The translation of the term "culture" from Latin means "cultivate, process." It was the hard and careful work of cultivating wild plants that led to the emergence of crops.

New crops in modern world appear thanks to biological discoveries and achievements of genetics.

About cultivated plants

The first samples of plant cultivation took place in the Stone Age. Primitive man, collecting edible fruits, roots, berries, seeds, etc., drew attention to the possibility of growing the plants he needed near the dwelling.

Throwing seeds into loose, moist soil and receiving the first fruits of agriculture, he gradually learned to control the process of growing cultivated plants.

Timely watering, destruction of weeds, protection from sudden destruction of the crop by animals and insects, selection of the best in quality, taste and size of plants led to an unconscious artificial selection. After a while, selection marked the appearance of the first cultivated plants.

And the experience of growing, caring for plants was accumulated and passed on to the next generations. The development of agriculture has formed geographical centers for the cultivation of certain crops. The spread of cultivated plants was facilitated by wars, trade, travel and travel.

The predominant part of cultivated plants has been cultivated for a long time, but some specimens have been cultivated relatively recently. An example is sugar beet, which began to be cultivated at the beginning of the 19th century, while wheat was grown already in the 7th millennium BC.

How cultivated plants differ from wild plants

The composition of the soil, the presence of precipitation, the level of temperature indicators, the speed of movement of air masses do not depend on humans, but are created by nature and are not subject to regulation (according to at least, at this stage of human development).

Such conditions are called the natural habitat. Wild plants have adapted to their environment and are subject to natural selection and reproduction.

Video: wild and cultivated plants

Did you know? There is an interesting relative of the tomatoes we are used to - the Porcupine tomato: its leaves are covered with sharp bright spikes containing toxic substances, while the fruits resemble the usual cherry tomatoes in size and color, but you should not taste them, because they are also rich in toxic alkaloids. Fortunately, it is found mainly in Madagascar.

The cultural ones are in the power of man. Their growth, reproduction, development, harvest, place of growth, planting time depend on people. Without proper attention and care on their part good harvest not receive.

What plants are called cultivated

Plants grown by humans to fulfill their goals are called cultivated. Goals can be very different. Among them are the acquisition of food, the filling of the fodder base of livestock, the manufacture medicines from vegetable raw materials and others.
Breeding, hybridization, genetic engineering are the main ways of transforming wild plants into cultivated ones. The latter are divided into 11 groups.

Decorative

Plants used for landscaping populated areas, decorating gardens, parks, alleys, streets, decorating residential premises and individual buildings are called decorative. There are more than 10 thousand types of ornamental crops.

Distinguish:

• park trees;
• floral;
• decorative leafy;
• lawn;
• soil protection;
• ameliorative plants.

When choosing a decorative culture, take into account color scheme leaves or needles, size and aroma of flowers, duration and timing of flowering, as well as appearance after flowering. Of particular value are plants that retain their decorative (attractiveness) all year round.
Flower ornamental plantings are the most common and diverse in application, composition and care.

There are a great many types of flowers, some of them are bred exclusively for growing at home (decorative, some species), others grow well under open sky. There are views that can delight you both on the windowsill and on personal plot, for example, different .

Deciduous and coniferous, evergreen and with falling leaves trees and shrubs are considered park ornamental. By height, tall, medium and low plants are distinguished.

Among the undersized, creeping and dwarf species are valued (, ), which are most beautiful in stone gardens, Alpine rollercoaster, slopes. Equally important is the shape of the crown.

Among them are:

• pyramidal ( , );
• spherical ( , );
• conical ( , );
• sprawling ( , );
• umbrella-shaped (silky acacia);
• weeping (, weeping birch);
• curly ( , ).

Reservoirs are decorated with plants with a weeping crown shape, and streets, squares, parks - with a conical, spherical, pyramidal. Plantings of a single type are dominated by sprawling and umbrella-shaped crops. climbing plants create vertical decorative structures.

