The term Fertile Crescent implies the spatial dependence of civilization on cereals. Cereal frontiers coincided with civilizational frontiers. Sorghum and millets were also being domesticated in sub-Saharan West Africa.Ĭereals were the foundation of human civilization. Around the same time, millets and kinds of rice were starting to become domesticated in East Asia. Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley were three of the so-called Neolithic founder crops in the development of agriculture. About 8,000 years ago, they were domesticated by ancient farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region. The first cereal grains were domesticated by early primitive humans. The use of soil amendments, including manure, fish, compost and ashes, appears to have begun early, and developed independently in several areas of the world, including Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley and Eastern Asia. Fiber crops were domesticated as early as food crops, with China domesticating hemp, cotton being developed independently in Africa and South America, and Western Asia domesticating flax. During the same period, farmers in China began to farm rice and millet, using human-made floods and fires as part of their cultivation regimen. Wheat, Barley, Rye, Oats and Flaxseeds were all domesticated in the Fertile Crescent during the early Neolithic. There is evidence of the cultivation of cereals in Syria approximately 9,000 years ago. The Levant is the ancient home of the ancestors of wheat, barley and peas, in which many of these villages were based. Įarly Neolithic villages show evidence of the development of processing grain. Agriculture bred immobility, as populations settled down for long periods of time, which led to the accumulation of material goods. It also created the need for greater organization of political power (and the creation of social stratification), as decisions had to be made regarding labor and harvest allocation and access rights to water and land. Īgriculture allowed for the support of an increased population, leading to larger societies and eventually the development of cities. The word “cereal” is derived from Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvest and agriculture. In developed countries, cereal consumption is moderate and varied but still substantial, primarily in the form of refined and processed grains. In some developing countries, grain in the form of rice, wheat, millet, or maize constitutes a majority of daily sustenance. When processed by the removal of the bran and germ the remaining endosperm is mostly carbohydrate. In their natural, unprocessed, whole grain form, cereals are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, oils, and protein. Edible grains from other plant families, such as buckwheat, quinoa and chia, are referred to as pseudocereals. Cereal grain crops are grown in greater quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop and are therefore staple crops. The term may also refer to the resulting grain itself (specifically " cereal grain"). A cereal is any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran.
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