The founder crops
Eight species domesticated in one region become the foundation of Western agriculture.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 300 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat and barley; lentil, pea, chickpea and bitter vetch; and flax for fibre — the Neolithic founder crops are domesticated in the Fertile Crescent within a few thousand years of each other and spread together as a package into Europe, North Africa and South Asia. The Fertile Crescent's advantage was partly luck of the draw: it held an unusual concentration of large-seeded annual grasses and self-pollinating pulses suited to domestication.