PROMISCUOUS PLANTS OF THE NORTHERN FERTILE CRESCENT

25 CHAPTER 3 PROMISCUOUS PLANTS OF THE NORTHERN FERTILE CRESCENT When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. Daniel Webster (1782–1852) HUNTER-GATHERERS, who had previously made a living based on their solid knowledge of plant life and an understanding of animal behavior, con- tinued to follow many of their old ways even as they engaged in agricultural activities. Consequently, the Neolithic Revolution, as we have come to call the invention of agriculture, although the most momentous of humankind’s achievements, was not revolutionary in that it brought abrupt change. Rath- er, beginning about 11,000 years ago, grain gathering began to shade into grain cultivation in the Jericho Valley and, at about that time or a little later, hunting started giving way to herding in the Zagros Mountains. 1 Millennia later surpluses were generated, giving rise to agricultural civilizations such as of Mesopotamia, Egypt, northern China, and the Indus Valley, and with them came more complex and stratifi ed societies. 2 It is probably not coincidental that all of these fi rst civilizations emerged within a relatively few centuries of one another, despite the distances sepa- rating them. Each one was located on a river and dependent on annual fl ood- ing for moist, rich soils rather than on the vagaries of rainfall. 3 Agriculture was simplifi ed because there was little need for plowing or manuring and, 26 A Movable Feast as a result, despite occasional famines, populations grew larger. At least they did until around 2200 BCE when droughts and reductions in river fl ows caused severe and successive famines, exhausted grain stores, and brought about the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, Sumerian civili- zation in Mesopotamia (from the Greek meaning between the rivers), and Harrapan civilization in the Indus Valley. These early Neolithic Revolutions link the end of the Stone Age with the beginning of recorded history, when we can see early civilizations with rela- tive clarity. Yet, the end of the Stone Age is so obscure that we cannot be cer- tain where the fi rst Neolithic Revolution occurred, although as a rule pride of place is given to that large and fertile arc running from the Persian Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean and south to the Nile Valley that we call the Fertile Crescent. But since agriculture in the northern part of that arc devel- oped substantially earlier than it did in Egypt, we employ the term “northern Fertile Crescent” to exclude Egypt from this geographic generalization. Because of the Old World’s west-east axis, the northern Fertile Crescent was a region ideally located to radiate agriculture in all directions. Its crops could and did spread westward throughout the Mediterranean and into North Africa, northwestward to Europe, and eastward to the Indus valley. 4 Such diffusion often took place over water. The Fertile Crescent is an area surrounded by bodies of it – the Persian Gulf on its southeast, the Red Sea to the southwest, the Caspian and Black seas to the north, and the Mediterra- nean to the west. It is also bounded by mountains on the north and east, and desert to the south, all of which acted in concert to moderate a climate that nurtured the growth of wild grains, especially the ancestral forms of wheat and barley – seminal crops that were the foundation of food production in western Asia. These plentiful wild grains made possible (and practical) widespread cereal exploitation and, consequently, encouraged sedentism, as previously nomadic peoples discovered perennial sources of food. WHEAT Wheat (genus Triticum ) is a grass that today helps to sustain 35 percent of the world’s population. Its origins are in Southwest Asia where its wild ancestors (einkorn and emmer) were fi rst manipulated by humans. Sickle blades, grinding stones, even grain storage pits have been found on Natufi an (pre-Neolithic foragers) sites that were lived on year round by people who harvested wild grain, although with less than optimal effi ciency. 5 Promiscuous Plants of the Northern Fertile Crescent 27 The trouble with wild wheat, and other wild grasses, is that nature intended that its seed-con- taining spikelets fall easily off a ripe ear to be dispersed by the wind, whereupon their arrow shapes and barbs would establish them in the earth. It is a strategy that promotes reproduc- tion but is wasteful of food. Domestication involved reversing this procedure so that the spikelets became plumper, tended to stay put even on a ripe ear during harvesting, and sported poorly developed barbs. 6 It stands to reason that this reversal was an accidental product of a selec- tion process whereby plants with spikelets that remained attached to sturdy stalks were the most likely to have their seeds gathered and planted the following season. But the price was that wheat that had always planted itself now depended on humans for that task. Such accidents were often the midwives of domesti- cation and this one must have taken place at some time before 8000 BCE – the approximate date when domesti- cated einkorn and emmer were being cultivated around Jericho in the Jordan Valley and at about the same time, at Tell Aswad (just to the southeast of Damascus). 