Dr. Betty Kamen, Ph.D.

Table Talk Health Hints

How Civilization Began
(a speculative summary)

There is still some uncertainty about just how the hexaploid wheats "appeared on the scene" some 8,000 years ago. In all likelihood, the hexaploid wheats (these are the "modern" wheats, the group that includes common bread wheat and most commercial wheats) did not exist in nature prior to that time. They are the result of a random cross-pollination between a diploid (two sets of seven chromosomes) and a tetraploid (four sets of seven). Two plus four equals six - so the result is the hexaploid group.

Random cross-pollinations occur all the time in nature. But it's very, very rare to produce a viable organism that can reproduce itself. Even if the astronomically unfavorable odds are overcome, it's even less likely that the new hybrid will be competitive in the natural environment. The new plant doesn't have the benefit of mellennia of evolutionary selection, so it would soon be crowded out by the original species.

Here's where human intervention enters the picture: 8,000 years ago today, a farmer was out tending two adjacent fields of grain. One was einkorn, the now-forgotten diploid grain, and one was a tetraploid, possibly emmer or Persian wheat. She notices an unusual stalk, with bigger kernels. She's seen these before - they appear with some regularity on the boundaries between the two fields - but she's never had any success getting the seeds of these cross-breeds to germinate past the second generation.

This time, she collects the kernels and plants them - on a hunch - near some kernels from other hybrids that she's collected.

"Maybe one combination isn't enough," she reasons. "If I can get combinations of combinations, then I'll have more different kinds of combinations, and maybe one of them will be fertile enough to eventually plant a new field with these bigger kernels."

After several years of meticulous work - (during which she is undoubtedly ridiculed by the skeptics in the clan), she achieves some measure of success. The new line of wheat can perpetuate itself, as long as there are humans around to plant the seeds, keep the einkorn and Persian varieties off the field, and scare the birds away.

Our hypothetical farmer, even though she was only thinking of feeding her family with the next harvest, has fired the starting gun for western civilization. She also may have started her species on what some may regard as a long downhill nutritional slide.

Why a downhill slide? Because modern wheat has been modified to such an extent that tens of millions of people in North America alone are allergic to it! High yield, resistance to pests and disease, suitability for mechanized harvesting and milling, even color for pasta manufacturing are among the selection criteria. Nutritional content is secondary at best. And the by-products of this "artificial" selection - a biochemical brew that has completely bypassed the natural selection process - is something we can only guess about. It is often suggested that the further an agricultural product gets from it's naturally evolved state, the more likely it is to cause allergic responses.

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Dr. Betty Kamen, Ph.D.

How Civilization Began (a speculative summary)

How Civilization Began
(a speculative summary)