Cereal cultivation (pre-domestication)

What it is

Deliberate sowing of wild wheat, barley and rye in prepared plots, centuries before morphologically domestic forms appear. It marks the shift from gathering to producing food.

Independent invention in at least six centres: the Fertile Crescent (wheat, barley), China (rice, millet), New Guinea (taro, banana), Mesoamerica (maize, squash), the Andes (potato, quinoa), and West Africa/the Sahel (sorghum, pearl millet). The rye from Abu Hureyra at c. 11,000 BCE remains controversial.

What it led to

• Permanent settlement tied to the cultivated plot
• Demographic growth and a shorter interval between births
• The birth of land ownership and inheritance
• Dependence on few species and vulnerability to poor harvests

Built on

• Composite flint sicklec. 9500 BCE
• Saddle quern and mortarc. 9000 BCE
• Composite flint sickle
• Intensive grass (cereal) gathering

Made possible

• Granary / grain siloc. 9300 BCE
• Wheat domestication (einkorn and emmer)c. 9000 BCE
• Barley domesticationc. 8500 BCE
• Pulse domestication (lentil, pea, chickpea)c. 8500 BCE
• Polished stone hoec. 7000 BCE
• Flax domestication and linenc. 7000 BCE
• Grain silo

Links

Sources✓ verified 2026-09-25

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Abu_Hureyra
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1191/095968301678302823