7 Shortly after this a fully agricultural economy based on farming and herding emerged throughout the region. Within a few generations the “self-planting” ability disappeared and the wheat had been domesticated. 8 It has been estimated that it took 5,000 acres to support a single hunter-gatherer. In the new agricultural societies 5,000 acres of wheat could sustain 5,000 people. After this fi rst (but very lengthy) phase of grain domestication that also included barley (see ahead), fruits such as grape, olive, date, and fi g were brought under cultivation, although their full dietary potential could not have been immediately appreciated. Wild nuts – especially almond ( Prunus dulcis), pine nuts (genus Pinus) and pistachios ( Pistacia vera) – became tame and as important in the diets of the fi rst farmers as they had been for the foragers they supplanted. According to the archeological records of the third and second millennia BCE , new foods such as apples, garlic, and 28 A Movable Feast coriander were being cultivated along with foods domesticated outside the Fertile Cres- cent such as millets, sesame, and rice, indicat- ing contact with the other early centers of agriculture and early steps in the direction of food globalization. 9 Within Mesopotamia, diets varied according to the status and location of the consumers. People in civilizations that practiced irrigation – those in the south – used wheat but favored barley and beer, along with dates and date wine. In the hilly regions, however, wheat was the favored grain and grape wine the most important of the beverages. Close to the Mediterranean wheat and wine were joined by olives and olive oil. Meat was seldom available to the lower classes, and state workers received grains as the bulk of their food rations. 10 Following establishment of an agricultural beachhead in the northern Fertile Crescent, wheat was transformed into the banner of an expand- ing Neolithic Revolution. It arrived in Europe around 6000 BCE , could be found in northern Egypt after 5000 BCE , and reached south Asia and China by 4000 BCE . 11 The major early civilizations that emerged – the city-states of Mesopotamia, dynastic Egypt, and the civilization of the Indus Valley – were all dependent on wheat. But there were also other cereals and a host of legumes as well. BARLEY Wild barley ( Hordeum spontaneum) was present in Western Asia and its story is similar to that of wheat. It was gathered for many millennia before evidence indicates that domestication took place in the eastern Fertile Crescent around 9,000 years ago. But although domesticated barley (H. vulgare) came along later than wheat, after it did barley was generally its companion. They spread together into the Aegean region and then into the Balkans, central Europe, the Nile Valley, and the western Mediterranean basin. By 8,000 years ago barley agriculture, but not yet wheat, had reached the foothills of the Indus Valley and from there it moved into South and East Asia. 12 Promiscuous Plants of the Northern Fertile Crescent 29 Much of barley’s appeal seems to have been its ability to ferment, which lent it to beer-brewing. This was an important, early use of the grain in ancient Mesopotamia 13 and by 2300 BCE barley had almost completely replaced wheat in the Mesopotamian Valley. The reason, however, was not so much a desire for still more beer as it was that irrigation was turning the region’s lands salty, and barley is by far the more salt tolerant of the two. 14 RYE Rye ( Secale cereale) is a close relative of the genus Triticum (the wheats) – so close, in fact, that it was recently possible to combine the two by breed- ing Triticum and Secale to become the hybrid Triticale. 15 Wild rye grew to the north of the range of wild wheat and barley in western Asia – in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey through Iran to Caucasia, where it still grows wild today. There is some evidence of rye cultivation during the Neolithic, but very little, and the fi rst unequivocal indication that it was being delib- erately cultivated only dates to the Bronze Age in north- central Anatolia. A major problem with dating the domestication of rye is that it existed for a long time as a contaminant of wheat and barley and was consequently unintentionally cultivated. Illustrative was the “volunteer” rye now called the “wheat of Allah” by Anatolian peasants – recalling a time when the wheat crop failed but rye (much hardier that wheat), which had inadver- tently been planted with the wheat, still stood. The peasants assumed that Allah had “sent” them a replacement crop. 16 In like manner, rye probably smuggled itself into Europe where its importance increased during Roman times when, because of its winter hardiness and ability to resist drought and grow in acid soils, it became an ever more valuable crop in northern and eastern Europe. At times, how- ever, such virtues were cancelled out by the susceptibility of rye ears to the ergot fungus, which, when ingested, causes the disease ergotism. Often its symptoms were manifested in the nervous system dysfunction of con- sumers, but sometimes in gangrene, and untold thousands died during the 132 European epidemics of ergotism counted between 591 and 1789. 