Domestication and Food Production

I don't think I emphasized enough today the connection between food production and domesticated products.

All of the socio-cultural consequences I spent the last couple of classes going over only really became manifest when certain species went through the process of domestication. Humans and domesticated species became entangled in mutually dependent relationships that allowed for the remarkable expansion of both.

The addition of these modified species to the subsistence base of human groups changed up those groups' environments in dramatic ways. Now, their subsistence context included species that were manageable whose production could be relatively easily increased. For the most part, food production almost always involves the participation of domesticated species.