Wheat, wormwood and other plants that changed history (8 photos)

10,000 years ago, man domesticated wheat. Or is she his? These everyone knows plants, but not everyone fully understands the role that they played for mankind. Without them, perhaps there would be no us.





Wheat: the birth of European civilization



It was this cereal that made our ancestors move to a settled lifestyle. Prior to that, they were hunter-gatherers who I had to survive: natural gifts are limited, but I want to eat. Cereal crops (not only wheat, but also later cultivated oats and millet) allowed people to solve the problem of hunger. But the process was gradual. Scientists believe that wheat originated from several wild cereals growing in Asia Minor, Southern Europe and North Africa. One of the first domesticated of them was wild spelt, common in the Fertile Crescent. Somewhere out there they discovered it for themselves progenitors. It was nutritious but deficient (like all wild cereal varieties) - the grains immediately crumbled to the ground after ripening, therefore had to harvest an unripe crop.

For more spelled, about 10,200 years ago, someone I guessed to sow it, and then, gradually and under the influence of random factors, more and more resistant to threshing spikelets were selected. So about 6500 years ago, wheat appeared.

Simultaneously with wheat in the Middle East cultivated barley. It is even believed that they began to cultivate it earlier, but bread from it was inferior to wheat and in taste and nutritional properties. But barley has become one of the basic crops in Rus', for the most part the territory where the wheat simply did not ripen. Exact ancestor of barley yet unknown.

Rice: The Birth of Asian Civilization





Like many other cereals, rice has been domesticated in different parts planets. However, classic Asian rice is much older, for example, African look. It began to be cultivated in East Asia about 9000 years ago. back, having won the right to be called the main culture of the region. Today most of humanity feeds on it (and approximately one in seven the inhabitant of the planet participates in its cultivation, that is, rice gives work over a billion people).

The ancestor of rice is the wild form of Oryza sativa or close to him Oryza nivara, and possibly both of these species. Both the one and the other to this day grow along the banks of reservoirs in China, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Malaysia. The Asian ancestors simply took what was given to them by nature, although this was difficult to do: the seeds of wild rice, like wheat, tend to crumble after maturation. But the cultivation of the plant brought their fruits.

The resourceful Asians, by the way, used not only seeds, but also straw, making rice paper and cardboard out of it. Also rice here has long been considered a measure of wealth - it was from Asia that came to us the tradition of showering the newlyweds with this cereal so that the house is a full bowl. IN In Japan, the word "rice" and the verb "eat" are denoted by the same hieroglyphs

Corn: The Birth of American Civilization



The third epochal cereal crop in the history of mankind is corn. It is the basis of the foundations of not only the entire Indian civilization, but also her religion. The Mayans believed that God created man from grains of white and yellow maize. Yes, and all other representatives of the original American cultures considered corn a sacred plant: young women wore branches from its stems on the head, and on the neck - necklaces of roasted grains (those the most that we today call popcorn - yes, they invented it Indians), and then circled in ritual dances.

By the shape of a bursting corn grain, they guessed about the future, as we do on coffee grounds.

Corn was domesticated about 9,000 years ago in the center Balsas Valley in Mexico. And corn comes from local wild teosinte plant, outwardly similar to its cultural descendant, but with much smaller buds. They are only 3–4 cm long. Yes, and the cob itself is rather a spikelet. The ancient sons of Tenochtitlan had to only to increase the latter, but also to “soften” their shell - in wild kind it is hard.

Spices: geographical discoveries, wars, colonization and technological progress



Clove, cinnamon, saffron, pepper, bay leaf, ginger - the most fragrant spices grew in the tropics andfor the Europeans were exotic, reaching the consumer in unhurried caravans. Price them was cosmic, and if today we call a rich man a bag of money, in the Middle Ages they could say “a bag of pepper” about this.

Of course, the Europeans were looking for their own ways to reach India and other southern countries. But cunning eastern businessmen described in colors the hardships of the path and the sea monsters that they will meet on the route. But the desire to get rich was greater than fear, due to which they were open the Americas, the Philippines, the Greater Moluccas and Sunda Islands, laid way to the Indian Ocean around Africa, and Magellan made his trip around the world. By the end of his expedition, originally out of five ships, only one small ship remained, but even those spices that remained on it, the team members had enough to pay huge debts for the loss of ships and even profit). For the right to grow and supply spices, wars were fought, new territories - all European colonies were created primarily for the purpose of mastering the "spicy" monopoly.

Soy: a global change in the consumer basket



By the beginning of the 20th century, the problem of hunger even in developed countries began to increase. These were, of course, not primitive times, but growth population and life expectancy required additional resources in form of cheap protein. Soy became such.

They knew about it before - according to some sources, the first Mentions of beans appeared in China and date back 5,000 years ago. Inhabitants China managed to cultivate the plant and increase productivity, and Today, soybeans are considered the most important component of the global food market. Soy protein is not inferior in nutritional value to milk and egg: the seeds of this plant contain 37–42% protein, 19–22% oil and up to 30% carbohydrates. At the same time, the price of soybean production is much lower than that of meat and dairy products, and it is itself a safe substitute for them. If if it weren’t for soybeans, our grocery basket would cost more, and a lot of people in XX and XXI centuries would simply die of hunger or at least experience total protein deficiency. In addition, soy is one of the main fodder crops for domestic animals.

Cinchona and wormwood: saving hundreds of thousands of lives



Even 200-300 years ago, malaria was considered one of the most common and dangerous diseases on earth. Especially she raged in countries with a warm, humid climate. With the opening of the New Sveta, where the cinchona tree grew, the situation improved dramatically.

True, not immediately - to discover miraculous properties plants and learning how to treat malaria with them took time. And although the Indians knew the cure for this disease, to reveal the secret of it the conquerors were in no hurry to prepare. And when the European Aesculapius after all, his recipe was recreated, the global malaria epidemic began to decline.

And in the 1970s, Chinese scientists led by pharmacologist Tu Yuyu isolated from the decoction of wormwood a substance they called qinghaosu (in Western pharmacology, it was called "artemisin"), which to this day is considered the most effective drug against malaria. In general, plants that have played a key role in our history, quite a few: millet, oats, papyrus, cotton, flax, sugar cane, tea, potatoes and others, but that's another story.