Domesticated wheat descended from earlier wild grains. Most notably?
Emmer and Einkorn. This Old World grain was introduced to the New World as part of the Columbian Exchange. “The wheat now growing in vast fields stretching across the Great Plains of North America had its beginnings in the eastern Mediterranean region, where the wild grass Triticum aestivum originated to become one of the first of the domesticaed grains and ultimately one of the world’s two most important superfoods. Wheat was probably first domesticated in the Middle East many thousands of years ago. The ancient Egyptians made bread from it, but only later did the Greeks adopt wheat in preference to emmer. Later still, one of the reasons for the expansion of Rome was the need for wheat, and thej Romans turned Egypt into a wheat-growing breadbasket for their empire. Wheat reached northern China later than it reached the West, and in eastern Asia it jouned millet as a major crop.” —Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:
