Wheat in ancient history

Historic documents confirm that wheat is the earliest field crop used for human food processing.

In the western part of the Fertile Crescent (Syria, Jordan and Israel) Natufians people in settled communities after 9500 BC on a diet of wild wheat and also barley.

The Chinese cultivated wheat as early as 2700 BC and had developed elaborate rituals to honor it.

Wheat became the leading grain used for human consumption due to its nutritive profile and relatively easy harvesting, storing, transportation and processing, as compared to other grain.

The earliest varieties, grown in Near East, were Triticum monococcum (einkorn) and Triticum dicoccum (emmer). Emmer, which is rather widely regarded as one of the ancestors of today’s wheat, closely resembles a wild species of wheat found in the mountainous area of Syria and Palestine. 

Emmer was a wild grain, not yet completely domesticated, but as early as 7000 BC, the villagers of Jarmo, a Neolithic village of modern Iraq crushed it to make flour.

The main wheat varieties grown today are Triticum aestivum, subspecies vulgare, which is a hexaploid with six groups of seven chromosomes in each group.

This species includes hard red winter, hard red spring, soft red winter, and white wheat.

The importance of cereals in the diet throughout the empire is confirmed by the Prices Edict which gives first place to wheat and followed by other crops. The Romans established their perfected wheat as the predominant grain of the Mediterranean world.

During ancient Egypt, wheat is one of the main cereal crops, grown for making bread.
Wheat in ancient history