Hedges from soil-protective plants perform the function of protection from the wind, marking the boundaries of plots of land, decorating the landscape. Ameliorative plantings are able to dry the soil (), delay landslides ( , ), fix sandy soil(willow-sheluga). The best lawn plants include the giant bent, they are not inferior to and.

Cereals and cereals

Plants grown for the use of grain are classified as cereals. The grain of cereal crops is used in brewing, in animal husbandry, in the cereal, bread industry and other industries.

The first place in the collection of the gross product and the number of sown areas belongs to the cultivation of cereals:

• wheat;
• rice
• barley;

Not all cereals belong to cereals, for example, there are so-called leguminous crops, which are representatives legume family, these include soybeans, beans and peas. And the buckwheat mentioned above comes from the buckwheat family.

Did you know? For many centuries, wealthy people ate white bread, and the poor - black (rye). However, in the last century, the situation began to change: more and more health-conscious people began to prefer bread made from dark flour because of its richer mineral composition.

Legumes

Plants grown for agricultural purposes and eating in the form of beans (soybeans, lentils) and green pods (green peas,) are called legumes.

They are conditionally divided into:

• vegetables, cultivated to obtain delicious beans and pods (in addition to the above, you can also call, mung bean, urd,);
• fodder, present in the feed of agricultural livestock ( , ).

This group also includes, which is usually classified as nuts.

For technical purposes, vegetable and fodder legumes are grown to obtain medicinal raw materials, green manure (enrichment of the soil layer with organic matter and nitrogen by plowing green mass), joint landings(for example, garden beans and potatoes) to increase the germination of both crops, control some pests (for example,). Individual legumes adorn decorative compositions (,).

Starchy

Plants whose tissues contain a significant proportion of starch are called starch-bearing. Potato is the main starch-bearing crop of agricultural zones of the planet. This includes some varieties of corn with a high starch content.

Other representatives of this species include:

• yam(found mainly in African lands);
• (grown in regions with a warm climate);
• , or sweet potato(it is also cultivated in the tropics and subtropics).

Starch plants serve as food for people, animal feed, raw materials for the production of flour, starch, alcohol, molasses for food and technical purposes.

Among these crops, there are endemic species that are not so widespread in world agriculture, but have been cultivated since ancient times by some countries. These are the tuberous crops of South America: Oka, Ulyuko and Anna.

Did you know? Potato La Bonnotte, cultivated on the island of Noirmoutier (France), has gained fame as the most expensive in the world. A kilogram of the most delicate and delicious product costs about 500 euros.

Sugar-bearing

Plants capable of accumulating significant amounts of sucrose in tissues and used for the production of sugar are called sugar-bearing. main crops of this type are sugar cane and sugar beet.
A perennial crop of the bluegrass family - sugarcane - grows in tropical and subtropical zones (India, China, the African continent, Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Central and South America).

The stems of the plant contain 18-20% sugar. It serves as the main source of sugar in temperate latitudes. There are also crops of sugar sargo, sugar and wine palm, sugar maple (produced), carob (fruit pulp contains 50% sugar).

oilseeds

Plants grown for fatty oils are defined as oilseeds.

Among them are:

• (cabbage family). The economic role of rapeseed in the 20th century has grown significantly due to the emerging possibility of obtaining rapeseed biodiesel;
  
• oil palm (palm family), serves for the production of high-quality food and technical oils. West Africa is considered the birthplace of the world's leading oilseed;
  
• peanuts (bean family). Peanut butter has spread around the world from the US, as has delicious peanut butter, which of course includes butter;
  

  Did you know? Sesame oil has been valued in the East since ancient times. It is widely used in Ayurvedic practices, and the famous Persian physician Avicenna had about a hundred prescriptions for medicinal products based on it.

