GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

146 • GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
question by examining the wild grass species still growing wild in the valley
today. Leaving aside species with small or unpalatable seeds, they
picked out 23 of the most palatable and largest-seeded wild grasses. Not
surprisingly, barley and emmer wheat were on that list.
But it wasn't true that the 21 other candidates would have been equally
useful. Among those 23, barley and emmer wheat proved to be the best by
many criteria. Emmer wheat has the biggest seeds and barley the second
biggest. In the wild, barley is one of the 4 most abundant of the 23 species,
while emmer wheat is of medium abundance. Barley has the further advantage
that its genetics and morphology permit it to evolve quickly the useful
changes in seed dispersal and germination inhibition that we discussed in
the preceding chapter. Emmer wheat, however, has compensating virtues:
it can be gathered more efficiently than barley, and it is unusual among
cereals in that its seeds do not adhere to husks. As for the other 21 species,
their drawbacks include smaller seeds, in many cases lower abundance,
and in some cases their being perennial rather than annual plants, with the
consequence that they would have evolved only slowly under domestication.
Thus, the first farmers in the Jordan Valley selected the 2 very best of
the 23 best wild grass species available to them. Of course, the evolutionary
changes (following cultivation) in seed dispersal and germination inhibition
would have been unforeseen consequences of what those first
farmers were doing. But their initial selection of barley and emmer wheat
rather than other cereals to collect, bring home, and cultivate would have
been conscious and based on the easily detected criteria of seed size, palat¬
ability, and abundance.
This example from the Jordan Valley, like that from Tell Abu Hureyra,
illustrates that the first farmers used their detailed knowledge of local species
to their own benefit. Knowing far more about local plants than all but
a handful of modern professional botanists, they would hardly have failed
to cultivate any useful wild plant species that was comparably suitable for
domestication.
WE CAN NOW examine what local farmers, in two parts of the world
(New Guinea and the eastern United States) with indigenous but apparently
deficient food production systems compared to that of the Fertile
Crescent, actually did when more-productive crops arrived from else-