Dettweiler: Aryan Agriculture 



475 



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WILD AND CULTIVATED WHEAT 



At the left, seeds of the wild wheat of Palestine, which is thought by some authors to represent 

 the ancestral form of the present cultivated wheats. In the center is a large-seeded varia- 

 tion of this wild wheat, which was produced at Bard, California; on the right is shown, 

 for comparison, seeds of the Sonora wheat, the one ordinarily grown in the southwest 

 United States at the present day. The Palestinian wheat (Triticum hermonis) has adapta- 

 tions for cross-pollination, whereas the cultivated varieties at present depend almost 

 invariably on self-fertilization. Photograph from O. F. Cook, enlarged about one-fourth. 

 (Fig. 1.) 



day domestic animals, our most impor- 

 tant field products and — as we shall 

 soon see — our farm implements, the 

 men of the old Stone Age had as domes- 

 tic animals at most the dog and perhaps 

 the reindeer, and among garden prod- 

 ucts had only two or — if you like — 

 three kinds: barley and wheat, but the 

 latter in two forms — Triticum polonicum, 

 L., which is still cultivated at the present 

 day in the Spanish province of Galicia, 

 and owes its name to a geographical 

 error of Linnaeus; and spelt. 



Recent discoveries have thrown valu- 

 able light on the upper middle Paleo- 

 lithic age, the Age of Reindeer. They 

 come from caves in the Pyrenees 

 mountains near Lourdes, and consist of 

 carvings on reindeer horns, unmistak- 

 able in their execution. Further, in 

 the cave of Lorthet, belonging to a late 

 part of the same epoch, there was found 

 a car\nng on slate, which depicted 

 winter barley such as is even yet grown 

 in that locality. 



Means of preparing food at that 

 period have not yet been found. 

 Perhaps people ate their grains roasted. 

 This condition exists throughout the 

 transition period from the old to the new 

 Stone Age; and from that period barley 



and wheat grains have . been found, 

 not only in southern France, but also 

 in the mounds of mussel shells along 

 the coast of Denmark. 



I want to make it plain that in the 

 Paleolithic age — that is, some 50,000 

 years ago — ^man must have had some 

 kind of an art of agriculture. That he 

 must have possessed a relatively high 

 degree of culture is demonstrated by 

 the wonderful fidelity to nature shown 

 in his engravings on cavern walls. 



Whether his cultivation of cereals 

 was done with a hoe, as we cultivate 

 garden-stuff, or whether it was done 

 in some other manner, is a question of 

 secondary importance. The point of 

 real importance is that in such a 

 relatively distant period there was any 

 agriculture at all. 



origin of cultivated wheat. 



Where did his plants come from? 



It is evident that the men of the old 

 Stone Age must have made use of 

 plants that grew wild around them, 

 whose seeds or fruits they gathered, 

 and whose value was generally known. 

 Such ancestral forms have been defi- 

 nitely identified, in our time, only in 

 Palestine, where about 30 years ago 