• (aster family) known for a very long time, its cultivation began in North America, occupies 87% of the area of ​​oilseeds;
  
• European olive (Olive family). The tree has not been found in the wild for a long time, it has been cultivated for oil production since antiquity;
  
• common flax (flax family) serves to obtain valuable nutritious and medicinal oil;
  
• (bean family), was called the "miracle plant" for good yield and nutritional composition of the product, known since the III millennium BC. (homeland - East Asia).
  

It would also be useful to mention plants whose oils are used mainly in cosmetics: these are, coconut,.

fibrous

Plants, the structure of which makes it possible to obtain fibrous material for the manufacture of fabrics, paper, and some household items.

Subdivided according to the nature of use into:




The most common fiber crop is cotton. It is used in fabrics, oil is extracted from seeds, and waste is fed to livestock. China, Uzbekistan, India, USA, Pakistan, Australia, Brazil are the largest suppliers and producers of cotton in the world.

Creeping (clinging) plants belonging to the pumpkin family and grown on melons are called melons. The predominant number of gourds has strong roots, elongated clinging stems, overall leaves and large inflorescences, but there are also bushy plants.

Tropical and subtropical states are considered the birthplace of gourds. Fresh fruits are used for food and as raw materials in the medical industry, they are added to the feed ration for farm animals.
Gourds include:

Important! Passion for gourds can move sand and kidney stones and gallbladder which often ends in surgery. It is advisable to eat watermelon and melon once a day and in moderation.If you do not eat the incised fruit within 24 hours, you can get intoxication and flatulence, as pathogenic organisms multiply rapidly in the remains of gourds.

Vegetable

Agricultural plants whose productive organs are grown for human consumption and combined general concept"vegetable" are called vegetable. About 120 crops of this type grow on the planet, about 55 of them are grown in all regions of the world.

The main direction of use of vegetable crops is as food both in its original form and in processed form (drying, squeezing juice, salting, heat treatment). Also have fodder crops intended for agricultural livestock.
A productive organ called a vegetable defines the following sections of vegetable crops:

• fruit and vegetable crops (, vegetable);
• leafy vegetables ();
• bulbous crops ( , );
• root crops ( ,

Wild plants became cultivated in a variety of ways. The wind brought the seeds of fruit trees and berry bushes to human dwellings, and they grew nearby. People often spilled grains of cereals themselves, and they also began to grow. All this led to the idea that rather than looking for plants with edible fruits far in the forest, it is better to grow them near the house.

Primitive people collected those plants that surrounded them. Of course, they were different on different continents, which is why many cultures were cultivated. different types. Most cultivated plants appeared in Europe, Asia and Africa. 400 species were presented to the world by South Asia, about 50 appeared in Africa, more than 100 in North and South America. But in Australia, before the arrival of Europeans, there were no cultivated plants at all.

Countries and continents that have become the birthplace of modern cultivated plants

The oldest modern grains are barley, wheat, millet, rice and corn. Wheat was grown already in the Neolithic era (new stone Age). During the excavations of the settlements of this period in the European territory, wheat grains were found, as well as seeds of peas, beans and lentils. Rice is native to India and Indochina. Its wild species still grow there.

Quite late, around the first century A.D., rye appeared, a little earlier people began to grow oats. Potatoes and corn are native to South and Central America. Tomatoes, pumpkins, beans and capsicum appeared in Peru and Mexico. Central America gave the world the culture of tobacco, and North America gave the sunflower. Common vegetable crops such as turnips, radishes, beets, cabbages, onions and carrots originate from the Mediterranean.

In the South American tropics, pineapple and peanuts were cultivated, in Indochina - a variety of citrus plants. Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, where you can still meet its wild ancestor. Tea has become in Burma, cocoa in Mexico. It is curious that cocoa beans acted there as a monetary equivalent. In ancient times, people began to grow spinning plants. Thus, flax was cultivated in Europe, hemp in China, and cotton in Asia and America.

