History of popcorn grain

Corn began as a wild grass called teosinte in southwestern Mexico and was probably cultivated as a domesticated crop around 9,000 years ago.

Scholars agree that popcorn originated in the Americas. Popcorn grains estimated to be more than 1,000 years old were found on the east coast of Peru. A 1,000-year-old popped kernel was found in a dry cave inhabited by predecessors of the Pueblo Indians in Southwestern Utah.

In 1948, small heads of the zea mays everta were discovered by Herbert Dick and Earle Smith in a dry cave known as the “bat cave.” These kernels have since been carbon dated and shown to be approximately 5,600 years old. Strains of corn (taxonomized as Zea mays) are cultivated specifically as popping corns. The Zea mays variety everta, a special kind of flint corn, is the most common of these.

Around the year 1612, early French explorers through the Great Lakes region noted that the Iroquois popped popcorn with heated sand in a pottery vessel and used it to make popcorn soup, among other things.

In the mid-1800s, the steel plow—which could cut through tough vegetation—transformed Midwestern agriculture. In Nebraska, Iowa, and Indiana, corn—especially the poppable variety—became such an important cash crop that it was dubbed “prairie gold.”

In 1875, a Kentucky resident named Frederick J. Myers patented a corn-popping device that added a stay-cool handle. Charles Cretor of Chicago is often credited as the inventor of modern popcorn, thanks to his invention of the mobile popcorn cart in 1885. Since the machine was mobile, the invention also increased the amount of people who had access to popcorn and thus the popularity of the snack in America.

Popcorn’s modern era as a favorite American snack was launched in 1893 at the New York World’s Fair. Street vendors, by the 1920s, with their steam or gas-powered poppers, were a common sight at fairs, parks and expositions.

The first hybrid popcorn for commercial production, Minhybrid 250, was released in 1934 by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station. It only grew well along the northern edge of the U.S. corn belt, but was quickly followed by hybrids adapted to the central region of the corn belt.

By the 1940s, more widely adapted hybrids had been developed by Indiana and Kansas Agricultural Experiment Stations in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry. Modern plant breeders, concentrated in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt, continue their quest to develop improved popcorn hybrids.

When popcorn was first sold inside movie theaters, almost 100 years ago, it actually helped buoy the business, which was flailing at the time as the country entered the Great Depression. A successful popcorn advertising partnership with Coca-Cola and Morton Salt, along with advertisements of individual popcorn companies made the early 1950s the largest home-consumption growth period for the popcorn industry.
History of popcorn grain

Grain storage in ancient Egypt

The principal food crops, barley and emmer, were used to make beer and bread, the main staples of the Egyptian diet. Grains were harvested and stored in granaries until ready to be processed. The storage of food staples is always of utmost importance as it is a key component of food distribution, which is an important means of executing power and accomplishing the goals by specific actors in a system.

Ancient Egypt had one of the most successful and stable agricultural economies of the ancient world, and had both a system and facilities for grain storage: larger granaries were attached to temples and palaces, while smaller ones were dispersed within the town.

The structure of granaries, comprising storage chambers of either vaulted or rectangular shape, was essentially similar throughout all dynasties. The basic type of storage chambers was dome-shaped. Mud of the Nile valley mixed with water, sand and straw was particularly suitable for building granaries in the arid climate of Egypt.

The ancient Egyptians made a practice of preserving grain in years of plenty against years of scarcity, and probably Joseph only carried out on a large scale as habitual practice. The stores of wheat and barley served the inhabitants of Egypt during the period of drought and hunger that followed.
Grain storage in ancient Egypt

History of wheat in Roman Empire

Wheat was immensely important in the Roman Empire, partly because it was almost the only staple. Barley, which had been important in earlier centuries was going out of fashion, although it still provided food for the poor.

Rome’s conquests brought changes in agriculture. One change was in the size and purpose of farms. Most Romans had been small farmers who believed in hard work and service to Rome. Now, the small farms were replaced by large estates called latifundias. The small farms had grown wheat for food.

Emmer (Triticum dicoccum L.) was the most widely cultivated husked wheat in Roman Italy for over 300 years, into the Imperial period, until at least the 5thand 4thcentury AD.

The bulk of the Roman basic citizens would eat wheat or barley every day in the form of a gruel called puls or as a coarse home-baked flatbread. The citizen who could afford to do so would take their cereal to a local bakery to have it made into loaves of leavened bread, which was ideal for dipping into olive oil, milk, wine, or the sauces from cooked dishes.

