accidental fermentation of grain may have created a desire to cultivate crops for a regular supply.

Farming spread through two types of diffusion: demic and cultural. Farmers spread throughout the world, carrying their agricultural knowledge with them. Modern languages are descended from early farming communities. There is evidence that farming and hunter-gatherer societies often lived alongside one another and traded goods. Over time, many hunter-gatherers joined farming communities. By 2000 B.C., most humans were living in agricultural societies.

Society changed because of farming and the domestication of plants. While humans were altering the genetic code of plants and animals, their lives were being altered too. In 2009, the agricultural industry accounted for 41% of the job market. The food humans eat bears little resemblance to the foods that made up the diet of early hunter-gatherers. Standage argues that farming is neither a natural act nor an innate part of the human experience. He takes a dim view of how agriculture has affected the species: “prompting humans to exchange a varied, leisurely existence of hunting-and-gathering for lives of drudgery and toil” (27).