Grafting

Discussing Romans 11 this morning we noticed how Paul uses the reverse of normal grafting to emphasize that his Gentile audience shouldn't get swelled heads: grafting wild grapes onto a cultivated vine.

Grafting is weird -- who thought of it? How could you guess you weren't going to just kill the scion?

People started doing it somewhere between the Middle East and China, and it slowly spread from those places. Apparently more observant people noticed naturally occurring "inosculation" where branches or roots grow together on contact. I've not seen this with branches, but I have with tree roots -- I just never made the connection. Somebody did, played around with the process, and came up with other possibilities.

Lots of other possibilities.