Plants are for humans. Where does a person use various substances of plant cells

There are five main areas where a person directly or indirectly uses plants:

• as food;
• source of raw materials for industry;
• how medicines;
• for decorative purposes;
• to preserve and improve the environment. Let's consider each of them separately.

Let's start with nutrition. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats are the three main groups of substances that a person needs to build his body and ensure its vital functions. Throughout life, a person processes a huge amount of substances - more than 1000 times the weight of his body. Assimilated substances, he processes them inside his body, takes energy from them and then partially releases them again, but in an altered form.

The total need for food products is directly or indirectly provided by plants: directly by eating the plants themselves or plant products, and indirectly through animals, which ultimately also feed on plants. The ratio of plant and animal food in human nutrition is very different and depends both on its capabilities and on established traditions.

The first conscious relation of man to plants appeared, no doubt, in the fact that he began to collect them in order to eat. Fruits and seeds, tubers and roots, young shoots and even whole plants made up an essential part of the diet of the first people. At the same time, it was necessary to distinguish edible plants from inedible and poisonous ones. So a straight line was established very quickly and close connection people with plants, which grew stronger as knowledge about different types plants, as well as with the invention of methods for producing fire and the associated processing of harvested plants and the improvement of their nutritional qualities.

When and where man came to the conscious cultivation of plants has not been clarified, nor can it ever be clarified. It is firmly established only that he has been purposefully cultivating plants for a very long time. The oldest traces of this are 10,000 years old, that is, they date back to those distant times when people in some territories switched to a settled way of life.

The most important modern cultivated plants are starchy, and among them, first of all, representatives of the cereal family: wheat, rice, corn, barley, oats and rye. In terms of human use, wheat is undoubtedly in the first place. Rice is slightly inferior to wheat.

The third very widespread grain crop is corn, which is mostly fed to livestock.

Starch-bearing plants, in addition to cereals, also include representatives of other families, among them potatoes are primarily among them.

The next important starchy plant is the banana. Powdery banana fruits are especially rich in starch. They are boiled, fried and baked, from which brown flour is obtained, which finds a wide variety of uses.

In addition to starch, sugar is one of the most important carbohydrates. But the number of sugar-bearing plants in comparison with starch-bearing plants is relatively small, and only two of them - sugar cane and sugar beet - are of great importance.

Proteins, unlike carbohydrates, a person receives mainly from animal food. Of course, many food plants also contain proteins, but in fact, only the seeds of legumes are currently important as a source of vegetable proteins used by humans.

The situation is different with fats, since a significant part of them is given to humans by plants. These are plants such as rapeseed, colza, poppy, sunflower and others. All these plants contain fats in fruits or seeds.

However, carbohydrates, proteins and fats of purely vegetable origin are only part of the basic human diet. Another, no less important part, a person receives from plants through animals.

A person receives from plants not only energy-rich substances, but also vitamins. Almost all fruit and vegetable plants can be classified as vitamin-bearing plants.

Herbs and spices play an essential role in our diet, all except table salt that are of vegetable origin. The main part of the flavoring substances of spicy plants belongs to a large group essential oils, which are formed by plants in special cells or are secreted into special receptacles located inside tissues, and later when they leave the plant body through glandular hairs or glandular cells. We are talking about easily evaporating, pleasant-smelling liquids, which are a mixture of alcohols, carbonic acids, esters and other substances. Taste also depends on organic acids, which play an important role in metabolism.

Valuable properties depend on secondary plant substances cultivated plants another group - plants containing exciting substances. The most important of them are coffee, tea, cocoa and tobacco.

However, plants are used by man not only as food and aphrodisiacs; Plants and the products derived from them also play an important role in other areas. Everyday life person. Plants often use as a raw material or raw material to receive it. Wood, cotton, jute and other fibers, as well as cellulose, rubber, vegetable fats and oils, dyes and tannins obtained from plants, are still needed for many branches of the national economy. Wood has been used by man for a long time; it was the first fuel, and in a number of areas the first building material.

Linen- one of the most famous cultivated plants. To this day, it serves as the main raw material for the manufacture of fabrics, which are used, for example, for bed and table linen.

