Barley: An Ordinary Grain with an Extraordinary Impact

Barley: 

An Ordinary Grain with an Extraordinary Impact

http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/postharvest/pht_cereal_barley.html

One of the most popular grains in our world today, barley is a key ingredient in the production of goods including beer, porridge, breads, cereals, animal feeds, whiskey, and even tea.  Though its uses may appear to be limited to the culinary realm, barley has had a profound impact on world history.  From its initial cultivation, which is believed to have sparked the Neolithic Revolution, to its vast cultural and economic impacts in our world today, human history has been indisputably altered by this seemingly simple grain.

http://globalfoodpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/prosperity-property-or-beer-what-drove-human-agriculture/

For all past human history, man had been a hunter-gatherer, roaming from place to place in quest for the next meal.  Approximately 12,000 years ago, however, inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent began to cultivate plants themselves, abandoning their former nomadic lifestyle for a more sedentary one in an era now referred to as the Neolithic Revolution.  According to recent findings, perhaps the largest driving factor that caused this shift to an agricultural way of living was the need to make beer, and this first beer was made from barley.  Those in the Fertile Crescent regarded beer with the utmost importance, evidenced in ancient cuneiform writings, throughout which the word for beer was written extensively.

The desire to produce beer thus drove these early people to devise new technology to better cultivate barley.  These technological advancements allowed for the farming of other crops and the raising of livestock, giving these new settlements the ability to have a surplus food supply, which they had never before experienced.  Surpluses consequently helped promote skill specialization and division of labor in these early settlements.  Therefore, without barley, mankind would not have had the incentive to take on sedentary lifestyles, and consequently the specialized, permanent societies which dominate our world today might never have formed.

http://www.travelsignposts.com/Germany/food/oktoberfest-food

As shown in this video, mankind has never overcome its obsession with barley since the Neolithic Revolution.  Beer is still one of the most popular beverages on the planet, and people have widely expanded its usage- from culinary goods, like bread and cereals, to therapeutic medicines to distilled alcohol products.  Researchers have begun to explore its genetic makeup, and it has taken a prominent role in farming, botany, and horticulture.  Since the Neolithic Revolution, barley has never ceased to dominate and guide human industry, business, science, and cuisine.  Without barley, the world would not exist as it does today.