PANDORA'S SEED
This new book by the internationally known geneticist,
anthropologist, author and director of The Genographic Project focuses on
the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers
rather than hunter-gatherers. Wells makes use of the latest genetic and
anthropological data to show that although this decision to control our own
food supply is what propelled us into the modern world, it had many downsides
that we're only just beginning to recognize.
Terrorism, pandemic disease, and global warming – what do these have in
common? To find the answer we need to go back ten millennia, to the wheat
fields of the Fertile Crescent and the rice paddies of southern China. It was
at that point that our species made a radical shift in its way of life. We had
spent millions of years of evolution eking out a living as hunter-gatherers.
When we learned how to control our food supply, though, we became as gods
– we controlled the world, rather than it controlling us. But with godliness
comes responsibility. By sowing seeds thousands of years ago, we were also
sowing a new culture - one that has come with many unforeseen costs.
Taking us on a 10,000-year tour of human history and a globetrotting factfinding
mission, FALLOUT charts the rise to power of Homo agriculturis
and the effect this radical shift in lifestyle has had on us.
Focusing on three key trends as the final stages of the agricultural population
explosion play out over this century, Wells speculates on the significance of
our newfound ability to modify our genomes to better suit our unnatural
culture, fast-forwarding our biological adaptation to the world we have
created. But what do we stand to lose in the process? Climate change, a direct
result of billions of people living in a culture of excess accumulation, threatens
the global social and ecological fabric. It will force a key shift in our behavior,
as we learn to take the welfare of future generations into account. Finally,
the rise of religious fundamentalism over the past half-century is explained
as part of a backlash against many of the trends set in motion by the
agricultural population explosion and its inherent inequality. Ultimately,
the world's present state of crisis will force us to evolve culturally, but can
we self-correct our culture to solve these problems that we ourselves, in our
race to succeed, have caused?
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