Wheat

Breeding across species is known to produce sterile offspring. However, bread, the staff of life, is a product of a very strange genetic event: the cross-breeding of two species to produce a third, fertile species. This has happened twice in the ancient history of wheat, the first time, about 30,000 years ago, to produce Emmer Wheat, and the second time, about 9,000 years ago, to produce the wheat we use today.

Wheat in Ancient Daily Life

Sprouted Emmer Wheat may have been the main ingredient of ancient Egyptian beer. Whether it was Emmer Wheat or barley, though, Egyptian beer was one of the daily essentials, along with bread and onions. [See Ancient Brewing.] The ancient Greek diet had similar essentials: bread, oil, and wine. [See The Staple Articles of Food.] In Deuteronomy 8, the promised land promises wheat before honey:

8:7 For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
8:8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
8:9 A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.

Evolution of Wheat

According to an article from Truth About Trade Technology, < URL = www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=5021 > "Ancient genetic tricks shape up wheat," a wild wheat (Triticum monococcum) crossed with a species of goat grass (Aegilops speltoides) to produce a new form that had four sets of chromosomes. Had there been just two chromosomes, the new wheat would have been, like a mule, sterile. However, the extra chromosomes allowed the new Emmer Wheat to reproduce. Emmer Wheat crossed with another goat grass (Aegilops tauschii) and produced a new wheat, the one we know, with six chromosomes.