Agri-Culture

Chapter 8

Crossing the Internal Frontiers

A Fundamental Redesign

Human connectedness to nature has deep roots. For 5 million to 7 million years we walked this earth as hunters and gatherers, entirely dependent upon our knowledge of wild resources, and on our collective capacity to gather plants and catch animals. About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, we began to domesticate plants and animals. For most of the time since then, the culture of food production was intimately bound up in some form of collective action, and in an intimate knowledge of nature. Where city-states emerged, as in Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, China, Maya and mediaeval Europe, the ...