In the Age of the Great geographical discoveries cultivated plants began to spread different countries and continents. Gradually, farmers improved the plants, selecting for sowing the seeds of the most productive or possessing other virtues of the species. Thanks to the emergence and further spread of cultivated plants, the living conditions of people have significantly improved.

Cultivation of plants means the transformation of wild plants into cultivated cereals. Already during the gathering, wild plants began to change during pruning, irrigation, fertilization, etc., as well as their protection from other tribes and consolidation as property. ancient man I have long noticed that, unlike others, they are edible plants. Wild wheat, it turns out, can be eaten just like that.
Soviet scientist N.I. Vavilov at one time developed and substantiated a method by which it was possible to determine the centers of origin of plant crops. According to his research, it turned out that the vast majority of known cultivated plants originate from only eight foci. All of them are concentrated mainly in mountainous tropical and subtropical regions - these are the Andes, the Himalayas, the mountainous regions of Africa and the Mediterranean countries, mountainous China. In essence, only a narrow strip of land on the globe played a major role in the history of world agriculture, the scientist concludes6.
In the area of ​​the "fertile crescent" (Fig. 26), cereals with large grains grew. It was wild wheat. It multiplies when mature ears open and grains fall out of them. A long and stiff awn helps them fly away from the mother plant with the help of the wind and, after falling to the ground, firmly fix themselves in the soil. This method of reproduction, natural in nature, created inconvenience for the ancient collector. He either had to gather unripe ears or lost a lot of grains

when harvesting. Probably, it was these shortcomings that caused the cultivation of wheat.
The first plants that people began to sow were wheat and barley. Cultivated plants have changed so much compared to wild ones that the bred varieties could no longer grow without human intervention. Experiments of a researcher in the field of agriculture D.R. Harlan showed that wild wheat was so densely grown that the family of an ancient gatherer in three weeks of work could collect more grain than she needed for a whole year.
And today, wild wheat grows in abundance on the hilly slopes of the Middle East. Man working on Neolithic technology, without special efforts can gather a kilogram of wheat. Wild wheat matures quickly and can be harvested every three weeks. A family of experienced foragers could collect enough wheat (about 1 ton) in these three weeks to eat for a whole year. However, having harvested the wheat, it had to be stored somewhere. They built barns. They had to be guarded and stayed close to this food source for a long time. So there was another incentive to a settled way of life.

When the crop was harvested in the dwelling, some of the grains were probably lost, and some of them fell into fertile soil, since the settlements were usually located near water bodies and away from the mountainous terrain, where wild wheat mainly grew. Plants that sprouted the next year were, as a rule, of the species that could not scatter grains. In addition, they grew closer to the village, so they were collected in the first place. The constant repetition of this spontaneous selection led to the fact that in the end the largest and most productive wheat fields were near the settlements. Thus, a decisive step was taken towards the cultivation of the land.
Sometimes hunters and gatherers courted useful plants- weeded, pruned, guarded young shoots. Digging up edible tubers and roots, they thinned out dense thickets and dug up the ground. The hunters and gatherers of Southeast Asia even knew how to replant wild tubers, the Australian aborigines sometimes planted the seeds of trees and shrubs, grains of cereals. This concerned not only edible plants, but also those that gave shade or marked the boundaries of communal areas.
The first plants that were cultivated about 8.8 thousand years ago in China were rice and millet. Millet - high coarse herbaceous plant, which is still growing in northern China. The homeland of its wild ancestor was treeless areas in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, where loess soils are common. Already at the beginning of the III millennium BC. in the villages of northern China, millet was grown everywhere. These settlements were quite large (sometimes up to 600 people lived in them). Numerous grain storages discovered during excavations testify to the high level of agriculture. Millet, which feeds on a third of the world's population, is used as bird feed in the United States.
Rice - the most important agricultural crop in China - has been grown since the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Its wild variety grew in the subtropical regions of South China. The domestication of rice probably occurred in South India or Southeast Asia. Evidence has been found for even earlier tillage in Southeast Asia. Seeds of cultivars of beans and peas grown in the 8th millennium BC have been found in Thailand. Rice was cultivated here probably several thousand years earlier than in China.

