BREEDING CROP PLANTS 



CHAPTER I 

 INTRODUCTION 



The origin and mode of development of nearly all of our 

 principal cultivated crops is an obscure and much debated sub- 

 ject. This is partly due to the fact that many crops have been 

 grown for hundreds of years and often the same forms are culti- 

 vated as were grown in early periods. It is very probable, for 

 example, that the men of the old stone age, 50,000 years ago, had 

 some sort of art of agriculture (Dettweiler, 1914). These con- 

 clusions have been drawn from old engravings of this period 

 which were made on cavern walls. Wheat and barley were cer- 

 tainly grown in early times. A carving of the upper Paleolithic 

 age in the Pyrenees mountains shows winter barley such as is now 

 cultivated in that locality. 



Dettweiler writes very interestingly of the agriculture of the 

 Lake Dwellers who lived during the period from 4,000 to 2,000 

 years B.C. He states that the Lake Dwellers of Switzerland 

 cultivated the short-eared, six-rowed barley, Hordeum sanctum of 

 the ancients; the dense-eared, six-rowed variety, H. hexastichon 

 L., variety densum; two-rowed barley, H. distichon; small lake- 

 dwelling wheat, Triticum vulgare antiquorum; true Binkel wheat, 

 T. vulgare compactum; Egyptian or English wheat, T. turgidum, 

 L.; an awnless thick-eared emmer, T. dicoccum, Schrank; one- 

 grained wheat, T. monococcum, L.; meadow (common) millet, 

 Panicum miliaceum, L.; club millet, P. italicum, L.; and a type of 

 flax, Linum angustifolium, which still grows wild in Greece. An 

 excavation was made in the village of Gleichberg, near Romhild 

 in 1906. On an old fireplace, with remains of the oldest Bronze 

 age, were found the following seeds: einkorn, spelt, binkel, and 

 small lake-dwelling wheat, small lake-dwelling barley, vetch, 

 peas, poppy, and possibly apple seeds. 



It is not the purpose to give the historical development of 

 crops except to show that many were cultivated in very ancient 



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