46 AGRICULTURAL AND BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS IN PALESTINE. 



Lebanon, I gathered a stool of Secale montanum. It is an interest- 

 ing fact, too, that the wheat in which the cultivated rye was found 

 was Triticum durum melanopus (T. complanatum) , having a starchy 

 and not a glassy grain. 



Now, it has been asserted as a fact that in ancient times as well 

 as in our own day rye has been unknown to the Orient. Philologists 

 were ignorant of the special name for this cereal in the Orient, and 

 they therefore concluded that rye must have originated in Europe. 

 It was on this theory that Hoops, Much, and others based their con- 

 viction that the cultivation of the cereals originated in Europe. No 

 one who knows how strongly Damascus has resisted European in- 

 fluence, even up to the present time, can for a moment believe that 

 the rye which I found in the wheat field had been imported. It 

 is to be noted, too, that the region to the east and the north of 

 Damascus is almost unexplored, and it may therefore be that with- 

 out our knowledge iwe is more or less cultivated there. I have not 

 yet found out the special name the Arabs use to designate this cereal. 



WIDE RANGE OF WILD EMMER. 



In 1908 I was commissioned by the Turkish Government to make 

 a scientific exploration around the Dead Sea, and was thus enabled 

 to extend my study of Triticum dicoecum dicoccoides. 



While descending Engedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, 

 in March, 1908, I noticed a plant of Ilordeum spontaneum with un- 

 ripe heads, but gave it no particular attention. On March 26, having 

 gone around the Dead Sea to the south and having pushed tolerably 

 far into Arabia, our caravan reascended from El-Mazra-a on the 

 southeast shore of the Dead Sea, 1,300 feet below sea level, toward 

 the plateau of Moab, which is in some places more than 3,300 feet 

 above sea level. At 350 to 500 feet above the Dead Sea, where the 

 salty marls began to give place to calcareous strata, we saw Ilordeum 

 spontaneum more and more frequently. The abundance of this and 

 the conditions of soil and vegetation made me think at once of the 

 wild emmer. But, though I looked carefully, I could not find it 

 either that day or on the three following days, although wild barley 

 was as plentiful as before. I attributed this to the season, for the 

 barley had barely headed and the wild emmer, if there, would have 

 been concealed. On March 28 we camped in the Wady Waleh (see 

 PI. V, fig. 2) , with which we were familiar from a preceding explora- 

 tion around the Dead Sea and where, on February 29, 1904, Professor 

 Blanckenhorn and I had discovered flint implements from a paleo- 

 lithic, or perhaps even an eolithic, epoch at the foot of the rude stone 

 columns called "menhirs," some of which were overturned and some 

 still standing (see fig. 12). 



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