or origins of agriculture
Cultivation of plants may have arisen accidentally. According to the “dump heap hypothesis,” wandering peoples discarded remains of plant foods in piles in cleared areas, then returned to the sites and discovered that the same types of plants they had eaten the year before grew again. Eventually, people connected the leaving of seed one season to finding of edible plants the next. Farming began when people intentionally saved and planted seeds of their favorite plants.
another theory suggests agriculture began with beer.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,668642,00.htmlA secure supply of alcohol appears to have been part of the human community's basic requirements much earlier than was long believed. As early as around 9,000 years ago, long before the invention of the wheel, inhabitants of the Neolithic village Jiahu in China were brewing a type of mead
Plant domestication / The Centre cannot hold: