How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity with Dr. Robert Spengler

Did humans domesticate plants, or did plants domesticate us? Paleoethnobotanist Dr. Robert Spengler joins Dr. Cassandra Quave to explain why ancient farmers likely had no idea they were changing the course of evolution. Key traits like the tough rachis in wheat and barley took 2,000 to 3,000 years to take hold, far longer than any one person, or any one generation, could have planned for. From there, they follow the Silk Road, which Dr. Spengler describes as the spokes of a wagon wheel with Central Asia at the center. They cover millet and wheat crossing Eurasia, apples hybridized by bees and locked in by grafting, and chickens that spread across the ancient world once they began laying eggs year-round. They also cover spices and early cannabis burning, medieval barley farming in the Gobi, and why bugs were probably a normal part of the ancient menu. Dr. Spengler directs the Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal project and oversees the paleoethnobotany laboratory at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. He is the author of Nature’s Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity and Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Food We Eat. Learn more about his work at https://www.spenglerlab.com/ #FoodiePharmacology #Paleoethnobotany #Archaeobotany #PlantDomestication #SilkRoad #AncientFoods #Ethnobotany #FoodHistory #Apples