The significance of plant domestication and the fifteen most important plants:
"In the long view of time, the domestication of plants ... occurred nearly simultaneously in various parts of the world. In the short view of time, however, within a few thousand years some areas lagged behind others with fateful consequences. Because people in the Americas had no suitable grains and animals for early domestication, the evolution of complex societies there began 3,000 to 4,000 years later than in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. As a consequence, when Europeans arrived in the Americas in 1500 CE, they found societies in many ways comparable to those of the Middle East in about 2000 BCE. With their horses, guns, and diseases, products of their more evolved agrarian societies, Europeans were able to strangle the more slowly emerging civilizations of the Americas.
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