Nearing the end of our cross-country road trip from the east coast to home in the Inland Northwest (see blog posts immediately prior to this one), we drove through Aberdeen, ID. Since 1988 the small southeastern Idaho community of Aberdeen has been home to the USDA’s National Small Grain Collection that contains one of the world’s largest seed banks for wheat, barley, oat, rice, rye, and other small grain germplasm as well their various wild relatives. The location was chosen because of the University of Idaho’s long history of agricultural extension research nearby, the region’s favorable growing conditions, and proximity to irrigation. Special thanks to Chad Jackson, director of UI’s Research and Extension Center in Aberdeen for providing information on the facilities.
The advent of widespread use of grains as a food staple can only be estimated, but archaeological evidence indicates humans in eastern Africa mixed crushed primitive wheats and barleys with water to form a nutritious gruel several hundred thousand years ago. The 23,000-year-old Ohalo II site on Israel’s Sea of Galilee’s southwest shore has yielded flint and bone sickles and primitive grinding tools with remnants of wild emmer wheat, barley, and oats that supplemented the omnivorous diets of area Paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands. Wild cereals reluctantly surrendered their dense nutrition through millennia of human ingenuity requiring the sophisticated mastery of elemental forces—stone for cutting and grinding, water for mixing and kneading, and fire for cooking. Use of heated stones, with embers, and in other ways enabled the roasting of grains to enhance flavors and led to primitive breadmaking. But the revolutionary advent of fire-resistant earthenware pots in the Middle East by the eighth millennium BC fostered a significant advancement in food supply, culture, and population growth. Grains boiled in water made possible a savory array of pottages, soups, and stews, with the softened food especially benefiting the very young and elderly. No culinary advance since the invention of earthenware has had such salutary effects on cooking methods.
Cultivation of cereal grains has been integral to humanity’s advance since time immemorial and was undertaken independently at several times and places throughout the prehistoric Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Development of agriculture may be said to be humanity’s relentless quest to recreate environmental conditions that gave rise to our species. Cereals, named for the Roman goddess of fertility, Ceres, are not only nutritious but also adaptable to a wide range of climates and soil conditions. The ancestral range of cereals stretched along the Fertile Crescent from the Upper Mesopotamian-Anatolian slopes of southeastern Turkey, eastward across Transcaucasia to Kashmir and south to Egypt and Ethiopia. This vast region is notable for long, hot summers and mild, moist winters which were ideal for the emergence of large-seeded wheat, rye, and other grains along the alluvial shores of lakes, streams, and springs. These became the principal foods that fueled human settlement and expansion throughout the world.
Wild Einkorn and Wild Barley growing on the Karaca Dağ Plain
USDA National Small Grains Germplasm Research Center Photographs
“Amber Eden” Heritage Hard White Wheat
Palouse Colony Farm near Endicott, Washington (July and August 2023)
Grain cultivation and replenishment of soils by annual flooding coincided with animal husbandry as villagers sought to prevent creatures of horn and hoof from damaging grain fields by domesticating them for food and labor. Dispersion of cereals by wind, animals, and other natural processes in prehistoric times was inexorable if slow—perhaps a thousand yards per year on average. Successive plant selections by early agro-pastoralists and discovery of tending operations (seeding, watering, manuring) led to earlier and more uniform maturing stands of protein-rich grains with characteristics unique to each region. These developments began the Neolithic “Revolution” along the Mesopotamian wetlands approximately 11,000 BC that developed over three millennia. Crop production and processing represented key cultural breakthroughs that led to settlements with fields, gardens, and livestock. This led over time to food surpluses and transition from unowned open commons to fixed residence sedentary “homelands,” cities, territorial states—and “civilization.”