1、 Plants and MankindBotany, the studyof pants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. Wedon''t know what our stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we canobserve of preindustrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning ofplants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plantsare 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 onlyfor food, but also for clothing, weapon, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, andmany other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognizehundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany has no nameand is probably not even recognized as a special branch of" knowledge" at all.Unfortunately, themore industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact withplants, and the less distinct out knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comesunconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people willfail 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 certaingrasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the nextseason, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans wastaken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture:cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their livingfrom the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a littlehere and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulatedknowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plantsin the wild would begin to fade away.
1 It islogical that a detailed learning of plants and their properties must beextremely ancient.
2Peoplecannot survive without plants.
3Tribesliving today in the jungle of the Amazon teach botany to their children atschool.
4Our directcontact with plants grows with the process of industrialization.
5 Todaypeople usually acquire a large amount of botanical knowledge from textbooks.
6 Peopleliving in the Middle East first learned to grow plants for food about 10,000years ago.
7Once mankindbegan farming, they no longer had to get food from many varieties that grewwild.