In America - Mexico and Peru - among the first plants, man cultivated corn and potatoes. In Mexico, with its diverse climatic conditions and soil types, the prerequisites for this were especially good. As a result, several species of edible wild plants have emerged. However, in Mexico, they grew over vast areas, so, unlike the Middle East, the transition to a settled way of life here occurred somewhat later. The first developed civilizations in this region were formed almost 2 thousand years later than in Mesopotamia (by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC). In Central America essential component food was corn. The first finds associated with this plant date back to the period of 5.2-3.4 thousand years BC. Even earlier, pumpkins and beans were grown. Evidence for the existence of agriculture in the Neolithic Age in America has been found in caves near Gulf of Mexico south of the Rio Grande (about the 7th millennium BC).
The highland regions of Peru, rich in water and animals, were probably inhabited as early as the 15th millennium BC. The most ancient finds that testify to the cultivation of plants date back earlier than 5600 BC. Special climatic conditions of coastal areas Pacific Ocean did not create favorable conditions for the development Agriculture. Only pumpkin grew well here. In this area, plants have been systematically grown only since the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, when crop cultivation technology penetrated the Pacific coast from the interior of the continent.
So, in almost all parts of the Old World, wheat, barley, oats, lentils and peas began to be cultivated; in America, pumpkin, avocado, beans (beans) and corn were cultivated; in East Asia - almonds, beans, cucumbers, peas, wheat and millet, which until the II millennium BC. was more important than rice in China. Due to the fact that there was enough food, the hunters took less risks and died, they no longer killed their newborns (which is inevitable for the survival of nomadic hunters). As a result, the population has increased significantly. Often there were so many people in a certain area that they could not feed themselves, so separate groups went in search of new places.
Today people need protein and calories provide cereals. In the world diet, their percentage contribution now looks like this: wheat - 28%, corn and maize - 27%, rice - 25%, barley - 10%, other cereals - 10%1.

Cultivated plants have become so firmly established in human life that few people think about where the history of their cultivation began. Eating vegetables and fruits for food, a person does not wonder how their wild relatives look and how great the variety of cultivated plants is.

Almost all cultivated plants known today have their own historical roots, which determine the centers of their appearance and gradual transformation.

The origin of cultivated plants is attributed to 50,000-60,000 years BC. e. Until this period, the gathering of plants was the way of survival of the tribe, which was the responsibility of women. Historical evidence that people began to select large and healthy grains and fruits to grow them near their homes are ancient utensils, pots with supplies in burials and their drawings.

To date, of the most popular 640 species of cultivated plants, about 400 of them are known to have come from South Asia, 50 from Africa, more than 100 from South and North America the rest are from Europe.

Interesting Facts about cultivated plant, for example, wheat, they say that cereals were the first species that people began to consciously grow near their homes. This statement is confirmed by the oldest mortars and pestles found at the sites of cave people settlements.

Plant cultivation centers

In the 20th century, scientists were able to more fully determine where they came from modern views cultivated plants. Even N. I. Vavilov divided the geography of crop production into 7 zones:

So, South Asia became the progenitor of 33% of domesticated species. Cultivated plants (examples can be found in the writings of Vavilov), such as rice, sugar cane, cucumbers, eggplants and many others, came to us from there.

East Asia has given us 20% of cultivated species such as soybeans, millet, cherries, buckwheat.

The southwestern part of Asia is home to wheat, rye, legumes, turnips, which makes up 4% of plants.

11% of known cultivated plants belong to the Mediterranean part. These are garlic, grapes, carrots, cabbage, pears, lentils and others.

Ethiopia has become the birthplace of 4% of species, which include chickpeas, barley, coffee tree.

