Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was the one field of awareness about which humans had anything more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but form what we can observe of pre-industrial societies that still exist a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them, botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of “ knowledge” at all.

Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild- and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.

【真题】辽宁省阜新市2018年中考英语试题及答案(Word版) 18-08-01

【真题】山东省菏泽市2018年中考英语试题及答案(Word版) 18-08-01

【真题】四川省绵阳市2018年中考英语试题及答案(Word版) 18-07-31

【真题】浙江省台州市2018年中考英语试题及答案(Word版) 18-07-31

【真题】湖北省荆州市2018年中考英语试题及答案(Word版) 18-07-31

大庆市肇源县2018年外研版七年级上期末英语试卷含解析 18-07-29

【真题】2018年衡阳市中考英语试卷及答案解析(Word版) 18-07-24

【真题】2018年无锡市中考英语试卷及答案解析(Word版) 18-07-24

2018年云南省中考英语试题（原卷+解析） 18-07-24

2018年春外研版七年级英语下期末测试卷（二）含听力mp3 18-07-23

外研版九年级上英语Module1检测题及答案（含听力原文） 18-07-23

＊ 本站是所有资料仅供教学之用。本站部分内容来自互联网或由会员上传，版权归原作者所有，如有问题，请及时联系我们。

版权所有@12999教育资源网