In a broad sense, wheat is a general term for wheat, barley, wheat, buckwheat, oats, etc., of which the wheat planting area is the most extensive, the most widely consumed, so people say wheat, most of the wheat refers to wheat.
The earliest name for wheat is “Lai”, the traditional Chinese character for Lai. The first name for wheat was “Lai”, which is a traditional Chinese word for “Lai”. Lai resembles the ears of wheat, and later the word “Lai” was followed by the word “Xi”, which resembles the root of wheat. The Ming Dynasty Li Shizhen in the “Compendium of Materia Medica” said: “Xu said the text: the sky descends the wheat, a barley, like the shape of the manslaughter, the sky is coming. As the foot line to come, so the word wheat from Lai from Xi. The word “xi” is used to describe the foot line. The poem cloud, I am I come mou is carried forward.” According to the explanation of “Chinese Characters”, Laimou is the word for wheat. The so-called sound, that is, the word sound of the word wheat, split to read; can also read the word Lai Mou two words faster, you can read the word sound of the word wheat to. Thus, Laimou became another name for wheat in ancient times.
According to tradition, wheat originated in West Asia. First by a grain of wild wheat and the proposed Spelt goat grass natural pollination, evolved into two grains of wheat; two grains of wheat and coarse goat grass “intermarriage”, to get the spike large, more seeds of ordinary wheat. In West and Southwest Asia, wild one-grain wheat, wild two-grain wheat and coarse goatgrass, which is closely related to common wheat, are still widely distributed. Southwestern Syria, northwestern Israel and southeastern Lebanon are the centers of distribution of wild two-grain wheat and the centers of origin of cultivated two-grain wheat.
According to the wheat remains excavated by archaeologists in many places in Central Asia, it is inferred that wheat is the product of the domestication of its wild ancestors by Neolithic man and has been cultivated for more than 10,000 years. Subsequently, it was introduced to Europe and Africa from around West Asia and the Near East, and spread eastward to India, Afghanistan, and China. The Encyclopedia of Chinese Agriculture – Crop Biography records that wheat was widely cultivated in Turkey, Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Israel as early as 7000-6000 BC; in Pakistan in 6000 BC, in Greece and Spain in Europe in 6000-5000 BC, and in Europe in 5000-5000 BC. Spain in 6000 B.C., Transcaucasia and Turkmenistan in the Soviet Union in 5000-4000 B.C., Egypt in Africa in 4000 B.C., India in 3000 B.C., and China in 2000 B.C. Wheat has been cultivated successively.
To determine the origin of the crop’s cultivation history, on the one hand, relies on historical documents, on the other hand, relies on the excavated ancient cultural relics and the distribution of wild species closely related to this crop, etc. From the archaeological and practical point of view, China may also be one of the origins of wheat, only a little later than in Western Asia.
From many excavated wheat artifacts, it is easy to see that the earliest evidence of wheat cultivation in China is at least 5,000 years ago, in 4,000-3,000 years ago, wheat has been widely cultivated not only in western China, but also in the south, east and central.
Of course, only to excavate wheat artifacts to conclude that China is also the origin of wheat, seems a bit too arbitrary, so far China has not found wild one-grain wheat and two-grain wheat. But if China is not the origin of wheat, in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the Ili Valley in many places, but there has long been a large area of coarse goatgrass native communities, in the Tibetan plateau also found in the ears of wheat self-break the original type of common wheat. And there is also the “wheat show song” in the Zhou Dynasty, the “Historical Records – Song Weizi Shiji” cloud: “After Kezi dynasty Zhou, over the old Yin ruins, feel the destruction of the palace, the birth of grain and millet, Kezi hurt, want to cry is not, want to cry for its near the woman, is the poem of wheat show to sing. The poem says: ‘The wheat is gradually growing, and the corn is greasy. He is a cunning boy, not good with me! The so-called cunning boy is also known as Zhou. When the people of Yin heard this, they all shed tears”; what about the names of places such as “Mai Cheng” in Danyang, Hubei, and “Mai Qiu” in Shanghe, Shandong? It seems that further research is needed to determine whether China is the origin of wheat.
