Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Cultivated Plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley

by Daniel Zohary, Maria Hopf

Now in its second edition, this in-depth account reviews the origins and spread of cultivated plants in southwest Asia, Europe, and northern Africa, from the earliest beginnings through the classical era. A new chapter is included on dye plants, and the information on vegetables, fruit trees, and several grain crops benefits from recently acquired insight. The authors examine evidence from archaeological sites and living plants to provide a modern synthesis of crop plant evolution, describing the first domestication of plants, where this occurred, and how these species and practices spread throughout the world. A chronological chart, site orientation maps, and a full set of references complete the volume.

Genres: Food History, Nonfiction, Science, History

290 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 1988

Reviews

[Usfromdk · Rating 5 out of 5]

The page count of this book is not that impressive, but the amount of knowledge the authors managed to fill it with is. A very well researched and dense book of high quality. The coverage is very broad; the book covers a lot of different crop types (cereals, pulses, fruit trees and nuts, vegetables and tubers; there are even short sections on condiments and dye crops). The breadth naturally means that the amount of depth provided is limited - though especially as far as the cereals go, it's not actually that limited - but in the case of all crops covered in the book we get at least some information about what is known, how we know it (archaeology, genetics, linguistic evidence), and how strong this evidence is, according to the authors. A discussion of the wild ancestry of the crop in question is included for all crops (as far as I can remember), even if the 'discussion' is sometimes limited basically to an observation that we don't really know very much at this point. The book might feel slightly formulaic to read because it's the same sort of evidence that is encountered repeatedly and quite a few crops have quite similar domestication histories, but on the other hand there's no question that the formula applied works, which makes this a great book.

The book doesn't cover the entire 'Old World' in that China/East Asia is not covered in any detail - this was a deliberate decision made by the authors - but even so this is a highly edifying and comprehensive work.

I'd note that if you read both this book and Bellwood's First Farmers, the combination of those two books is arguably greater than the sum of their parts.