Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

by James C. Scott

The purpose of the cultivated field and of the garden is precisely to eliminate most of the variables that would compete against the cultigen. In this man-made and -defended environment—other flora, exterminated for a time by fire, flood, plough, and hoe, pulled out by their roots; birds, rodents, and browsers scared off or fenced out—we make a nearly ideal world in which our favorites, perhaps carefully watered and fertilized, will flourish. Steadily, by coddling, we create a fully domesticated plant. “Fully domesticated” means simply that it is, in effect, our creation; it can no longer thrive without our attentions. In evolutionary terms a fully domesticated plant has become a superspecialized floral “basket case,” and its future is entirely dependent on our own. If it ceases to please us, it will be banished and almost certainly will perish.7 Some domestic plants and animals (oats, bananas, daffodils, day lilies, dogs, and pigs) have, as we know, resisted full domestication and are capable, to varying degrees, of surviving and reproducing outside the domus.