Agronomists are currently interested in an obscure Eurasian grass. How does this relate to archaeology? Aegilops, or goatgrass, as it’s commonly known, has “saved our bread” in the ancient past. A brief thread on the origins of agriculture or the “Neolithic” in western Eurasia 1/ https://phys.org/news/2022-03-hardy-wild-grass-bread.html

Around 23,000 years ago, at a site in Israel called Ohalo II, people started living sedentary lives. They harvested numerous wild plant seeds, among them grasses like Aegilops as well as wild wheat, barley and rye. 2/

The development of microlith technology, which are small, sharp, chipped rocks that can be set into a larger tool, allowed people to harvest plants like grasses into sheafs, but they had to be harvested before they were fully ripened. 3/

Wild grasses are different from domesticated grasses; their ears shatter when fully ripened. Domesticated grasses have a “rachis” which holds the seed to the ear that is less brittle than that of a wild grass. This is why wheat has to be threshed off the ear. 4/

Wheat that has been threshed leaves behind the chaff. Sometimes this chaff falls into a fire, becomes carbonized, and is preserved in the soil for thousands of years. This chaff from Syria is about 11,000 years old, preserving the tell-tale rachis. 5/

Over time, the act of harvesting wheat with a sickle into sheaves and carrying them home has selected for ears of grain that do not shatter, allowing them to be transported to sedentary houses for threshing, saving, and re-planting. 6/