This Is How Plants Looked Like Before We Domesticated Them

When shopping in the produce section of your grocery store, you’re probably used to seeing red tomatoes and green cucumbers, yellow bananas and purple eggplants. Just like animals - which have changed a lot since humans started breeding them for food - fruits and vegetables have undergone drastic transformations since humans became agriculturally focused.The fruit and veg that graces our plates today would have been unrecognizable to our ancestors. For thousands of years, humans were hunters and gatherers, which means they hunted animals and gathered wild plants for sustenance. As communities grew larger and more established, however, humans learned that it was more efficient to centralize the cultivation of food.

Some plants were very different before humans came along and domesticated them, usually to make them more edible. Some of the fruit and vegetables we eat today were very different before humans got involved. We changed bananas from stubby little fruits with hard seeds into long, easy to peel tubes of deliciousness. Eggplants, which actually used to look more like eggs became bigger with a sexy new shape. Carrots started off as little more than roots until we decided to turn most of them into tiny orange rocket ships. Watermelons were once small, bitter and tough to crack but now they are massive green chambers of juicy red goodness. Corn was just a dinky little plant with a few hard seeds that became one of the most important crops in human history.

Watch the video to see side-by-side comparisons of wild produce versus what we see in the store today!