Central America gave the world corn, pumpkin, tobacco, cocoa.

South America owns potatoes, coca, oka, cinchona.

Wild relatives of all these plants can still be found. The interesting facts about the cultivated plant do not end there.

Selection in ancient people

You can hardly call cavemen or later types of human development breeders, but they had some skills in selecting and growing plants.

Archaeologists have come to the conclusion that agriculture and a settled way of life as a way of survival became applicable 10,000 years ago. It is this period that is considered the beginning of the cultivation of plants. In fact, cultivated plants (examples of which archaeologists find at the sites of ancient sites) began to grow long before that.

Scientists suggest that the collected wild grains, stone berries and other plant species grew near the sites of ancient people when they spilled grain or threw away the bones along with the leftovers. It was customary for women of the tribe to pull out weeds near such "plantations", which has survived to this day.

Gradually, a person began to select the roots, grains and seeds of the most delicious and largest fruits and purposefully plant them near their homes. Thus, agriculture was born, which gave impetus to a new level of human development.

Variety of cultivated plants today

In our time, breeding has become a science that works not only on the yield of cultivated plants, but also on their palatability and increased survival. Almost all types of vegetables, fruits and cereals that he eats modern man, - hybrid, that is, artificially bred.

Interesting facts about a cultivated plant, which has undergone not just selection, but crossbreeding with other species, is that a completely new organism is obtained that has no analogues in nature.

Crossbreeds, artificially bred in laboratories, are a one-time seed, but thanks to them, the number of tasty, high-yielding cultivated plants has increased hundreds of times.

Today, hybridity has touched both crops and fruits, and vegetables that are well known to us, such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and many others.

Cultivated cucumbers

The cultivated cucumber plant is so familiar on our table, both fresh and canned, that we don’t ask ourselves the question “where did it come from.”

It turns out that the path of the cucumber to our table was rather big, since India and China are its homeland. As early as 6,000 years ago, this vegetable was cultivated, although its ancient relatives still grow in Indian forests like creepers, twisting around tree trunks, and they are also used to plant fences and hedges.

On the frescoes in Ancient Egypt, and then in Ancient Greece, this vegetable was depicted on the tables of rich people and for a long time was available only to high-ranking persons.

The Greeks brought cucumbers to Europe, and their distribution became rapid due to their taste and the ability to pickle for the future for the winter. Today, this vegetable is available to everyone and everywhere. Each gardener considers it his duty to grow a good crop of cucumbers, for which both his varietal species and hybrid ones are used.

Cultivation of indoor plants

People valued plants not only for their ability to be eaten, but also for medicinal properties as well as beauty. Interesting facts about the cultivated plant, which from the wild has become the standard of beauty and tenderness, concern the rose.

The rose has become a symbolic flower for many peoples since ancient times. So, according to Indian legends, Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty, was born in a rosebud. She was dedicated to poems by poets in various countries and at all times, and its homeland was tropical Southeast Asia. It was from there that the cultivated plant rose moved to Ancient Greece, where it was called the flower of Aphrodite. AT Ancient Rome even put greenhouses for roses so that they bloom all year round.

Today, hundreds of varieties of this plant are known, bred by breeders for flower growers around the world.

Modern roses are grown in open ground, in pots on windowsills, in greenhouses and winter greenhouses. Tasty and healthy jam is prepared from them, and rose oil is considered one of the most expensive, since 500 kg of petals are used to obtain one kilogram.

cultural fruits

Just like cereals and vegetables, fruits became the object of cultivation among ancient people. Beneficial features berry and fruit plants, as well as the ability to store them in dried or soaked form, made them permanent objects of pantries. The most famous of the fruits are apples, which are wild relatives.
x are found in the layers of the Cretaceous period, and dates. Today many fruit trees, which were considered foreign even 200-300 years ago, grow habitually in gardens on personal plots.

