ABSTRACT
Most early-nineteenth century thinkers concerned with man's relationship to nature continued to accept the dichotomy, but there were exceptions. It resembles quite closely the essentially descriptive model of an evolutionary continuum of people-plant interaction which the author proposed - independently of Ford's model - and which was published first in 1989 and in a revised form in 1990. The general analytical distinction between domesticated and undomesticated crops is of course not absolute, but it focuses attention on the distinction between the cultivation of predominantly wild plants and agriculture based mainly on crop production. This chapter attempts an overview of people-plant domesticatory relationships, it is not the author intention to examine evidence for all the activities by which humans have intervened in the ecology of the plants concerned. By examining, and exemplifying, the varied patterns of interaction that have linked people, plants and animals in the past, the author have sought to clarify their understanding of the phenomenon of 'domestication'.