Hemp- the oldest fibrous plant. From its relatively thick and brittle fibers, at present, mainly ropes, canvas, thick threads, etc. are made. An even coarser fiber gives jute. Almost all jute goes to the production of burlap.

However, the most important role in the world economy is cotton- fibrous plant.

Plant fibers consist of almost pure cellulose, and vegetable cellulose is the main raw material for the manufacture of very many products, of which it is enough to name only paper, cardboard, rayon, viscose, artificial wool, varnishes. The initial raw material for the production of cellulose is mainly wood, but sometimes cane and straw are used.

Another important plant product for industry is natural rubber, although these days it no longer matters as much as it used to.

Tannins, which are part of some plants, are bitter in taste and are widely used in Food Industry, since, along with other substances, they determine the taste of many fruits, stimulants and food products.

Tannins are found in lingonberries and blueberries; they give them an astringent taste. Tannins are found in the leaves of the tea bush; rich in them and seeds coffee tree. There are especially many of these substances in the bark and heartwood of some trees. The presence of tannic acids often protect these tissues from damage by microorganisms, making them more resistant.

Many other plant substances also find economic use. True, as a result of the development of chemistry, the importance of some of them has decreased, while others are no longer used at all, such as, for example, many dyes of plant origin.

Like medicines plants still play an important role. Information about the healing effect of plants was preserved in different peoples many centuries. Now we know the substances contained in many plants, and we know what effect they have on the human body. But in folk medicine there are also many false, mystical and superstitious ideas. To some extent, this attitude has continued to this day.

However, plants are not only used for nutrition, for economic and medical purposes, they, in addition, decorate our lives And improve surrounding a person natural environment , being its constant component.

In the daily life of people, flowers have always played and play a big role. As a sign of attention to a friend and comrade, as a gift to a beloved woman, as a last bow to the deceased - flowers are never forgotten. They give comfort to our homes and workplaces, they decorate parks and gardens. Their role in our lives is evidenced by thousands of species and varieties of ornamental plants. Beautiful not only ornamental plants. Even microscopically small plants cannot but attract attention with a peculiar form.

The plant world is undoubtedly the main component of the biosphere, which, in fact, arose only when plant organisms appeared that were capable of converting solar energy and synthesizing bioorganic matter on Earth. Since then, the overall balance of matter and energy has been closely dependent on the state of the vegetation cover of individual regions and the planet as a whole.

Plants (Latin Plantae or Vegetabilia) are studied by the science of botany, for the 21st century, scientists have more than 320 thousand plant species, most of which are flowering plants (about 280 thousand species), the number of plants is increasing every year, new species are constantly being discovered.

What would our planet be like without plants?

The role of plants both in nature and in human life and economic activity cannot be overestimated. Thanks to the process of photosynthesis that occurs in the green leaves of plants with the participation of sunlight, oxygen is formed, which is vital for all inhabitants of the earth's surface. Plants are the richest source of vitamins and minerals, an indispensable element of trophic food chains, a producer of various organic matter in nature from inorganic raw materials. If there were no plants in nature, then there would be no animals, no man himself, and the planet itself would look like a lifeless desert, it would not even have soil and any landscape diversity created precisely by plant groups. A person should appreciate and understand the role of plants in his life, because without them he simply would not exist, by planting and caring for small sprouts of green life, we become cleaner and kinder, we join the mysteries of nature and the universe.

Photosynthesis as the great cosmic process that makes our planet habitable

One of the most important functions of green plants is the production of oxygen during photosynthesis. The leaves of green plants contain the pigment chlorophyll, which, under the influence of sunlight, separates the water drawn from the soil by the roots into hydrogen and oxygen (the process of photolysis). Also, the carbon dioxide absorbed by plants in the presence of chlorophyll and already without the mandatory participation of sunlight reacts with water, forming glucose and oxygen (the process of carbon dioxide reduction). By combining the resulting glucose with sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorus compounds obtained from the soil, plants generate proteins, fats, starch, various vitamins and others. complex connections necessary for their continued life.

