Over millions of years humans developed an increasingly varied set of relationships with the plants and animals in their environment. By the European Mesolithic and the Near Eastern Epipaleolithic the efficient exploitation of wild food resources had produced a social and economic base that was ripe for the introduction of domesticates. It is not the intent of this volume to again discuss animal and plant domestication but, rather, to focus on the relationships of people to plants and animals before the introduction of agriculture.