17 OAT Oat ( Avena sativa) is another grain whose wild ancestors were richly repre- sented in the soils of western Asia. Like rye, oat found its way into domes- tication as a weedy admixture in cultivated cereals such as wheat or barley, 30 A Movable Feast but unlike rye there is no evidence of oat domestica- tion during the Neolithic or even the Bronze Age. Instead it seems to have taken place during the fi rst millennium BCE in what is now Czechoslovakia. 18 Oat does well in cool and moist climates and Roman writers later observed that oatmeal had become a staple in Germany. Shortly thereaf- ter oat was under cultivation in the British Isles, especially in Scotland, and by the fi rst millenni- um AD it had reached the other side of Eurasia to become a cultivated crop in China. 19 LEGUMES In addition to cereals, beans, peas, and lentils were instrumental in the early development of agriculture although not always instantly appreci- ated as domesticates. Rather, it is suspected that, like rye and oat they too were accidentally cultivated, perhaps even domesticated while trespassing in cultivated wheat and barley fi elds. But if their potential as cultivars was initially overlooked, wild legumes were nonetheless handy additions to the diet. They were consumed fresh to be sure but, more importantly, could be dried and stored for porridge during winter months. Lentils ( Lens culinaris) are probably the oldest of the cultivated legumes (which includes peas and beans). In late Paleolithic times they were being gathered in the wild throughout much of the Old World and especially in a range from the Fertile Cres- cent to Greece. Domestication took place some eight or nine thousand years ago. Seeds from an apparent- ly domesticated plant that date from around 7000 BCE have been found in northern Israel and many other Fertile Crescent sites have yielded just slightly younger seeds. Domesticated lentils were introduced to southeastern Europe when Neolithic agriculture took hold during the sixth millennium BCE , and they were also among the new crops that diffused from Mesopotamia to Egypt in one direction and the Caspian Basin and the Indian subcontinent in another. 20 Promiscuous Plants of the Northern Fertile Crescent 31 The cultivated pea ( Pisum sativum) today ranks second after lentils in the production of seed legumes. Its ancestors grew wild in the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East, where they were munched on by hunter-gather- ers. A number of ancestral strains contributed to what we now think of as the common garden pea. According to pea remains found in early Neolithic farming villages, the legume became one of the domesticated crops of the Middle East between 7500 and 6000 BCE . 21 Pea cultivation was associated with that of wheat and barley and, like lentils, peas joined these grains in the spread of agriculture into Europe where evidence of early pea cultiva- tion has been found in that continent’s eastern and central parts. 22 The pea also traveled southward into the Neolithic settlements of the Nile and fol- lowed the lentil eastward, reaching India around 2000 BCE and China, in historic times, perhaps along the Silk Road. 23 Another legume called pea is the cultivated chickpea ( Cicer arietinum) whose wild ancestors were scattered over central and western Asia. Known as a garbanzo in Spain, cici in Italy, and gram (from the Portuguese grão meaning grain) in India, the chickpea reached these diverse regions from the Middle East, where it is thought to have been closely associated with early Neolithic food production. However, physical evidence of the legume only becomes plentiful in archaeological investigations of Bronze Age sites – in Israel, Jordan, and the eastern Mediterranean Basin. Chickpeas were probably domesticated around 7,000 years ago, but unlike lentils or peas did not accompany Neolithic agriculture deeply into Europe. Rather they took fi rm root around the Mediterranean and in Harrapan settlements of the Indian subcontinent – a subcontinent that today produces 80 per- cent of the world’s crop. 24 The last member of the Neolithic legume quartet is the faba or fava bean ( Vicia faba) also known as a Windsor bean, a broad bean, and a “horse bean” (because it was also fed to animals). There is disagreement about whether the fava bean originated in the Middle East or outside the region – perhaps in South Asia. It is a disagreement not easily reconciled because the wild ancestor of the cultivated fava has not yet been discovered and may have become extinct. 