Most people do not realize how much mankind has altered food crops since Neolithic Revolution and beyond when societies made their way from subsistence foraging and hunting to agriculture and pastoralism.
Corn
Selective breeding has altered corn, also known as Maize, from a spindly whip to a burgeoning cob. Corn has its origins in Mesoamerica about 6300 years ago or perhaps earlier. It did not reach Europe until the 16th century.
The BananaA few years ago, Televangelist
Ray Comfort offered up the modern banana as an example of how his god designed food for man's uses. Later he was somewhat humbled when biologists provided evidence of how man has selected the fruit to its present form.

Edible bananas originated in the Indo-Malaysian region reaching to northern Australia.

They were known only by hearsay in the Mediterranean region in the 3rd Century B.C., and are believed to have been first carried to Europe in the 10th Century A.D. Early in the 16th Century, Portuguese mariners transported the plant from the West African coast to South America. The types found in cultivation in the Pacific have been traced to eastern Indonesia from where they spread to the Marquesas and by stages to Hawaii. To the left is a wild banana which is what our present day grocery store variety looked like thousands of years ago.
WheatWheat seems to be the genesis of what we call the agricultural revolution and started out as a wild grass. It originated in the area known as the
Fertile Crescent in
Western Asia approximately 11,000 years ago. The cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent and did not reach Europe unil about 5000 years ago. At right is an example of how the grains have been changed over the Millennia.
ApplesThe center of diversity of the genus
Malus is in eastern
Turkey. The apple tree was perhaps the earliest tree to be cultivated,
[7] and its fruits have been improved through selection over thousands of years.
Alexander the Great is credited with finding dwarfed apples in Asia Minor in 300
BCE; those he brought back to Macedonia might have been the progenitors of dwarfing root stocks. Winter apples, picked in late autumn and stored just above freezing, have been an important food in
Asia and
Europe for millennia, as well as in
Argentina and in the
United States since the
arrival of Europeans.
Apples were brought to
North America with colonists in the 1600s, and the first apple orchard on the North American continent was said to be near Boston in 1625. In the 1900s, irrigation projects in Washington state began and allowed the development of the multi-billion dollar fruit industry, of which the apple is the leading species.
Carbonized remains of apples have been found by archeologists in prehistoric lake dwellings in Switzerland, dating back to the Iron Age. There is also evidence to show that apples were eaten and preserved by slicing and sun drying during the Stone Age in Europe. The apple has a rich comtemporary history going back to greek and roman times, however I cannot seem to find much information about its origins and how it has changed. However, in future, scientist believe apples will look more like this:
Tomatoes
The tomato is native to South America. Genetic evidence shows that the progenitors of tomatoes were herbaceous green plants with small green fruit with a center of diversity in the highlands of Peru.]Apparently there is no history that the tomato was cultivated or even eaten in Peru before the Spanish arrived. These early species diversified into the dozen or so species of tomato recognized today. One species, was transported to Mexico where it was grown and consumed by prehistoric humans. The exact date of domestication is not known. Evidence supports the theory that the first domesticated tomato was a little yellow fruit grown by the Aztecs of Central Mexico who called it xitomatl , meaning plump thing with a navel, and later called tomatl by other Mesoamerican peoples. Aztec writings mention tomatoes were prepared with peppers, corn and salt, likely to be the original salsa recipe.
Possibly, Spanish explorer Cortez may have been the first to transfer the small yellow tomato to Europe after he captured the Aztec city of Tenochtítlan, now Mexico City in 1521. Also Christopher Columbus, may have taken it to Europe, earlier in 1493. The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in a herbal written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist, who named it pomo d’oro, golden apple.
Aztecs and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking; it was being cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas by 500 BCE.it probably looked more like these small yellow cherry tomatoes.
As a new plant in the 1600's the tomato was believed to be poisonous in England and the colonies and was used for decoration, but this myth had largely passed by the 1700's. Yet some people still insist on believing this.
Cotton

Cotton comes from a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb is suspended above the ground is flexible enough to allow the animal to bend downward, and graze on the grasses within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether is eaten the stem withers and the lamb dies. This plant-lamb has bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and is a favorite food of wolves, though no other carnivorous animal will attack it. This wonderful plant which bares living lambs for its fruit, grows in the area of Tartary. Since no one knows who cultivated it or where it originated from, the only explanation must be that it was placed onto the earth by God to used by his children how they see fit. Except of course, one shall not lie with the plant lest he be smote.
Labels: apples, Corn, crops, maize, neolithic revolution, Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, wheat