May 11 2009
Of Grains and Men – Farming, Society, and Quinoa – Part 1
Take yourself back 11,000 years ago to a time before cities and government, before metallurgy, when people across the world were still hunters and gatherers using stone and bone implements to hunt and capture prey while foraging
for various plant foods. The world was just at the eve of a phenomenon known as the “Neolithic Revolution”, when people began domesticating plants and animals, rather than hunting and foraging wild ones.
A group of people settled into a village near a perennial spring providing abundant water – an oasis surrounded by a craggy desert. These people used their intimate knowledge of local plant life to begin farming grains in the fertile soils rather than just harvesting them. Occupants at this village, which would later come to be known as Jericho, were thus
some of the earliest farmers in the world, marking a watershed event in the human endeavor.
Using hybrid forms of local grasses to select for larger grains that were easier to harvest, occupants in the Fertile Crescent made the shift from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic as they began farming fields of wheat, barley, rye, and oats. With technological advancements such as irrigation, these cereal grains provided enormous surplus the likes of which were never before known during the enormous antiquity of mankind. Surplus food became the equivalent of currency, and people who were able to control redistribution began profiting. Wealth and prosperity allowed people to settle into population centers of 5000 or more, with government and religious centers, mansions, apartments, and bazaars.
It was because of this co-evolutionary relationship between humans and grasses that the first civilizations arose at places like Eridu and Uruk in Mesopotamia, giving rise to the first science, universities, religious institutions, and literature. It also heralded the first organized warfare, deadly plagues, terrorism, and other unfavorable outcomes of human greed. Truly a devil’s bargain.
The Neolithic Revolution was not confined to the Fertile Crescent. During a relatively brief period, people across the world began farming local varieties of grain-yielding grasses. In some cases, people adopted farming from their neighbors. In other cases it was a completely independent process. Over a period of 4000 years (which is fleeting compared to the millions of years that we have been on this earth), cereals were domesticated in the Near East, Africa, and Europe, rice and millet were domesticated in Asia, and a host of local plants were domesticated in the Americas. When people think of American domesticates, maize (corn) immediately takes the spotlight. Maize was domesticated from – you guessed it – a grass. Specifically a tropical grass known as teosinte which is found in parts of Central and South America.