ABSTRACT
The long history, legacy and pervasive impact of biotechnology on humankind and the biosphere as a whole is not fully appreciated even by most well-educated people. Although it is commonly thought to be an invention of 20th- and 21st-century scientists working inside brightly lit high-tech labs, biotechnology was first developed at the end of the last ice age, between 8000 and 12,000 years ago, at multiple independent locations around the world (Smith, 2001; Fedoroff, 2003).
