"Agriculture was launched in the Fertile Crescent by the early domestication of eight crops, termed "founder crops" (because they founded agriculture in the region and possibly in the world). Those eight founders were the cereals emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley; the pulses lentil, pea, chickpea, and bitter vetch; and the fiber crop flax. Of these eight, only two, flax and barley, range in the wild at all widely outside the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia. Two of the founders had very small ranges in the wild, chickpea being confined to southeastern Turkey and emmer wheat to the Fertile Crescent itself. Thus, agriculture could arise in the Fertile Crescent from domestication of locally available wild plants, without having to wait for the arrival of crops derived from wild plants domesticated elsewhere. Conversely, two of the eight founder crops could not have been domesticated anywhere in the world except in the Fertile Crescent, since they did not occur wild elsewhere."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997), p. 141
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Agriculture
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Agriculture
75 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Agriculture →
Related Quotes
"Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; W…"
"Three acres and a cow."
"Virginia was in fact a landowning aristocracy, without nobility or merchant class, or any considerable small peasant …"
"Look up! the wide extended plain Is billowy with its ripened grain, And on the summer winds are rolled Its waves of e…"
"When you have decided to purchase a farm, be careful not to buy rashly; do not spare your visits and be not content w…"
"Arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet baccam ipse numquam."
"For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better bec…"
"Oculos et vestigia domini, res agro saluberrimas, facilius admittit."
"We must plant the sea and herd its animals … using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization i…"
"Ten acres and a mule."