agriculture: The Middle East crops They included three grains: emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley; four legumes: lentils, peas, chickpeas, and bitter vetch; and flax, a fibrous plant that furnishes the raw material for linen Historians know little about the domestication of the legumes and flax but have found a great deal of information on the domestication of the grains The grains were the fi rst cultivated plants Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley are all grasses that are so-called edge species in the wild, growing naturally on fi ne-grained soil at the edges of woodlands at high elevations All three of them appear to have been domesticated in a relatively short period of time, between 8000 and 7800 b.c.e Emmer was fi rst cultivated around Jericho in the Jordan River valley and near Damascus in present-day Syria around 7800 b.c.e Einkorn wheat grew throughout the Anatolian Peninsula, and hunter-gatherers are known to have harvested it between 9000 and 8000 b.c.e Farmers were cultivating it near Damascus and Jericho around the same time as they were domesticating emmer Barley grew wild throughout the entire Fertile Crescent Archaeologists have found evidence of domesticated barley near Damascus and Jericho between 7800 and 7600 b.c.e., and it is clear that farmers of the time were gradually selecting barley types to maximize yields Wild barley has two rows of grains on its heads The earliest farmers grew this type of barley, but by 7500 b.c.e they were also growing a denser type of barley with six rows of grain per head Farmers in other areas did not manage to produce the denser six-rowed barley and continued to grow the two-rowed type along with emmer and einkorn Grains soon became the staple of Fertile Crescent diets, furnishing the majority of calories for agricultural peoples in the region In addition, grains kept well in the dry climate of the region, providing a steady supply of food year-round People ate wheat by grinding it into meal and cooking it as bread or porridge Legumes were also an important food source Lentils and peas were domesticated around the same time as grains Both grew wild in the Fertile Crescent, and hunter-gatherers had been gathering them long before they were domesticated Wild peas and lentils grow in pods that usually explode to spray the seeds outward, but some mutant pods not Humans selected these nonpopping pods as the most desirable because they kept the peas and lentils conveniently packaged until they could be picked Peas and lentils are high in protein, keep for a long time when dried, and can be cooked quickly by boiling THE FIRST AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENTS The fi rst places in the world where humans deliberately planted seeds in order to harvest their crops in the future were isolated to a small area called the Levantine Corridor, a six- to twenty-five-mile-wide corridor along the Jordan River extending from the Damascus basin to Jericho and neighboring sites Each of these sites had a high water table and high water supply Early farmers had no irrigation systems 25 Cuneiform tablet recording barley rations given to workers and their families at the temple of the goddess Bau, about 2350–2200 b.c.e., from Tello (ancient Girsu), southern Iraq (© The Trustees of the British Museum) and so conditions had to be optimal for them to succeed As of 8000 b.c.e people were clearly collecting wild grasses to eat their seeds They already had the equipment used to process grains: fl int sickles for harvesting, flat grinding stones, and bowls At the site called Netiv Hagdud in Israel, archaeologists have found evidence of the first steps toward genuine agriculture Some 9,800 years ago a single type of domesticated two-rowed barley appeared along with the wild grains people continued to harvest This is the earliest known example of people deliberately transitioning from gathering to cultivation Archaeologists are not sure exactly why people began settling down and cultivating crops, but they believe it was tied to a growing population that made it harder for people to wander from place to place without running into competitors As for what inspired people to begin experimenting with putting seeds in the ground, that, too, is unknown Once people settled in one place and built structures, they naturally developed rules for running their new social structure They had time to make tools to facilitate gathering of plant foods and were not constrained by the need to move them The earliest farmers were Stone Age people; they did not know how to work metal into tools so they made tools out of stone, bone, wood, and clay Ancient farmers at first dug the soil with pointed wooden sticks called digging sticks These were soon replaced by hoes with stone blades and wooden handles As farms grew larger, farmers began using wooden