Við mannfólkið eigum það til að gleyma hvað við erum búin að hafa mikil áhrif á þróun lífs hér á jörðinni og við höldum oft að hlutir sem við gerðum hafi bara alltaf verið svona.
Það eru til ótal dæmi um það – og hér eru sjö þeirra:
1. Contrary to popular belief, the Amazon basin is not naturally fertile. Indigenous people invented a “superdirt” which could remain fertile for thousands of years and renew and propagate by itself. This covers at least 10% of the Amazon basin today.
2. Broccoli is a result of selective-breeding of wild cabbage plants that began around the 6th century BCE. This makes it a man-made food and not a natural one—like lemons.
3. If you thought that earthquakes are always natural disasters, you are wrong. A study identified 730 sites where earthquakes as high as 7.9 on the Richter scale have been caused by human activity in the past 150 years.
4. It is true that oysters make pearls, but that is left more or less to chance. Today, 99% of the pearls that are found on the worldwide market are cultured. They are grown in controlled conditions by a pearl farmer.
5. The smells of natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas are not natural as they are odorless. A clear liquid with a distinct odor is added to it so that we can smell gas leaks.
6. Vanilla cannot be grown without human intervention. Vanilla plants need to be hand-pollinated, as natural pollination through bees is no longer possible. Most vanilla products contain vanillin which is produced synthetically from lignin, a polymer found in wood.
7. The dangerous “killer bees” shown in a lot of movies are a manmade hybrid species of bees that exist in the wild because, in 1957, 26 swarms accidentally escaped quarantine and crossbred.
