Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
c tools
and approaches that he acquired through collaboration with prominent
archaeologists, notably the late Maria Hopf. He thus arrived at a novel
understanding of plant domestication by ancient humans, which was
primarily based on the unconscious selection of genetic characteristics
in crops and trees, which enabled the latter to economically sustain
settled human communities. This thesis explained the transformation of
nomad groups of food gatherers (and hunters) into people primarily
engaged in agriculture. Zohary and colleagues later extended this prin-
ciple of unconscious selection to the domestication of animals (sheep
and goats) (Zohary et al. 1998).
Zohary also collaborated extensively with plant breeders, especially
on artichoke breeding (Basnizky and Zohary 1987, 1994) and on culti-
vation of anemones (
Anemone coronaria
), which became one of the most
common ornamental
Later in his career, Zohary added to his arsenal other scienti
flowers grown in Israel (Horovitz et al. 1975).
V. THE TOPIC
The magnus opus
Domestication of Plants in the Old World
may be
regarded as the culmination of Danny Zohary
'
c work, as it
summarizes his most important papers, as well as those of his colleagues
in this
s scienti
field. His collaboration with Maria Hopf started as a joint paper in
Science
on the domestication of pulses (Zohary and Hopf 1973), but soon
the additional insight into issues of plant domestication that came from
archaeological
s attention and keen interest. He felt
that plant domestication and the rise of agriculture involved several
steps of unconscious manipulation by humans. In this way desirable
traits were selected, and the plants that were chosen and propagated
were also modi
findings won Zohary
'
ed in important aspects of their genetics, especially
regarding the breeding systems and dispersal mechanisms. Subse-
quently, the chosen plants underwent improvement of their nutritional
characteristics and adaptation to the cultivation routines used by
the settled human communities, and thus started agriculture. In the
four editions of the topic, Zohary and his coauthors Maria Hopf and
Ehud Weiss tried to understand and follow domestication of each
agricultural plant in the Old World, based on the genetic and ecological
evidence on the one hand and on a huge amount of archaeological
findings on the other. Each edition is a major revision of the previous one
and re
field during the period between
1988 and 2012, and the accumulation of new
ects the rapid progress in the
fields
pertinent to the topic. The full name of the topic (4th edition) is
findings in the
