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xiphias. . . I think I'd have to go with corn/maize and bananas.
Maize and bananas are both plants whose cultivatable, food-producing forms are very different from the closest wild relatives. In both cases, the ancestral cultivatable forms are also very different from the modern plant: the earliest cultivated forms or maize produced ears that were smaller than what we have today as "baby corn", and the earliest cultivated bananas were less than two inches long. But, even so, those forms are closer to the modern plants than to the closest wild plants.
Their genetic codes show evidence of massive tampering, of course. I mean, corn has a genetic sequence orders of magnitude more complex than that of human beings, for instance. And that's got to be a result of massive crossbreeding over thousands of years. Even so, the amount of crossbreeding that would have had to be done to get the earliest wild plants into forms that were worth crossbreeding boggles the mind. Who would have spend dozens, maybe hundreds, of years, crossbreeding plants into a form that would eventually become an amazingly useful crop? And a similar argument can be made for bananas and plantains. Clearly, it must have been the work of time-traveling genetic engineer botanists. Or aliens. Or possibly the Easter bunny.
But probably time travelers.
Maize and bananas are both plants whose cultivatable, food-producing forms are very different from the closest wild relatives. In both cases, the ancestral cultivatable forms are also very different from the modern plant: the earliest cultivated forms or maize produced ears that were smaller than what we have today as "baby corn", and the earliest cultivated bananas were less than two inches long. But, even so, those forms are closer to the modern plants than to the closest wild plants.
Their genetic codes show evidence of massive tampering, of course. I mean, corn has a genetic sequence orders of magnitude more complex than that of human beings, for instance. And that's got to be a result of massive crossbreeding over thousands of years. Even so, the amount of crossbreeding that would have had to be done to get the earliest wild plants into forms that were worth crossbreeding boggles the mind. Who would have spend dozens, maybe hundreds, of years, crossbreeding plants into a form that would eventually become an amazingly useful crop? And a similar argument can be made for bananas and plantains. Clearly, it must have been the work of time-traveling genetic engineer botanists. Or aliens. Or possibly the Easter bunny.
But probably time travelers.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 01:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 02:44 am (UTC)*adores you and your wacky brain*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 02:48 am (UTC)As for bananas, the earliest known cultivation was in what's now India, 2500 years ago. Alexander the Great brought bananas to the West in the 300s BCE. And they spread throughout Africa, undergoing many mutations which produced different types. Gradually they were crossbred to the point where they have absolutely no "sex life" at all, which is why every new banana tree is a clone of another one, and why a blight is such a big deal. More here and here.
I think the word you were looking for might not be "evidence," but "suggestion." Besides, consider what you're suggesting. If there were an alternate timeline in which, say, corn never existed, the world would be so different from the one we know as to be nearly unrecognizable.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 08:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 02:31 pm (UTC)Who would have spend dozens, maybe hundreds, of years, crossbreeding plants into a form that would eventually become an amazingly useful crop?
Anyone sufficiently patient person (or persons) who was convinced that it would eventually become an amazingly useful crop.
Someone once told me that the surest proof that time travel is impossible is that no one has come back to tell us about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-25 01:13 am (UTC)Not at all. Lots of people have come back to tell us about it. But for some reason, the only time travellers interested in doing so all appear to be homeless people with mental problems. Go figure.