Beginning of Agriculture and Domestication in India

Humans have lived in close proximity to plants from the beginning of time and that has deeply influenced their social, economic, religious and scientific ideas - this is indicated by ethno-archaeological evidences. During the early phases, humans used wild, tubers, leaves fruits and grains to feed, but after keen observation learnt how to germinate plants in different seasons and climatic conditions. In human history, the introduction of agriculture has played the most crucial role - several inventions were made along with the beginning of agriculture. As a country of varied geoclimatic conditions, India has always had huge potential for cultivation of a wide variety of crops. This book reviews how the domestication process and agriculture based on rice, wheat, millet, pulses, etc started in India. While some of these are indigenous, others were introduced from other parts of the world.The book is structured in 12 chapters, each being independent by itself but which, collectively, present the history of human-plant interaction in India, primarily based on the archaeobotanical evidences. Despite it being a technical subject, it has been dealt with in a very lucid and simple manner to provide maximum information for the benefit of general reader. Thus, in the first five chapters, the process of beginning of agriculture from the non-archaeological primitive background has been reviewed in the global context. The subsequent chapters are devoted to the beginning of agriculture in different regions of the Indian subcontinent, starting from Indus valley, north India, east and northeast India, central India and the Deccan, Ganga Valley and the Vindhya and the peninsular south. The book concludes with the recapitulation of the main topics taken up in the study.