82 



History of Wheat. 



present, it will also be necessary to search for, preserve, and care- 

 fully study every spike, spikelet, or grain sample found in the 

 course of excavations of ancient sites, and to catalogue, examine, 

 and compare whatever there may exist of old pictorial representa- 

 tions of cereals. We shall then, by the concentrated efforts of the 

 collector, the botanist, and the archaeologist, be in a better posi- 

 tion to reconstruct the process of evolution which has led from a 

 few wild grasses to the vast number of cultivated races which 

 to-day we comprise under the name of wheats. This is a process 

 which claims the attention not only of the botanist, but of all of 

 us who, beyond our professional spheres, are accustomed to give 

 a thought to the wider and deeper problems of the history of 

 civilisation. The evolution of the cereals occupies the foremost 

 place in the rise and onward march of agriculture all over the 

 world. That of the wheats — with their immediate allies, the 

 barleys and ryes — is especially closely associated with the white 

 races ; it is like a keystone in their making, it runs in their blood. 

 With the ancients the cereals were the gifts of the gods. Isis 

 gave wheat and barley to Egypt ; as Demeter she took them to 

 Greece, as Ceres to Latium. A wreath of wheat ears crowned her 

 head, in Egypt as well as in Hellas and Rome. To go to the other 

 end of the old Old World wheat area, the Chinese also received 

 it "from Heaven," or, as other legends have it, from their half- 

 mythical Emperor Shen-nung,. who in the very dawn of Chinese 

 history taught them to till the ground and raise the "wu ku,' 1 

 the five grains. Among them, holding the second place, was 

 " mai," which originally stood for wheat and barley, and later on, 

 according to Bretschneider, with or without the qualifying " siao " 

 (little), for wheat alone. Thus as the Egyptian myths made Isis 

 introduce wheat and barley simultaneously, so in China the " mai " 

 which the Emperor Shen-nung sowed covered both. Similarly 

 the Ze-jt, the primitive wheat of ancient Greece, is etymologically 

 equivalent to the sertic and avedic yava, which in another direc- 

 tion gave rise to "djau," the Persian name for barley, while the 

 Latin far, the synonym of Zea , corresponds to the Gothic barizeins 

 and Anglo-Saxon here for barley. This is remarkable, and 

 becomes very significant in the face of Aaronsohn's and Olivier's 

 observations to the effect that the wild wheat and the wild barley 

 are closely associated in their natural habitats. It is like an echo 

 from the dim mythical past, telling us that wheat and barley are 

 twins of one home and one age. Myths are like dreams, but even 

 dreams have their kernels of truth. Diodorus Siculus, a Greek 

 historian and contemporary of Caesar, records the following 

 legend : " Osyris, whose home was at Nysa, in that part of fertile 

 Arabia which is not far from Egypt, loved agriculture, and he 

 found the vine in the neighbourhood of Nysa. This shrub was 



