ABSTRACT
Expertly identified and radiocarbon-dated plant remains are now available from hundreds of Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Southwest Asia and Europe. With the exception of the problematic broad bean, all members of the Neolithic crop assemblage satisfy that prerequisite. The wild progenitors of barley, einkorn wheat, pea, lentil, and flax all abound in the same geographical belt in which the earliest archaeological evidence of their cultivation has been retrieved. With the possible exception of wild flax, the Near East is also the centre of their distribution. Stands and yields of both wild cereals approach quite closely to produced vigorous seedlings by the local land races of wheat and barley grown under field conditions. This demonstrates that it would have been easy to start wild emmer or wild barley cultivation both in the rain-fed belt or – with the help of irrigation – in the drier and warmer places below or beyond the oak-dominated park-forest belt.