What other useful plants give nature

The rate of photosynthesis depends on the intensity of light, the concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and the ambient temperature. The resulting O 2 is partially released into the atmosphere, and partially goes to the respiration of the plants themselves. Every year, plants release up to 510 tons of oxygen into the atmosphere, they maintain its constant gas balance to a state suitable for breathing. Rising into the upper atmosphere, oxygen turns into ozone and becomes part of the ozone layer that protects our planet from harmful UV radiation from the Sun.

Plants produce up to 170 billion tons of organic matter every year, most of which is produced by land plants. With the help of plants, the upper fertile layer of the Earth called soil is formed, they provide it with a constant circulation of mineral substances, which is so necessary for its fertility.

Plants, due to the fact that they return to the atmosphere 90% of the moisture that the land evaporates, significantly soften the Earth's climate and form temperature regime planets. By absorbing carbon dioxide, they reduce the so-called the greenhouse effect, although man, as a result of his economic activity (burning fuel and cutting down large areas of humid equatorial forests), is trying to reduce all the efforts of the "lungs of the planet" to zero.

Vegetation, covering the earth with a dense carpet, protects it from drying out, creates a milder, more humid climate, roots keep the soil from weathering and erosion, and prevent the appearance of ravines and landslides. Plants release specific phytoncides into the air, which are harmful to pathogenic bacteria; they are the first important step in the trophic food chains.

man and plants

In human life, plants play a huge role, because in addition to being sources of oxygen necessary for breathing, they are used by humans for food (cereals, vegetables, grains and legumes, tree fruits, essential oil crops, sugar plants), medicines are made from them. , clothes, houses, they serve as raw materials for industrial production paper, paint, rubber and other various useful substances.

Plants are an irreplaceable source of vitamins and minerals, the deficiency of which can lead to the development of serious diseases in humans. In animal husbandry, fodder crops are used as food for animals, in large cities they absorb excess carbon dioxide, serve for sanitary and hygienic purposes, absorbing harmful substances from the air, ionizing it and moisturizing it.

Tikhomirova Anastasia Pavlovna

Man has long used a significant number wild plants. They brought him wood for fires; served as material for the construction of dwellings and pens for animals; man made fishing tackle and hunting tools from plants; built boats and rafts, weaved mats and baskets, prepared various household and ritual decorations; fed plants to animals and birds, dug up roots and harvested fruits for food and medicine. A man took refuge in the forests from bad weather, hid from enemies and predatory animals. In a word, the whole life of primitive man was connected with plants. And the more diverse was the world of plants that surrounded man, the more widely he used plant riches for his needs.

Subsequently, when a person began to grow some of the plants useful to him near his dwellings, that is, he began to engage in agriculture, he laid the foundations of plant growing, although he continued to use the gifts of wild nature.

At present, mankind continues to widely use plants for their needs. At the same time, the natural vegetation cover is gradually changing. Forest areas are decreasing, treeless spaces are increasing, some plants that were once widespread on Earth are disappearing and not being restored. Although this process of destruction of the original natural vegetation is gradually progressing, nevertheless, there are still many plant species that continue to be of great economic importance for human life.

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Plants in human history In 1157 AD. The Chinese emperor Jen Tsu ordered a new work on the formakope. Over 1,000 plant species were described during his lifetime.

1492 Columbus leaves Spain in search of a western route to India. From the New World, he brings to Europe a new grain crop - corn and other plants. During his second expedition in 1493, Columbus brought sugar cane to Santo Domingo. The settler Aguilon reports that he gathered rich harvests of sugar cane on his plot, extracting sweet juice from it. In 1516, the first sugar made from cane was shipped to Spain. Soon after, Portugal began importing sugar from Brazil. Sugarcane may have been the driving force behind the slave trade.

Columbus also brought pineapple and capsicum to Spain, spicier than those in the Caucasus. This pepper was introduced in Spain in 1493, has been known in England since 1548 and has been cultivated in Central Europe since 1585. Columbus also brought cucumbers and other vegetables to America.

1497-98 Vasco da Gamma opened a trade route for Portugal to India through the Cape of Good Hope, bypassing Asia Minor. This deprived Venice of its monopoly on the trade in sugar and spices.

