Wheat origins near Turkey’s Karacadag Mountains

Genetic analysis of wild einkorn wheat suggests that it was first grown in the Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey. Dated archeological remains of einkorn wheat in settlement sites near this region, including those at Abu Hureyra in Syria, confirms the domestication of einkorn near the Karacadag Mountain Range. The earliest carbon-14 date for the einkorn wheat remains at Abu Hureyra is 7800 to 7500 years BCE.^[12] Recent genetic and archeological discoveries indicate that both emmer wheat and durum (hard pasta wheat) also originated from this same Karacadag region of southeastern Turkey. Remains of harvested emmer from several sites near the Karacadag Range have been dated to between 8,800 BCE and 8,400 BCE, that is, in the Neolithic period.^[13]

Cultivation and repeated harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the creation of domestic strains, as mutant forms (‘sports’) of wheat were preferentially chosen by farmers. In domesticated wheat, grains are larger, and the seeds (spikelets) remain attached to the ear by a toughened rachis during harvesting. In wild strains, a more fragile rachis allows the ear to easily shatter and disperse the spikelets.^[14] Selection for these traits by farmers might not have been deliberately intended, but simply have occurred because these traits made gathering the seeds easier; nevertheless such ‘incidental’ selection was an important part of crop domestication. As the traits that improve wheat as a food source also involve the loss of the plant’s natural seed dispersal mechanisms, highly domesticated strains of wheat cannot survive in the wild.

Cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent after about 8,000 BCE. Jared Diamond traces the spread of cultivated emmer wheat starting in the Fertile Crescent about 8500 BCE, reaching Greece, Cyprus and India by 6500 BCE, Egypt shortly after 6000 BCE, and Germany and Spain by 5000 BCE.^[15] “The early Egyptians were developers of bread and the use of the oven and developed baking into one of the first large-scale food production industries.” ^[16] By 3,000 BCE, wheat had reached England, and Scandinavia. A millennium later it reached China.

Wheat spread through out Europe and in England, thatch was used for roofing in the bronze age, and was in common use until the late 19th century.^[17]

Farming techniques

Technological advances in soil preparation and seed placement at planting time, use of crop rotation and fertilizers to improve plant growth, and advances in harvesting methods have all combined to promote wheat as a viable crop. Agricultural cultivation using horse collar leveraged plows (at about 3000 BCE) was one of the first innovations that increased productivity. Much later, when the use of seed drills replaced broadcasting sowing of seed in the 18th century, another great increase in productivity occurred. Yields of wheat per unit area increased as methods of crop rotation were applied to long cultivated land, and the use offertilizers became widespread. Improved agricultural husbandry has more recently included threshing machines and reaping machines (the ‘combine harvester‘), tractor-drawn cultivators and planters, and better varieties (see green revolution and Norin 10 wheat). Great expansions of wheat production occurred as new arable land was farmed in the Americas and Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Wheat (Triticum spp.)^[1] is a grass, originally from the Fertile Crescent region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize (784 million tons) and rice (651 million tons).^[2] Globally, wheat is the leading source of vegetable protein in human food, having a higher protein content than either maize (corn) or rice, the other major cereals. In terms of total production tonnages used for food, it is currently second to rice as the main human food crop, and ahead of maize, after allowing for maize’s more extensive use in animal feeds.

Wheat was a key factor enabling the emergence of city-based societies at the start of civilization because it was one of the first crops that could be easily cultivated on a large scale, and had the additional advantage of yielding a harvest that provides long-term storage of food. Wheat grain is a staple food used to make flour for leavened, flat and steamed breads, biscuits, cookies, cakes, breakfast cereal, pasta, noodles, couscous^[3] and for fermentation to make beer,^[4] other alcoholic beverages,^[5] or biofuel.^[6]

Wheat is planted to a limited extent as a forage crop for livestock, and its straw can be used as a construction material for roofing thatch.^[7][8] The husk of the grain, separated when milling white flour, is bran. Wheat germ is the embryo portion of the wheat kernel. It is a concentrated source of vitamins, minerals, and protein, and is sustained by the larger, starch storage region of the kernel—the endosperm.