25 When it was domesticated is similarly in doubt, although large numbers of fava bean remains from the third millennium BCE appear in archeological sites in the Mediterranean Basin and Central Europe. Somewhat later favas reached China – now their major producer . Fava beans grew well in the warm Mediterranean Basin where they were a major food source for many, even though, in the sixth century BCE , the 32 A Movable Feast famous sage Pythagoras along with Greek physicians warned against them. With good reason! In folklore, as in real life, favas and their pollen were associated with sudden, acute illness that could result in death and, in fact, the beans did indirectly kill Pythagoras. He refused to cross a fi eld planted in them to escape an angry mob. We now call this disease, the symptoms of which include acute hemolytic anemia, “favism.” It occurs in people with a blood enzyme defi ciency (Glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase defi ciency), developed as protection against falciparum malaria – a dis- ease that had been endemic in Greece and the islands of the Aegean, and remains so in Africa. 26 OTHER VEGETABLE FOODS Spinach ( Spinacia oleracea ) was probably in use in the Fertile Crescent eons before its known history of cultivation began in Persia during the fourth century AD . About 300 years later it had reached China via Nepal and about a century after that spinach was carried to Sicily by invading Saracens from North Africa who had earlier encountered the plant in Persia, by now centrally located on the Silk Road and a clearing house for foods bound for both the East and the West. Sometime after this the vegetable surfaced in Moorish Spain. It was slower to reach other tables of Europe where it was still regarded as an oddity in the sixteenth century. The onion ( Allium cepa), which seems to have originated in central and western Asia but not in the Fertile Crescent, can be found as far back as one is able to search the historical record, beginning in Sumer some 4,000 years ago, where it was widely used in cooking and where bread and onions formed part of a core diet for the peasants. Bread and onions were central as well to the diet of laborers on the Great Pyramid in Egypt, and the consumption of onion, garlic, and leek is depicted in Egyptian tomb art. 27 Many of the ancients thought that onions were symbols of eternity because of their concentric circles (perpetu- ated later in onion-shaped towers – a guarantee that they would last forever) and, according to some Roman writers, the onion in Egypt was regarded as a kind of deity. 28 Promiscuous Plants of the Northern Fertile Crescent 33 The leek ( A. porrum) was probably also in use at an early date in the northern Fertile Crescent although the Egyptians are given credit for fi rst cultivating them. Indeed Pliny confi ded to his readers that the best leeks came from Egypt, although the Greeks and the Romans both grew and appreciated them. 29 There is no evidence that the Egyptians also used garlic ( A. sativum), which was probably a native of central Asia. It was in use by the Bronze Age, but had a mixed reception in the Classical World; the Greeks favored the vegetable but not the Romans, who nonetheless made garlic a part of the diet of laborers (to give them strength) and soldiers (to give them courage). It was only in India, however, that alliums – every one of them – were regarded as unrespectable. Elsewhere, at one time or another, all of them including shallots ( A. ascalonicum) and chives ( A. schoenoprasum ), were regarded as medicines as well as foods. Onions were used against everything from sore throat to foot-fungus and garlic, often employed to bring down fevers and packed into wounds, also enjoyed a reputation as an aphrodisiac. 30 Wild nuts such as almonds and pine nuts were gradually brought under cultivation, and with domestication and breeding cultivated fruits became sweeter and orchard crops more popular. In the northern Fertile Crescent, important cultivars were pomegranates ( Punica granatum), among the fi rst fruits to be cultivated, and palms bearing dates ( Phoenix dactylifera). With a sugar content of over 50 percent, dates gave its consumers energy where- as the trees provided toddy from their sap. The original home of the date palm is lost in antiquity and no wild progenitor has defi nitely been established. But it is known to have been cultivated for at least 6,000 years because dates were employed to feed workers constructing the temple of the moon god near Ur in southern Iraq. The Sumerians and the Babylonians made this palm their sacred tree and initiated the date palm breeding that has resulted in the more than 1,500 date varieties available today. 31 From Mesopotamia the date moved east through Iran to the Indus Valley and Pakistan, and west to Egypt, where it was growing along the Nile in the fi rst millennia BCE . It was also grown in the Maghreb and Sahel regions, and later became a holy fruit for both Jew and Muslim. Christian legend has it that it may have been the date palm, not the apple, that was the fruit Eve offered to Adam. 32 34 A Movable Feast The fi g ( Ficus carica) was another early Middle Eastern favorite appar- ently native to Southwest Asia. Figs served as a cheap and staple food for many, had the virtue of tasting sweet whether fresh or dried, and in some places they were more heavily consumed than dates. The earliest place of fi g cultivation is unknown, although they were apparently being grown in prehistoric Egypt. 