Moldenke (1952) have found no reference to cultivated 
oats in the Bible; there is no evidence that oats were 
grown in ancient Mesopotamia, nor are they grown in 
that region today. In China, however, De Candolle re- 
ported that naked oats are first mentioned in a history 
treating the years 618 to 907 A.D. 
Archaeology and history indicate that 4. stvigosa and 
A. sativa were cultivated in northern Europe from 2000 
B.C. on. However, the evidence is very incomplete from 
the Near East where Vavilov placed the center of origin 
of hexaploid cultivated oats. The evidence does indicate 
that oats at first were weeds, especially of other cereals, 
and even today A. sativa ssp. macrantha is not cultivated 
as an independent crop. This brings us to another aspect 
of the problem. 
Oats as Weeds 
Vavilov (1926) reported collecting many samples of 
emmer wheat from the several scattered localities where 
that ancient crop is still grown. There were samples from 
the Basques of the Pyrenees, from Abyssinia, Bulgaria, 
Asia Minor, the Crimea, the Caucasus, Iran and parts 
of Russia. One hundred samples of emmer from these 
localities proved to have admixtures of some Avena spe- 
cies, many of them unique varieties. Vavilov came to 
speak of oats as the unfailing attendant of emmer and 
concluded the history of oats was intimately connected 
with that of emmer. He visualized emmer spreading over 
the Old World and carrying with it an assortment of 
oats as weeds. When they reached the harsher climates 
of the north, oats, being the hardier plant, supplanted 
emmer and became an independent crop. In this connec- 
tion Werth (1944) stated that emmer with its attendant 
oats was a widespread crop in northern Europe during 
the time of the Climatic Optimum. When the climate 
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