Agricultural systems, ecosystems and the origins of agriculture

摘要

Progress in the understanding of plant and animal domestication and the evolution of agriculture depends ultimately upon the accumulation of factual evidence from detailed taxonomic, cytological, palynological and archaeological studies. But it is necessary first to consider the problem of domestication in ecological terms. At best this approach provides a unifying conceptual framework within which to investigate the origins of agriculture and the evolution of all agricultural systems. At the least it provides a means of selecting those topics and areas that call most urgently for detailed study and thereby prevents the dissipation of limited time and resources on arbitrarilychosen investigations.