Nature domesticated humans

by Daya Dissanayake

It is possible that nature domesticated the human race, by inducing them to live close to their sources of food. Man in his arrogance even believes that he created God, and that he is supreme, because he is the most intelligent, most knowledgable and capable creature on earth.

Yet man is only just another tiny parasite living on Mother earth, a much tinier entity in the universe, and still tinier in the multiverse.

Man continues to believe that he can control, defy and destroy nature. That is probably the reason why he wants to believe that he domesticated plants and animals.

'Domestic' has been defined as 'living near or about human habitations'. But a better term for what happened in deep history would be 'Naturalisation', instead of 'Domestication'. When we take the 'Domus' out of our mind, we can see the process much more clearly, how man was naturalised.

Water

It would have been the women who decided where they should settle down, selecting a space that was close to a source of water and food. She would have been going out in the morning to gather the food for herself and her children, and for the man if he was hanging around. She would not have wanted to move too far away from her children, or to drag them around with her. Where the food supply lasted longer, she would have stayed longer.

A longer stay in one location would result in erecting a more permanent shelter or finding a cave suitable for such a stay. She did not domesticate the plants around her, but nature, using the plants as the incentive, domesticated the woman. A man would have been useful to the woman and her children, to provide some protection from predators, and in erecting and maintaing their shelter. In return the woman would have fed him and been his companion.

Thus it was that women domesticated men.

During such a long stay in one place, she would have noticed a new plant growing from a seed or a root she had thrown away. She would have been intelligent enough to realise the importance of her discovery.

Harvest

The woman would have nurtured the new plant, and perhaps settled down for a longer period around the place to reap the harvest. The next realisation would have been that she need not roam around from one area to another when the food sources depleted, if she could grow her own food. The worst mistake she had probably made in the long history of human evolution was turning into agriculture.

This woman became the first creature to interfere with nature, and she is still paying for it. Her next mistake was getting her man to help her in planting her crops. He would have slowly taken over the agriculture, which made him the owner and provider of the food for the family. The woman would have let him take over. The dominance of man over woman would have begun in this manner.

Once the man took over, he would have tried to domesticate plants and animals and to dominate nature. Yet even with all his intelligence, experience and modern technology, he has failed to domesticate his surroundings. Man is still at the mercy of nature and natural forces, which are able to destroy in a few moments, crops man had toiled to plant, and buildings he had taken months and years to erect.

Control

If man had really domesticated his plants, he would have had them under his total control. He would not have to carry on research to develop new varieties and species. Though he claims to have domesticated animals, the only animals he had been able to bring into his home are his household pets, the cat and the dog. All other animals are kept by him as his prisoners, in chains, in cages, or in restricted spaces. He has to clip the wings of the birds he tries to keep at home or in animal prisons called zoological gardens.

Man in our part of the world, believes he has domesticated the elephant. He had tried for several thousand years to do that. He has been using the elephant as a slave to labour for him, and as a prestige symbol. He has been able to breed a few elephants in captivity. But he is still unable to leave his 'domestic' elephant free of its chains, or without a jail guard with a sharp iron hook.

In his mistaken attempt at domestication, man destroys his environment, cuts down all the trees, diverts water flows, digs up the earth for mineral resources, and then builds immense concrete and asphalt jungles, polluting the entire earth, and now even outer space. He believes he has conquered nature. But if he abandons such an urban space for a few years open to the natural forces, if he neglects maintaining his plantations by adding synthetic chemicals, very soon nature takes over once again.

Forest

His plantation is invaded by other plants and animals, who take over and turn it back into a natural forest. The plants and animals invade the city, rain and sun begin to demolish the buildings aided by the plants extending their roots into the foundations. In a few years the concrete and asphalt jungle turns into a real green jungle.

In the same manner that we try to decide how our domesticated animals should live, what they should eat, nature ultimately decides how we should live. All our attempts to take over nature, to domesticate nature, has failed. This too confirms that it was nature which had domesticated man.

It is when man, with all his arrogance failed to control or dominate nature, and realized how powerless he was, that he sought the help of supernatural powers, and he has continued to believe in such powers even today.

Did man create god or god create man?

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