Relationships can be notoriously complicated, and our ancient bond with wheat is no exception. As Catherine Zabinski recounts in “Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, From Wild Grass to World Megacrop,” it’s been a rocky path over the millennia, replete with heartbreak, endless drama and even an unlikely love affair. If it hadn’t been for a capricious interloper named goatgrass mixing into wheat’s gene pool half a million years ago, our daily staple of bread—not to mention birthday cakes, mac and cheese, and pepperoni pizza—might never have existed.
Ms. Zabinski introduces us to wheat in its earliest, wildest iteration, describing a seed that was at first nearly inedible for humans. Herbivores gobbled it up with impunity, fermenting grass and seeds alike in their multichambered, specialized stomachs. But wheat’s protective hull was so incredibly hard that our hunter-gatherer ancestors cracked their molars simply trying to chew on it. Eventually stones were used to grind the seeds into flour, providing primitive pastes and gruels when other resources were scarce. This required an inordinate amount of time, energy and organization.
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