Anthropology Department Seminar Series, "Domesticating Plants or Domesticating Ourselves? A New Approach to the Origin of Rice Farming in China", a talk by Jiajing Wang (Dartmouth)

Please join us at the Anthropology Department Seminar Series on Thursday, October 6 at 3pm for a talk by Dr. Jiajing Wang.

Abstract: The transition to agriculture, characterized by plant domestication, is one of the most consequential events in human history. Despite more than two decades of extensive research, it remains unclear how and why rice domestication originated in the Lower Yangtze River of China. This presentation offers a new approach to explaining this transition by proposing a dialectical model of domestication. Challenging traditional explanations that attribute the rise of agriculture to human interventions on the environment, this research instead explores how the active agencies exercised by plants and tools resulted in the domestication of humans, a process in which humans became dependent on tools and trapped into a sedentary lifestyle, thereby foreshadowing the rise of rice agriculture.

Full event details can be found on the Anthropology Department event page.