1500 Beans, native to America, became known in Europe. At the same time, it was brought to Spain from South America yam (sweet potato), which later came to China, India, Malaysia, where it became widespread.

1505 The first black slaves are brought to America. The slave trade began to develop actively due to the fact that the plantations of sugar cane and cotton in the New World required laborers.

Rice was cultivated in China 7,000 years ago. Headed cabbage also occupied a significant place in the diet of the ancient Chinese, the diet of which was at least ¼.

Flax has been known for 9000 years in Syria and Turkey. Apparently, it was he who was here the main material for the production of fabrics.

In the Middle East, 10,000 years ago, people cultivated wheat and barley. At that time, barley was the daily food of man. Archaeologists have discovered the first flour-grinding stones.

Excavations in the Shanidar cave (Northern Iraq) testify that at that time, about 50,000 years ago, local residents ate chestnut seeds and walnut fruits.

Sorghum was already being grown in North Africa 5,000 years ago.

4,000 years ago (2000 BC) millet was already grown in North Africa.

1519 Magellan set off on his circumnavigation to explore new trade routes. Three years later, only 18 people out of 250 and one ship out of five returned from this expedition. But they brought with them 26 tons of cloves, bags of nutmegs and citrus fruits, and sandalwood wood. The proceeds more than covered all the expenses of the expedition.

Pigafett, sailing with Magellan, wrote: “In the Moluccas, we found cloves, ginger, sago palm, wood that is like bread.” He also writes: “Betel is a fruit that they, the natives, chew along with jasmine and orange flowers” Cannibals on the island did not consume any parts human body, except for the heart, which they soaked in lemon or orange juice.

1516 Bananas are brought to the New World from Africa.

1514 Alliance became the first European to reach China by sea. In China, the Portuguese discovered oranges, fruits from India and Ceylon.

1521 Cortes lands in Mexico. His soldiers are introduced to the spices and vanilla of the Aztecs.

1532 Francesco Pizarro landed in Peru when the Spanish Conquest in Peru ended four years later. Potatoes became common and cheap food for soldiers and sailors.

The emergence of agriculture is rightfully considered a turning point in history. The independent formation of the agricultural way of life in the most favorable centers for this (in Mesopotamia, North Africa, the Balkans) about 10 thousand years BC. e. led to the emergence of the first civilizations. Their existence and change, in turn, determined the entire subsequent history of mankind. The beginning of this process is associated with the "Neolithic Revolution" as a sharp change in lifestyle.

The period preceding this was traditionally considered and is considered as the dominance of the "appropriating" - hunting and gathering - economy. Subsequent changes are associated mainly with changes in the composition of commercial animal species. Gathering has always been assigned a secondary role - largely due to the fact that it was practically not represented in the archaeological material and all discussions about it were based on ethnographic analogies and the "principle of actualism": plant foods are present in the diet of all known peoples, including the population Far North.

In the 70s of the last century, the Leningrad archaeologist A. N. Rogachev put forward a hypothesis about “complicated collecting” in the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age, 2.6 million years ago - 10 thousand years BC).

Rogachev considered "complicated collecting" initial stage formation of the agricultural system.

Pestle-grinders: Kostenki 16 (~30 thousand years) - top row; Kostenki 14 (layer in the ashes ~40 thousand years) - bottom row

The reason for this was the presence in the inventory of a number of Paleolithic sites in Eastern Europe of specific stone tools - pestles and grater pestles (in the figure), presumably associated with the preparation (grinding to a state of flour) of plant products for long-term storage. Their presence in the cultural layers of the Early Upper and even the Middle Paleolithic testified to a long "preparatory" period for the formation of agriculture.

Modern research has shown that grater pestles existed for a long time and over large areas (from the Atlantic to Transbaikalia, from the early Upper Paleolithic to ethnographic modernity). They were not directly linked to any of the known cultural traditions. This means that plant processing was widespread (if not ubiquitous) in the Paleolithic. However, the tools associated with it reach archaeologists relatively rarely, perhaps because of their special significance for ancient man.

Until recently, the connection of grater pestles with plant processing remained only a hypothesis due to the lack of methods for its direct proof. Moreover, completely different functions were attributed to grater pestles, for example, rubbing mineral paints.

