ABSTRACT
It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that the separation between agriculture and nature began when the first seeds were sown ten thousand years ago. At a stroke, Neolithic hunter-gatherers set aside their spears and take up the axe to clear the forests and ploughs to till the fields. Then, the wilds become steadily pushed back as the agricultural frontier advanced. Domestication of plants and animals comes to dominate the world, as more than six billion of us today place relentless daily demands on food production systems. In truth, though, the separation of domesticated and wild was never this clear.
