Cultivation, history, origin, and distribution of cultivated plants

Excavations of the Iron Age in Denmark show that people in prehistoric times collected all kinds of seeds for food. The next step was to cultivate the soil and sow the seeds. This is how the oldest grains (cereals) came into culture, somewhere between 8000 and 5000 years BC in the Middle East. When the system of sowing and harvesting gained a place in the community, the population could grow and civilizations develop. Gradually selection produced the first cultivars, which were different from their wild ancestors, a process that took millennia. After the Middle Ages the process of improvement accelerated, but only after one understood the principles of genetics. It was possible to crossbreed accurately, resulting in an abundance of new forms and varieties. In a single century not only the yield of a number of important crops doubled, but at the same time an assortment of varieties arose that would have been unrecognisable for humans from the Middle Ages.