Grain in measurement is less than a gram, a very small amount. It is a common name of the seeds in the plant family which are also small but mostly edible. The small outside look, but the story of it could be endless, because it includes two in the five largest plants in the botany, they are cereals and legumes. These two groups must be very familiar with us for we use them daily, this way or another way.
Although it includes both cereals and legumes, but a subjective feeling when we mention the grain easily leads our mind to cereals more than legumes. This short story will be about cereals. For legumes, it is another interesting story.
Grain and the Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic is the end of the Stone-age, which the beginning was about 10,000 – 10,200 years BC. It was believed that the Neolithic had begun from Middle-East and then spread to other places in the world. The increasing of population at that time effected to human lifestyle and led them to the settlement. Animals and plants were domesticated then. Especially for plants, human had known to plant the food crop repeatedly to experience and get the food source. And grain, then had become the main crop that widely cultivated in many parts of the world.
The Neolithic Revolution was also called the Agricultural Revolution, for it was a huge turning point to the agriculture and the whole world later. The grain could be considered as one of the most important food crops in the first step of human to the specialization.
The things may show that, we may know some features related of grain but there are many things that it is attached with the history of human kind like the details as above, but not of us who know completely.
Grain from the east to the west
Although there are many species of grain but we could list some prominent types which run a leading role to the world food industry through time, they are maize, rice, wheat, barley, oat, rye and millet. Some of them are especially connected closely with some areas. Example, rice is a main food to Asia countries; wheat, oat, barley is popular in Europe and America; millet is widely used in Asia and Africa, maize is closely to America…
However, nowadays, all of these above grain and their products are imported and exported mutually between countries, for the food consumption has developed more and more, and has not been limited in any region.