The future of cultivated plants

Breeders around the world are still working in their laboratories to create new plant crops that can take root in unusual conditions for them and produce unprecedented yields.

Thanks to their efforts, cultivated plants better tolerate climate change, the depletion of the soil layer of the Earth and at the same time give good yields.

Many cultivated plants began to produce two harvests per year or per season, as they received hybrid hardening. This gives hope that in the future there will be fresh vegetables and fruits, whose homeland has long ceased to be individual countries, but the whole world has become.

To learn about the secret of the origin of cultivated plants means to reveal the processes that led to the enormous diversity in the existing cultural flora.

Today, modern plant geneticists are doing what would have been considered impossible a hundred years ago by creating new, hybrid plants that never existed before in nature.

It may seem unrealistic and unbelievable, but a new type of corn (Btcorn), actually a combination of bacteria and normal corn, is already growing in the fields. Why were bacteria introduced into the genes of corn? Because Bacillus Thuringiensis helps the new 'planteria' hybrid fight off the worms.

How is a hybrid like Btcorn created? Geneticists extract genetic material from bacteria, isolate certain parts of its DNA, and insert it into the DNA of corn. Then the desired transformation is achieved in tissue culture. Technically, such plants are called transgenic. Modified vegetables involve the transfer of DNA from one organism to another. Hybridization seeks to improve the plant, at least from a human perspective.

Most of the soybean plants grown in the world today have been genetically modified to survive the application of powerful herbicides. Btcorn is already widely grown and as described above is engineered to produce its own organic pesticide, thereby making the plant poisonous to earworms. Growth hormone has been isolated from bovine DNA and inserted into pigs to increase their weight quickly and reduce fat. The first cloned sheep, Dolly, has already paved the way for other biogenic animal cloning experiments.

And if we imagine that life on Earth did not originate as a result of random synthesis, but as a result of genetic engineering? In fact, this could be a likely scenario.

If you think that our modern historians, geneticists and scientists biologists know the answers and can point to evidence showing how our primitive Stone Age ancestors cultivated wild plants, you are the victim of a science game. That is, you should accept everything as it is, without further questions. However, the history of domestication is fuzzy, full of "missing links" and logical inconsistencies, although the public has the impression that the history of agriculture holds no real secrets.

We are told, in our history and anthropology textbooks, that our ancient civilizations were born at the crossroads of an "agricultural revolution" that took place near major river valleys. Textbooks fail to tell us what our Stone Age predecessors collected and ate, what wild grass seeds were during their long sojourn in the Paleolithic. Were they hunters, gatherers? Why did they suddenly figure out how to domesticate plants and turn them into a staple food source around 5000 BC?

This raises some obvious and very slippery questions regarding the period of trial and error experiments in development that led to the domestication of wild wheat into bread and wild corn into domestic varieties.

Let's start with the mystery of the modern corn plant. The origin of corn remains a mystery, as wild plant ancestors have never been found. It's installed scientific fact that corn is a cultigen, an engineered plant. This means that the plant cannot reproduce naturally and is completely dependent on the permanence of human cultivation. In short, it is an artificial plant and exists long time. Scientists have not been able to trace the ancestry of corn from wild plants. How can this be if the "agricultural revolution" took place 7-8,000 years ago?

Corn is a form of wild grass, like most other large cultivated plants, there is no reason for the ancestors to disappear and/or become extinct. 10,000 years may seem like a very long time in human terms, but it is a very short time in terms of the evolution and lifespan of plant species. There are ancient plants that have existed continuously for hundreds of millions of years.

If you are sure that our ancestors cultivated wild plants, you must assume that people without any agricultural experience did fantastic things in selecting wild seeds to turn them into staple crops. It is a historical fact that, despite 5,000 years of continuous agricultural development, we cannot breed new big harvest from wild species. How ingenious were the Stone Age predecessors who performed this agronomic feat without agricultural or genetic knowledge?

Research into the mystery of the origin of cultivated plants continues.