Feeding the city also had an important political dimension: since the Republic, a dole of wheat was given to each adult man which began in 58B.C.

By the time of Augustus, this dole was providing free food for some 200,000 Romans. The emperor paid the cost of this dole out of his own pocket.

Roman Empire in 117 AD

It has been calculated that the dole would have been enough to provide a man with about 3,000- 3,500 calories a day, although in practice he would have shared it with his family and, of course, eaten other things.

In 2 BC Augustus cut back the number of recipients of the wheat dole to 200,000, which implied importing somewhere in the order of 80,000 tons of wheat per annum for this purpose alone. In 146 B.C., the Roman legions sacked Carthage and took over its wheat fields. Less than 25 years later, Rome was able to begin issuing grain to its citizens at subsidized prices, and later free of charge.

To make this possible, there had to be food ships leaving for Italy every day, weather permitting. They sailed the sea in large convoys. The crossing from Alexandria, Egypt took 13 days, and from Carthage four days or less.

According to Roman philosopher and politician Cicero, writing in the 1st century BC, Sardinia, Sicily and Africa were the main sources of wheat-growing, but this gradually changed. In the Bellum Judaicum, Roman-Jewish scholar Josephus, writing about the time of the destruction of Pompeii, maintained that Africa fed Rome for two-thirds of the year and Egypt for the remaining third.
History of wheat in Roman Empire

The History of flour in Romans times

The advent of agriculture changed the lives of the people. The Nomads started to settle, built villages and kept cattle. But even in the advanced civilizations the grains were still ground by hand between simple grindstones.

In earlier times, of baked bread was wanted it would first be necessary to grind grains of wheat into flour at home. It was a laborious job and in Roman republic, the women had of the household had to grind out flour.

They did it very simply; by spreading wheat grains on a large flat or slightly concave stone and rubbing them over with a smaller stone which might either be round, long and narrow like a roller. Romans called it ‘thrusting mill’.

The Romans were no longer satisfied with this: in order to supply the growing urban population with flour they ground the corn on cone mills – massive, heavy structures turned by slaves or animals. By the first century Romans were producing flour with water mills.

Later they applied gearing so that a vertical water-wheel could drive a horizontal stone. A Roman mill of sixteen water-wheels capable of producing up to nine tones of flour per day is known.

The construction of machines for such mills was described by Vitruvius, architect and engineer in his Ten Books of Architecture around 25 BC.

The largest complex of the Roman Empire appears to have been at Barbegal, near Arles, and it was estimated that it could produce twenty-five tons of flour a day.

During the later Republic and throughout the Empire most middle and lower class Romans relied upon commercial bakeries for their bread. Some bakeries used their own mills to grind grain into flour.
The History of flour in Romans times

Wheat in ancient Egypt

The kingdom of ancient Egypt existed for over 3000 years. Wheat was one of the most common grains used in ancient Egypt.

During 12000 BC early people settle in the fertile Nile valley. Around 7000 years ago changes took place when some of these people began to farm land. They planted wild wheat seeds and cultivated the cereal plants which grew.

Before that Egyptians adopted a complex of crops including emmer wheat that was domesticated in southwest Asia between 9000 and 7000 BC.

By trial and error over centuries efficient methods of cultivation and processing were developed by Egyptians.

By choosing seeds form healthy plants their corps became strong and gave a good return of grain.

Harvesting wheat

Farming became the main business of ancient Egypt. They also grew flax and barley in large amounts. 

Emmer remained virtually the only wheat until Roman rule established durum as the main cereal crop.

In pharaonic Egypt, they transformed emmer wheat and other cereals into bread and beer, the staples of their diet.

Only the middle and upper class used wheat for making cakes while the poorer made do with cakes of barley.

Allotment of grain including wheat also often served as the wages for workmen and artisans.
Wheat in ancient Egypt

Barley in ancient history

Archeological evidence indicates that the wild barley was growing in the ancient past in Fertile Crescent 35,000 – 40,000 years ago.

About 9000 BC, the Natufians, who had a Mesolithic culture, gathered and used wild grains.

The Egyptians have a tradition that barley was the first of the cereal mad use by a man and trace its introduction to their goddess Isis.

Sumerian clay tablets described and recommended cultural practices for raising barley around 1700 BC. Barley was an important crop throughout the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age.

It is one of ancient crops in India. It was widely consumed as human food and horse feed in early time, particularly by Aryans.

According to experts, six rowed barley which was being grown in the Indus Valley at Mahenjo-daro and Harappa by about 2500 BC, was almost certainly introduced for Mesopotamia.

In Europe, as early as 3000 BC, barley was a stable food utilized in various types of breads and cakes throughout Europe, especially in the British Isles and Scandinavian.

Barley remained a stable ingredient in porridges along with peas and oats in the British Isles but often was the only cereal ingredient in Scandinavian porridge and stew recipes up until early in the twentieth century.

Barley was first grown in North America in 1492 by a colony founded by Columbus. Spaniards introduced barley into Mexico during the conquest, and from there it was introduced by missionaries into California.
Barley in ancient history

Origin of rye

The precise origin of rye domestication is unknown, but it was being cultivated at several locations in the Eastern Turkey and Armenia by 6000 BC.

The earliest sign of rye, associated with agriculture comes from central Anatolia. Rye is a typical ‘secondary crop’: it was primarily a weed in wheat and barley fields, later adopted as a crop.

Rye arrived in Europe through the Aegean Basin and the south Balkan as a cultivated crop by 4000 BC. Probably a cultivated crop in the Early Iron Age, is found in Roman Britain in both the highland and lowland zones, but not with great frequency.

Because of its tough constitution, it may have performed better than wheat and barley in the cooler, nutrient poor northern climates and therefore attracted human attraction.

It spread in the Roman Empire was a late phenomenon.

In Sweden, the cultivation of rye increased in the Middle Ages, partly because it was favored by the Church and the Crown. However, it was restricted to the provinces Lake Malaren and the adjoining regions to the south east.

In modern times, tetraploid and hexaploid wheat have been artificially hybridized with rye to form the new crop called Triticale.
Origin of rye

Ancient cereal

Archeobotanical data shows that the first domesticated wheat species were einkorn (Triticum monococcum ssp. monococcum) and emmer (Triticum turgidum ssp, dicoccon). These evolved from their wild relatives T. boeticum and T. dicoccoides about 10 000 years ago.

Both species were the staple food of the human population until the end of the Bronze Age when naked Triticum species became dominant in agriculture lands.

The studies shows comparing ancient human remains (and foodstuffs that surrounded them) from all parts of the globe show that farming practices did not start from one community and spread; instead, these ancient farming communities began independently.

The wild cereal grains abounded and agriculture developed at the hands of Neolithic women who were most likely responsible for the first planting and harvesting of hand-sown crop.

The first recorded farming communities in the ninth millennium BC were found in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now called Iraq. These farmers were quite sophisticated and were in their way the founders of cereal technology.

They grew wheat and other cereal grains (as well as keeping livestock) and used quite complicated irrigation systems to maintain their crops.

Through the fourth millennium BC during most ancient Egyptians in the Early Dynastic Period and later periods, villages became increasingly dependent on the cultivation of emmer wheat and barley, which was increasingly successful in the environment of the Nile floodplain in Egypt.

In Roman times its cereal exports were of such importance to Italy that the trade enjoyed the peculiar protection of the state and the general imperial system of provincial government received special modifications in its adaptation to Egypt.

Record shows that from 2300 to 1750 BC, wheat, barley, and rice were grown by inhabitants of northern India. In all these ancient societies cereals continued to be among the preferred crops right through to the Egyptians and on to the modern farms of time.

Amaranth the pseudocereal was eaten by hunter-gatherers in both North and South America before the domestication of crops. Amaranth, a pseudocereal, was cultivated first (from 7000 to 5000 BC), but by around 2500 BC maize was first domesticated.

The plants were domesticated independently in the Andes.

Later still, around AD 250 to 1600, maize was hybridized to increase the yields by Maya-Aztec civilization. These people were excellent farmers, who developed methods for tilling dry soil to retain moisture and also built the irrigation canal and made artificial gardens that floated on water.

The agriculture implements used by Inca’s farmers were few and simple. A hoe with a bronze plate was used for general cultivation. The grain were principle staple crops in the higher valleys.

The people of Inca Empire lived in the inhospitable Andes in around AD 1200. They cultivated maize on terraces with intricate irrigation and drainage systems.

