Olivia Strittmatter - Ecology of Eden Part One

Blog Post 7 - Class Readings 3

Week 7

        This blog post is going to be about Part One from Ecology of Eden by Evan Eisenberg. Part One is titled Waves, and is overall about human progression from hunter gatherers to industrial cities. It talks about the alliance of humans and grasses, and how this alliance aided in the spread of humans globally. Part One is made up of 6 chapters, and in the following mini-paragraphs I will quickly summarize each one.

        Chapter One, titled The Marriage of Grass and Man, is about the logic of husbandry from the point of view of the wheat. This chapter sets up the mood of the whole book, it starts off talking about how the alliance between man and wheat is the major turning point that allowed humans, and their grass allies, to spread around the world.

        Chapter Two, tilted Axis Powers, is about the alliances between species long before humans were involved. It talked about how early prokaryotes developed a symbiotic relationship which turned into the nucleus, and the mitochondria. As well as relationships such as those in lichen, between fungi and photosynthetic bacteria.

        Chapter Three, titled Dirt Cheap, is about the rise and fall of the soil community and how modern farming is destroying it. Throughout the chapter Eisenberg talks about the ecosystems that exist within the soil and how those ecosystems are extremely diverse and important to the global ecosphere. He then goes on to talk about how modern agriculture is extremely devastating to these soil communities, and is therefore destroying the integrity of the soil.

        Chapter Four, titled The New Pangaea, is about how ships and planes are eroding the diversity of life. In this chapter it talks about how species from all over the world are coming into contact with one another because of frequent global travel and invasive species. The world's species are not meant to interact as they currently do because they all have different alliances with viruses, bacteria, and parasites that are harmful to other species.

        Chapter Five, titled The Human Mushroom, is about fossil fuels and why getting energy is risky. It talks about how humans are the only animals who use energy without eating it. We burn fossil fuels and wood in order to get energy in order to cook food, stay warm, run our vehicles, and so much more. The chapter talks about how it’s risky to extract these energy sources because it is destructive to the environment and ecosystems that are built around and on top of the energy sources.

        Chapter Six, titled Life on the Edge, is about the transition from nature to culture. It talks about how humans transitioned from being mainly hunter gatherers, to living in large cities. It also talks about how there is a vague divide between “nature” and our idea of what culture is. How culture is a human construct, and we like to think that it is different from nature/wilderness.

        Part One, mainly Chapter One, reminded me of something I had read a while ago. It was about how humans show a lot of the traits of a domesticated species. Things such as less fur, smaller and rounder jaws, smaller teeth, paedomorphic traits, etc. Chapter One connected to that because it talked about the alliance between grass and man, but I think that, rather than an alliance it was more like coevolution. Humans domesticated grasses, and simultaneously the grasses domesticated humans. Humans were able to grow and spread across continents, and the grasses were able to put more energy into producing their fruits and seeds rather than spreading their seeds. I just thought that this was an interesting way to start the book, and I liked how it immediately connected to what I had been reading about earlier this semester.