We synthesise the results of a large programme of plant ecological research to investigate the selective pressures driving crop domestication and the origins of agriculture in western Asia. We explore this primarily through a series of experiments, comparing the ecological characteristics of: (1) domesticated cereal and pulse species with their wild progenitors and (2) the wild progenitor species with other west Asian grasses and legumes that did not become domesticated during the emergence of agriculture. In particular, we consider the balance between deliberate human selection and unintended consequences of human actions in driving the domestication process. Taken together, our results provide the first empirical evidence to suggest that ecological processes, and unintended selection due to competition between growing plants within anthropogenic environments, may have played a more significant part in the emergence of agriculture than previously supposed. Such human-plant co-evolutionary mechanisms would render unnecessary the search for ‘push’ or ‘pull’ factors, dependent on deliberate human invention to solve a problem or to satisfy a need, as prime movers to explain why hunter-gatherers switched to an agricultural way of life.

我们综合了一项大型植物生态研究计划的结果，以研究驱动作物驯化的选择性压力和西亚的农业起源。我们主要通过一系列实验来探索这一点，将以下方面的生态特征进行了比较：（1）驯化的谷物和豆类物种与其野生祖先，（2）野生祖种物种与其他未在驯化期间被驯化的西亚草和豆类农业的出现。尤其是，我们考虑了故意进行的人为选择与人为驱动驯化过程的意外后果之间的平衡。两者合计，我们的结果提供了第一个经验证据，表明生态过程，由于人为环境中生长中植物之间的竞争而进行的意外选择可能在农业的兴起中发挥了比以前想象的更为重要的作用。这样的人与植物的共同进化机制将使搜索“推动”或“拉动”因素变得不必要，而这些推动力取决于人类为解决问题或满足需要而故意蓄意发明的原动力，来解释为什么猎人-采集者转向了采集者。农业的生活方式。