The ecological background of plant domestication Introduction

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Abstract
This chapter looks at wild and cultivated plants associated with man as an ecological complex and view this in relation to the ecology of man himself. It provides considerable progress in understanding the mechanism of domestication, verifying and, when necessary, modifying our hypotheses by reference to exact archaeobotanical data. The common factor in cultivated and in closely related wild species is their "weedy tendency", their ecological adaptation to "open", disturbed, or unstable habitats with bare soil and less competition from other plants. N. I. Vavilov was convinced that "the wild species and varieties most akin to the cultivated plants, form one ecological group with the latter" and cites as examples barley, wheat, melon, carrot and hemp, all of which possess wild relatives of similar ecological requirements. Vavilov has shown that a number of domesticated plants were not cultivated directly from the wild but arose in a rather different manner at a later stage as weeds of cultivation.

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