320 , ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTa 



never sow the bean in their land, and if it grows they do 

 not eat it either cooked or raw. The priests cannot even 

 endure the sight of it; they imagine that this vegetable is 

 unclean." The bean existed then in Egypt, and probably 

 in cultivated places, for the soil which would suit it was 

 as a rule under cultivation. Perhaps the poor population 

 and that of certain districts did not share the prejudices 

 of the priests; we know that the superstitions varied 

 with the names. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus mention 

 the cultivation of the bean in Egypt, but they wrote 

 five hundred years later than Herodotus. 



The word pol occurs twice in the Old Testament ; * it 

 has been translated bean because of the traditions pre- 

 served by the Talmud, and of the Arabic name foul, fol, 

 orful, which is that of the bean. The first of the two 

 verses shows that the Hebrews were acquainted with the 

 bean one thousand years before Christ. 



Lastly, I shall mention a sign of the ancient existence 

 of the bean in the north of Africa. This is the Berber 

 name ibiou, in the plural iabouen, used by the Kabyles of 

 the province of Algiers. 2 It has no resemblance to the 

 Semitic name, and dates perhaps from a remote antiquity. 

 The Berbers formerly inhabited Mauritania, where Pliny 

 asserts that the species was wild. It is not known 

 whether the Guanchos (the Berber people of the Canaries) 

 knew the bean. I doubt whether the Iberians had it, for 

 their supposed , descendants, the Basques, use the name 

 baba, 3 answering to the Roman faba. 



We judge from these facts that the bean was culti- 

 vated in Europe in prehistoric terms. It was introduced 

 into Europe probably by the western Aryans at the time 

 of their earliest migrations (Pelasgians, Kelts, Slavs). It 

 was taken to China later, a century before the Christian 

 era, and still later into Japan, and quite recently into 

 India. 



Its wild habitat was probably twofold some thousands 

 of years ago, one of the centres being to the south of the 



1 2 Sam. xvii. 28 ; Ezek. iv. 9. 



2 Diet. Franqais-Berbere, published by the French government. 



3 Note communicated to M. Clos tar M. d'Abadie. 