The possibility of accurate determination has appeared relatively recently thanks to analytical studies using modern microscopes conducted by a group of Italian researchers from the University of Florence.

On stone artifacts from the Bilancino Paleolithic site (25,000 years old), comparable in shape and size to pestles, the remains of a marsh plant of the cattail family (Typhaceae) were determined from starch residues.

At the initiative of Italian scientists, the study was expanded by attracting materials from the Pavlov 6 site (Moravia, Czech Republic) and the Kostenki 16 site (Voronezh region, Russia), where outwardly similar tools were found. Analytical studies have confirmed their connection with the processing of plant resources. A generalized study, which analyzed the source from all three ancient monuments, was published in today's issue Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

The choice of the Kostenkovskaya group of sites for this study is not accidental. It is due to the variety of components of material culture:

at present, 26 Paleolithic sites are known in a relatively small area of ​​the villages of Kostenki and Borshchevo!

Almost half of them are multi-layered, that is, they contain the remains of several cultural layers - the remains of settlements. In total, about 60 settlements are represented here. Thanks to the unique conditions, almost all types of archaeological sources can be found in Kostenki. In addition to the flint and bone tools and faunistic (simply speaking, kitchen) remains, which are common for Paleolithic sites, these are numerous collections of jewelry and works of art, including figurines of "Paleolithic Venuses", the remains of residential structures made of mammoth bones, anthropological remains, including ancient burials …

Tools associated with the processing of plant resources are far from the first place on this list. Until recently, their significance for the reconstruction of the household activity of a Paleolithic person was limited to ascertaining their presence. The fact that a person rubbed paints, used abrasives to sharpen bone tools, different kinds chippers, retouchers for the manufacture of stone tools, with a high degree of certainty could be assumed by the presence of paints and sharpened bone tools, even in the absence of graters, abrasives and chippers in the available material. With tools for processing plant resources, the situation is much more complicated, since the final product obtained as a result of this type of household activity is not presented in the material that has come down to the archaeologist.

Kostenki 16.

On the surface of one of the tools from the Kostenki 16 site, Italian paleobotanists found particles of starch from several plant species, including the grapevine (Botrychium), a plant from the genus Ferns (illustration 6 of the photo gallery). This plant is present in the deposits of the cultural layer and speaks of rather severe climatic conditions comparable with the modern climate of the tundra.

“We were able to show that the found pestles were used specifically for processing plants,

in another, independent way - with the help of the so-called trace analysis. The uniqueness of our method is the study of tools from the point of view of their functional purpose, that is, attempts to understand what this or that object was used for.

This method was invented by the Russian archaeologist Sergei Semenov (by the way, this is the only method invented in Russian archeology that has become widespread in the West). Traces of work always remain on the tool, appearing as a result of the friction of the tool on the material being processed. Based on these traces (they are called traces), one can judge the purpose of the tool, its function. Such analyzes are carried out by a special science - archaeological traceology.

In order to have an evidence base - to substantiate the fact that certain routes belong to a particular type of activity - many experiments were carried out on the manufacture of tools and their processing different materials. This is how such a reference collection was created, that is, a collection of samples - replicas of tools, modified by processing different materials. When we find tools in excavations, we look at them through a microscope and, comparing them with our standards, determine the function of the found archaeological sites.

Thus, we were able to accurately confirm that ancient people used plants in their daily activities already in the Paleolithic era.

Similar results were obtained by Laura Longo (Museum of Natural History of Verona) in the study of tools from the sites of Pavlovo 6 and Belancino.

These works show that the "Neolithic Revolution" is the result of a long evolutionary process of the formation of methods for processing and storing plant remains over a long period of time.

Our cooperation with Italian colleagues is very old: Professor Laura Longo had an internship in our laboratory several decades ago. Since then we have been working together.

Unfortunately, often the issue of cooperation rests on funding. The Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research have international programs in the Russian Humanitarian Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, but it is very difficult to “break through” them. Actually, there are especially few humanitarian projects. I would like, of course, that through these grants, cooperation could be consolidated in the longer term.”

Prepared by Alexandra Borisova