The Levi Eshkol School of Agriculture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
J Exp Bot. 2014 May;65(8):1917-20. doi: 10.1093/jxb/eru068. Epub 2014 Mar 17.
The role of conscious versus unconscious selection is a central issue in plant domestication. While some authors hold that domesticated plants arose due to unconscious dynamics driven by selection pressures exerted by the ancient 'cultivation regime', others attribute an indispensable role to conscious and knowledge-based selection as an imperative component of Neolithic Near Eastern plant domestication. Recent experimental work demonstrated that, contrary to commonly held views, deep seed burial as part of the ancient cultivation regime cannot be considered as a general selection pressure underlying the increased seed size of domesticated legumes compared with their wild ancestors. This is a robust conclusion since, in three out of the eight legume species studied from different world regions, there was no association between larger seed size and better seedling emergence from depth. We concur with the authors that these legume crops were most likely under various and multiple (often interacting) selection pressures under domestication, thereby causing the observed parallel/convergent evolution of their larger grain size. However, it is puzzling that these authors did not mention the ever-present common denominator in plant domestication, i.e. conscious human decision-making. In our view, the human 'Mind' and the 'Science of the Concrete' à la Lévi-Strauss deserved to be discussed as an integral component of plant domestication.
有意识选择和无意识选择的作用是植物驯化的核心问题。一些作者认为，驯化植物的出现是由于古代“栽培制度”施加的选择压力驱动的无意识动力，而另一些作者则认为有意识和基于知识的选择不可或缺，是新石器时代近东植物驯化的必要组成部分。最近的实验工作表明，与普遍观点相反，作为古代栽培制度一部分的深种子埋藏不能被认为是驯化豆类种子大小相对于野生祖先增加的普遍选择压力。这是一个强有力的结论，因为在所研究的来自不同世界地区的八个豆科物种中的三个物种中，较大的种子大小与从深处更好的幼苗出苗之间没有关联。我们同意作者的观点，这些豆科作物在驯化过程中很可能受到各种（通常相互作用）选择压力的影响，从而导致其较大颗粒大小的观察到的平行/趋同进化。然而，令人费解的是，这些作者没有提到植物驯化中始终存在的共同因素，即有意识的人类决策。在我们看来，人类的“思想”和列维-斯特劳斯的“具体科学”应该被视为植物驯化的一个组成部分。
