The Eight Founding Crops of Domesticated Agriculture (Circa 9,500 BCE)

The eight so-called founder crops of agriculture— plant species domesticated by early Holocene (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region of southwest Asia— formed the basis of systematic agriculture in the Middle East, North Africa, India, Persia and (later) Europe. They included flax, three cereals and four pulses (legumes), and are the first known domesticated plants.

First emmer wheat and einkorn wheat were domesticated, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch (an ancient grain legume crop), chick peas and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites in the Levant, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be sown and harvested on a significant scale.