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g_pepper comments on Open thread, Sep. 14 - Sep. 20, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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How Grains Domesticated Us by James C. Scott. This may be of general interest as a history of how people took up farming (a more complex process than you might think), but the thing that I noticed was that there are only a handful (seven, I think) of grain species that people domesticated, and it all happened in the Neolithic Era. (I'm not sure about quinoa.) Civilized people either couldn't or wouldn't find another grain species to domesticate, and civilization presumably wouldn't have happened without the concentrated food and feasibility of social control that grain made possible.
Could domestcatable grain be a rather subtle filter for technological civilization? On the one hand, we do have seven species, not just one or two. On the other, I don't know how likely the biome which makes domesticable grain possible is.
I suspect that developing a highly nutritious crop that is easy to grow in large quantities is a prerequisite for technological civilization. However, I wonder if something other than grains might have sufficed (e.g. potatoes).
One of the points made in the video is that it's much easier to conquer and rule people who grow grains than people who grow root crops. Grains have to be harvested in a timely fashion-- the granaries can be looted, the fields can be burnt. If your soldiers have to dig up the potatoes, it just isn't worth it.
Yes, it's easier to loot people who grow grains than roots, but I don't think that's so relevant to taxation by a stationary bandit.
Hmm, abundant and easily accessible food is also a requisite for the evolution of eusocial animal colonies. I guess that's what cities ultimately are.