Domestication and social evolution

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Abstract
The centrality of agriculture as a field of research is witnessed by the number of interests represented in both the Royal Society and the British Academy which converge upon it. The methods by which human societies acquire food can be considered as components of systems which comprehend habitats, biomes, technology and the several dimensions of social and intellectual life. Such systems persist until the cost of maintaining them exceeds the benefit gained by so doing. The replacement of one system by another may be both drastic and rapid. The transition from hunting and gathering to farming may appear at centres of innovation to have been discernible only in quantitative terms, yet provoke social transformations of a qualitative and indeed revolutionary character. In domesticating animals and plants man had necessarily to domesticate himself. Social structures are conditioned by but also constrain methods of securing and distributing food. Similarly habitats and biomes constrain, but in the course of social evolution are increasingly shaped by modes of subsistence.

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