User:WouldBen/sandbox

= STAY OUT OF MY SANDBOX! = The book's first chapter, "The Domestication of Fire, Plants, Animals, and... Us" details the gradual process of transforming their environment that was undertaken by early humans. Scott begins by recounting the impact of mankind's use of fire, calling it "a species monopoly and a trump card" and detailing its desirability for its capacity to reduce the radius of a meal by concentrating foodstuffs in a smaller area around human encampments. He also touts the importance of cooking in the evolutionary advancement of mankind. The next section deals with the beginnings of sedentism in wetlands prior to the cultivation of cereal grains, which points Scott believes contradict the traditional civilizational narrative. Scott next tackles the 4,000-year "gap" between the cultivation of domesticated grains and the emergence agricultural societies, claiming that it was in the best interests of early men to supplement their existing diets with cereal grains and other domesticated crops rather than to rely upon said crops exclusively, that adaptability in subsistence strategies was expedient for our ancestors.