Ancient cereal

Grain in Ancient Egypt 1300 BC

Grain in Ancient Egypt 1300 BC
The wheat that Egyptian grew in such quantity was made into about 40 different sorts of bread, pastry, cakes and biscuits, but grinding the grain was very hard work. It was usually done by woman using two stones, and as it was done in the open air, grit and other foreign bodies found their way into the flour. These impurities caused extensive wear on the teeth, and Egyptians often suffered from both tooth infections and abscesses.

The Egyptians’ bread dough was made from flour and water – but without yeasts, so the bread did not rise. It was cooked as flat loaves or in moulds and different flavorings could be added, such as honey, milk, eggs, fruit, butter and herbs.

Barley was the other major grain crop, and the Ancient Egyptians used it to make the beer that every one drank everyday - even the gods. The brew had an alcohol content of about 8 per percent. To make it, the Egyptians first moistened barley with water, and left it to stand. Then they mixed the moist grains with lightly baked barley loaves in a large jar, poured on more water and let the mixture ferment. When the beer was ready it was very thick and had to be strained before drinking.
Grain in Ancient Egypt 1300 BC

History of Rice

Food History
The greatest variety of rice is found in the zone of monsoonal rainfall extending from eastern India through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, northern Vietnam, and into southern China. This diversity of species, including those considered by many to have been involved in the original domestication process, lends support to the argument for mainland Southeast Asia as the heartland of rice cultivation.

Linguistic evidence also points to the early origin of cultivated rice in this same Asian arc. In several regional languages the general terms for rice and food, or for rice and agriculture, are synonymous. Such is not the case in any other part of the world. Religious writings and practices are also seen as evidence of the longevity of rice as a staple item of the diet. Both Hindu and Buddhist scriptures make frequent reference to rice, and in both religions the grain is used as a major offering to the gods. In contrast, there is no correspondingly early reference to rice in Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament, and no references exist in early Egyptian records.

Archeologists have found evidence that rice was an important food in Mohenjo-Daro as early as 2500 B.C. and in the Yangtze Basin in the late Neolithic period.

The earliest and most convincing archeological evidence for domestication of rice in Southeast Asia was discovered by Wilhelm G. Solheim II in 1966. Pottery shards bearing the imprint of both grains and husks of O. sativa were discovered at Non Nok Tha in the Korat area of Thailand. These remains have been confirmed by 14C and thermoluminescence testing as dating from at least 4000 B.C. This evidence not only pushed back the documented origin of cultivated rice but, when viewed in conjunction with plant remains from 10,000 B.C. discovered in Spirit Cave on the Thailand-Myanmar border, suggests that agriculture itself may be older than was previously thought. No parallel evidence has been uncovered in Egyptian tombs or from Chaldean excavations.

From an early beginning somewhere in the Asian arc, the process of diffusion has carried rice in all directions until today it is cultivated on every continent save Antarctica. In this early hearth area, rice was grown in forest clearing under a system of shifting cultivation. The crop was grown by direct seeding and without standing water. Rice was grown on "farms" under conditions only slightly different from those to which wild rice was subject.

A similar but independent pattern of the incorporation of wild rices into an agricultural system may well have taken place in one or more locations in Africa at approximately the same time. It was in China that the processes of puddling soil and transplanting seedlings were likely refined. Both operations became integral pats of rice farming and remain very widely practiced to this day. Puddling breaks down the internal structure of soils, making them much less subject to water loss through percolation. In this respect, it can be thought of as a way of extending the utility of a limited supply of water. Transplanting is the planting of 1- to 6- wk-old seedlings in standing water. Under these conditions, the rice plants have an important head start over a very wide range of competing weeds, which leads to higher yields.

Transplanting, like puddling, provides the farmer with the ability to better accommodate the rice crop to a finite and fickle water supply by shortening the field duration (since seedlings are grown separately, and a higher density) and adjusting the planting calendar. With the development of puddling and transplanting, rice became truly domesticated. In China, the history of rice in river valleys and low-lying areas is longer that its history as a dryland crop.

In Southeast Asia, by contrast, rice was originally produced under dryland conditions in the uplands, and only recently did it come to occupy the vast river deltas. Migrant peoples from South China or perhaps northern Vietnam carried the traditions of wetland rice cultivation to the Philippines during the second millennium B.C., and Deutero-Malays carried the practice to Indonesia about 1500 B.C. From China or Korea, the crop was introduced to Japan no later than 100 B.C. Movement to western India and south to Sri Lanka was also accomplished very early.

