Weed killing has been integral to farming since it's inception.^1
Chemical herbicides were popularized in the 19th century, which necessarily coincided with the modern population explosion.
“The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.”
“The earliest known weed control technology in 8000 BCE was the plow and hand-weeding (which includes hand-pulling, cutting with a knife, hoes and mattocks).”
It's implied that @21000BC, they were pulling weeds by hand. Weed killing is part of cultivation. No offense, but you seem completely out of touch with reality, on this topic. I'm not sure you can make a compelling argument without experiencing the simple world of gardening.
https://imgur.com/a/Bly85h8 - these are 2 weeds that have taken over and killed a simple flowering plant from our yard. You can see there are 2 plots that we have spliced from our healthy flowers, where we have been testing weed control methodology, since the neighbors have let these weeds become their lawn. The simple solution seems to be wait until the weed is big enough to have a solid rootball and pull it up manually. This is both the common way for small gardens to be managed AND the only solution for certain invasive species like the Himalayan blackberry which can regrow from stalks or leaves after being mulched and buried - they are resilient to pretty much every pesticide, but they aren't our problem after moving out of WA.
In farmland, you can go over every inch of your acreage and try to spot treat (which won't stop proliferation) or you can uniformly treat, as modern farming currently does.
That’s a logical assumption without direct archaeological support.
Remember we started with wild plants so a significant energy investments beyond throwing seeds may simply have been wasted effort because it’s less needed and has lower rewards. Further removing competitors is a non obvious behavor.
The benefits of a possible harvest increased after destination so the time lag between just tossing seeds and active farming could have been a very long period.
> That’s a logical assumption without direct archaeological support.
It's what people do without any training. It's not necessary to have archaeological support for instinctive behavior. There's no archaeological support people swatted at flies during that time period. Again, this is rather pointless when you're arguing that early man was less capable than a child. GL with whatever.
> Children don’t clear weeds instinctivly, it’s learned behavior.
It's not clear what you mean by "learned" here. You have plants. Other plants grow next to them and they die. It's observed learning (as I showed in the photos), similar to learning fire is hot. You have been implying it's more than that and are flat wrong on this simple understanding of reality. There's nobody that can help you with that.
You just described a relationship that didn't apply to native species before domestocsrion. In effect they where growing weeds.
Second you described learning and ignored culture showing children this relationship. Looking at a prepared area doesn't exist without someone preparing the area.
> You just described a relationship that didn't apply to native species before domestocsrion.
> Second you described learning and ignored culture showing children this relationship.
You're ascribing some definition of "culture" when the behavior is intuitive. I can understand if you're making an assumption about how stupid ancient man was, but that is simply a bias within your own imagination.
> In effect they where growing weeds.
Weeds are competing plant life, compared to the cultivation of specific species. The dictionary doesn't do anyone a lot of favors here, but that's the common parlance.
We were talking about Farming, then cultivation, which are strictly different things. Now you've moved to "domestication" all the while leaning on some strange alternate definition, or you're trolling. I don't think I can help you any more.
Weed killing has been integral to farming since it's inception.^1 Chemical herbicides were popularized in the 19th century, which necessarily coincided with the modern population explosion.
^1 https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1759....