The birthplace of wheat: the history of origin and cultivation, the ancestor of cereal

Wheat is a popular cereal crop grown in many countries around the world. It belongs to the category of annual herbaceous plants from the bluegrass family. Wheat is grown to produce flour, from which bakery and pasta products are subsequently made. It is impossible to establish the exact homeland of wheat. However, most scientists believe that the plant was cultivated at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution.

The history of wheat

Wheat is believed to have originated in the Middle East, a region called the Fertile Crescent.It includes modern Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and other countries. It was there that people first began to eat the wild plant that became the ancestor of modern wheat.

Ancient farmers gradually domesticated this plant by selecting the best seeds. Archaeologists managed to establish that this happened in the 10th millennium BC. The cereal was found in the southeast of Turkey.

Cereal has completely changed people's lives. It was dried, threshed, boiled and made cakes. Initially, the grains were eaten raw, but later they began to grind with the help of stones. Thanks to this, it was possible to obtain flour from which porridge was made.

Soft

This wheat appeared in the south of Turkey. This happened in the 7th millennium BC. This variety of cereal is the result of cross-pollination of the oldest varieties of wheat and wild herbaceous plants. The culture immediately became high-yielding, which made it popular among farmers of that time.Currently, the share of soft varieties is more than 90%.

Hard

The region of origin of this culture has not been established to this day. Scientists consider the Mediterranean to be its homeland, since there was the maximum number of plant species and varieties. This cereal began to be used in agriculture around 4-3 millennium BC. Today, hard varieties cover approximately 5% of all crops.

Spring and winter

These types of crops can have hard or soft varieties. Ancestors who lived in regions with lots of snow and not very harsh winters found the benefits of planting the plant in the fall. The advantage of this method is the possibility of using moisture, which is obtained as a result of melting snow, for crop growth. As a result, it is possible to obtain an earlier ripening period when compared with planting in the spring.

For many centuries, breeding methods have made it possible to develop winter varieties and choose the most frost-resistant. That is how the winter culture appeared. The first information about it in Russia dates back to the nineteenth century. Culture began to be cultivated in the Caucasus. At the same time, spring varieties are planted in the northeastern regions of Russia.

Wheat in Russia

The inhabitants of Russia were mainly engaged in agriculture. At the same time, it was wheat that was cultivated in the southern regions.

When they started growing

The plant appeared in Russia in the fifth century BC. This is one of the first cereal crops grown by the Slavs. She came from the Goths, who lived in the southern part of Eastern Europe. The origin of wheat is described in the earliest written sources.

What varieties were grown?

Slavs planted a plant that bears little resemblance to modern wheat.They sowed spelt - an ancient type of plant. It is a semi-wild cereal that is considered a relative of modern durum wheat. Spelled grains were covered with a film in several layers. They were crushed and ground, after which they were boiled.

Distribution of the plant to other regions

During the Neolithic Revolution, culture quickly spread across the earth. Already in the 9th millennium BC, the cereal left the Fertile Crescent. It was then that the plant began to be planted in the Aegean Sea.

In the 6th millennium BC, wheat came to India. In the 5th millennium, the plant was brought to the British Isles and Scandinavia. Then the culture came to the Iberian Peninsula and Macedonia. In the same period, the plant was brought to Northern Greece and Mesopotamia. After about 1 thousand years, the culture reached China. In Eastern European countries, it began to be grown in the 6th millennium.

Some scientists believe that the cultivation of plants took place in different regions at the same time. But the facts show otherwise. According to information obtained during archaeological excavations, the early cultivation of cereals was carried out only in the Middle East.

By the advent of our era, the plant became widespread in Asia and Africa. During the Roman Empire, the culture began to be planted in different parts of Europe.

The plant came to South and then to North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was brought to the region by European colonists. It wasn't until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that wheat found its way to Canada and Australia. Thus, the cereal spread throughout the planet.

Ancestor of wheat

The origin of the culture can be traced back to the wild grass that appeared 75 thousand years ago and belonged to the Triticeae family. This plant is the ancestor of modern wheat.

The earliest harvested wheat was wild spelt, which grew in the eastern Mediterranean. She was 12,000 years old.

Primitive people liked the seeds of culture. Then they started using them. According to archaeological data, our ancestors grew wheat already in the 10th millennium BC. The ancient cereal had brittle ears and small grains. They fell right after ripening, and therefore it was not possible to collect them. As a result, people had to consume underripe grains.

For thousands of years, farmers cultivated and selected the seeds of wild plants, which eventually led to the domestication of cereals. At the same time, the cultivation of the plant proceeded extremely slowly. According to scientists, about 6.5 thousand years ago, the culture was domesticated.

Wheat is a common cereal crop that has a rich history. Today, it is grown all over the world and used to make baked goods and pasta.

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