The date of 2500 B.C. has already been mentioned for Mohenjo-Daro, while in Sri Lanka, rice was a major crop as early as 1000 B.C. The crop may well have been introduced to Greece and neighboring areas of the Mediterranean by the returning members of Alexander the Great's expedition to India ca. 344-324 B.C. From a center in Greece and Sicily, rice spread gradually throughout the southern portions of Europe and to a few locations in North Africa.

Interestingly enough, medical geographers in the 16th century played an important role in limiting the adoption of rice as a major crop in the Mediterranean area. During the 16th and early 17th centuries, malaria was a major disease in southern Europe, and it was believed to be spread by the bad air (hence the origin of the name) of swampy areas. Major drainage projects were undertaken in southern Italy, and wetland rice cultivation was discouraged in some regions. In fact, it was actually forbidden on the outskirts of a number of large towns. Such measures were a significant barrier to the diffusion of rice in Europe.
Food History

History of Wheat

Food History

Wheat is an ancient grain. Thought to have originated in southwestern Asia, it has been consumed as a food for more than 12,000 years.

It played an important role of religious significance and was part of the sacred rituals of many cultures. Greek, Roman, Sumerian and Finnish mythology had gods and goddesses of wheat. This exceptionally nutritious grain is still considered to be sacred in some areas of China.

Wheat was not native to the Western Hemisphere and was only introduced here in the late 15th century when Columbus came to the New World. While wheat was grown in the United States during the early colonial years, it was not until the late 19th century that wheat cultivation flourished, owing to the importation of an especially hardy strain of wheat known as Turkey red wheat, which was brought over by Russian immigrants who settled in Kansas.

As rice has been the dietary staple of Asia, wheat has served this role for many of other regions of the world. It is estimated that approximately one-third of the world's people depend upon wheat for their nourishment.

The collection of wheat offered man a number of advantages. Grains could be stored without spoiling. They could be stocked or carried from place to place and prepared in any number of ways. Grain could be traded for other essentials or comforts, eventually leading to the development of commerce and a means of supplying food for city populations from distant fields.

Today, the largest commercial producers of wheat include the Russian Federation, the United States, China, India, France and Canada.

Food History

History of Oat

Food History

Oats did not become important to man as early as wheat or barley. Oats probably per­sisted as a weed‑like plant in other cereals for centuries prior to being cultivated by itself. Some authorities believe that our present cultivated oats developed as a mutation from wild oats. They think this may have taken place in Asia Minor or south­eastern Europe not long before the birth of Christ.

Probably the oldest known oat grains were found in Egypt among remains of the 12th Dynasty, which was about 2,000 B.C. These probably were weeds and not actually cultivated by the Egyptians. The oldest known cultivated oats were found in caves in Switzerland that are believed to belong to the Bronze Age.

The history of oats is somewhat clouded because there are so many different species and subspecies, which makes identification of old remains very difficult. The chief modern center of greatest variety of forms is in Asia Minor where most all subspecies are in contact with each other. Many feel that the area with the greatest diversity of types is most likely where a particular plant originated.

Oats were first brought to North America with other grains in 1602 and planted on the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts. As early as 1786, George Washington sowed 580 acres to oats. By the 1860s and 1870s, the westward shift of oat acreage in the United States had moved into the middle and upper Mississippi Valley, which is its major area of production today.

Oats are chiefly a European and North American crop. These areas have the cool, moist climate to which oats are best adapted. Russia, Canada, the United States, Finland, and Poland are the leading oat producing countries. Oats are adapted to a wide range of soil types, thus temperature and moisture conditions are the usual limiting factors as to where oats are grown. Perhaps no other country uses oats as much in their cropping system as does Scotland. Some winter oats are produced in the United States, but most are spring oats produced mainly in the north central states.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the five leading states in production usually were Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. By the 1960's, the main oat producing area began moving somewhat north and westward. In 2000, the rank of states in order of production was Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Iowa. Iowa acreage peaked at about 6.4 million acres in 1950 and slumped to 270,000 acres, of which only 180,000 acres were harvested, by 2000. The more profitable crop, soybean, has replaced the oat acreage.
Food History