33 The apple (genus Malus), also thought to have its origin in southwest Asia, was one of the earliest tree crops to be widely cultivated, even before the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. 34 Apples were enjoyed by the ancients of the Middle East, but attained a more important position as an orchard crop in classical times and today there are over 7,000 varieties worldwide. 35 And the Old World grape ( Vitus vinifera) – thought to be a native of Asia Minor – was exploited for wine in Mesopotamia as early as 7,500 years ago (from grapes also came vinegar, an important pickling agent) although the viticulture passed on to the Mediterranean region seems to have been practiced more enthusiastically beginning around 3000 BCE . 36 Finally, a native of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, fl ax ( Linum usitatissimum) was among the fi rst crops cultivated in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey (dating from at least 5000 BCE ) for its fi bers and, even more impor- tantly, for its oil (linseed oil) used in cooking. Around 3,000 years ago fl ax cultivation spread to Europe where the plant was widely utilized in Greece, Rome, and northern Europe. It later entered medieval Russia, where it continued to be employed into modern times because the Ortho- dox Church did not proscribe its oil during days of fasting. 37 It has been largely forgotten that linseed oil was once an important food because today it used mostly for paints and varnishes. 38 DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS The fl esh of sheep, goats, and pigs occasionally invigorated the Fertile Crescent diet, with the fat-tailed sheep a special favorite. But, as a rule, meat was consumed only on festive occasions and in dishes that stretched the meat such as kibbeh (about 6,000 years old) consisting of pounded lamb, burghul (cracked wheat), and onions. 39 Most animal protein, how- ever, came from fi sh taken from the rivers, canals, and fi shponds, along with that furnished by eggs and by cheese made from the milk of goats, sheep, and camels. 40 [...]... stocks of aquatic animals such as those present in Sumerian temples around 2500 BCE.43 The sheer numbers of sedentary peoples provided an overwhelming military advantage over the remaining hunter-gatherers and other enemies, and before the beginning of the Bronze Age the Sumerians had put captives to work in their fields as slaves.44 Such numbers also meant more brain power to draw upon The sickle and the. .. storage, and kept track of livestock This agricultural record keeping led, in turn, to pictographic writing Specialized scribes maintained temple archives on clay tablets that first recorded agricultural health but then branched out to codify laws and preserve religious mythology The many segments of modern civilization were falling into place Promiscuous Plants of the Northern Fertile Crescent 35 ... inventions, and by the time of the Bronze Age domesticated animals were being harnessed to plows and wheeled vehicles Such innovations extended agricultural areas, increased production, and facilitated the transportation of crops from field to market, while trade brought new plants, such as rice, millets, and sesame, to the region from the East The surpluses generated by this sort of agricultural activity,... activity, in turn, gave rise to the growth of towns housing as many as 10,000 people that began to dot the landscape; then city-states, such as Uruk, arose around 3500 BCE Like other city-states that followed in western Asia, Uruk was administered by a priestly class made powerful by their control of food and its production In a temple-complex priests determined the allocation of the city’s lands, recorded... making radiated out of western Iran where some claim it was invented around 4000 BCE More likely it was a process discovered much earlier in the Neolithic, when humans began milking animals Milk spoils quickly, but cheese is a different matter and all it took to get cheese was to leave skimmed milk out in the sun to ferment.41 FOOD AND NORTHERN FERTILE CRESCENT TECHNOLOGY The dawning of the Bronze Age around... NORTHERN FERTILE CRESCENT TECHNOLOGY The dawning of the Bronze Age around 5,000 years ago marked the end of the Neolithic in Southwest Asia At that time Sumerian civilization was in full flower It had developed in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where annual floods delivered new deposits of fertile silt and where some 2,000 years earlier sophisticated irrigation agriculture techniques had . CHAPTER 3 PROMISCUOUS PLANTS OF THE NORTHERN FERTILE CRESCENT When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human. reached the foothills of the Indus Valley and from there it moved into South and East Asia. 12 Promiscuous Plants of the Northern Fertile Crescent 29 Much of