Tamed
by Alice M. Roberts · first published 2017
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2019–2025first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
Ten species that changed our world! For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors depended on wild plants and animals for survival. They were hunter-gatherers, consummate foraging experts, but taking the world as they found it. Then a revolution occurred - our ancestors' interaction with other species changed. They began to tame them. The human population boomed; civilisation began. In this book, Alice Roberts uncovers the amazing deep history of ten familiar species with incredible wild pasts: dogs, apples and wheat; cattle; potatoes and chickens; rice, maize, and horses - and, finally, h
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…Trenches of Show Business by David Dean Bottrell * Becoming by Michelle Obama * Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker * Rush Hour by Iain Gatel * Tamed: Ten Species that Changed our World by Alice Roberts * The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros by Mick Cornett
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?” ↗Makes me wonder if the original wolf is similarly smarter as well Tamed is a nice read by Alice Roberts, about domestication of various species like potatoes and horses (most of them before written history, so it's a puzzle with pieces being put together with archeological…
on “Living with Williams Syndrome, the 'opposite of autism' (2014)” ↗Back when I was reading Tamed by Alice Roberts, about the history of domestication, I remember being startled that modern ground nuts and rice were the product of irradiation.
on “Atomic Gardening” ↗…ancestor we had with great apes) in that there was apparently an evolutionary advantage to be less physically imposing and more like, well, as we are today (Based on what I remember from a books called Tamed by Alice Roberts)
on “Laptops with Stickers” ↗