How “millet” was key to agricultural societies

Have you ever had something that you thought you knew turned on its head? It might have been that you thought you knew how to make a good lasagne until a friend showed you how to make a really palate-seducing Béchamel sauce. Maybe you thought you knew all about the effects of lack of sleep; and then you became a parent. The reassuring thing is that you aren’t on your own; the nature of knowledge is that it is evolving all the time. What we think we know about the Universe now will seem laughable in a century from now, or possibly even a decade. Historians and prehistorians are well acquainted too with having what they thought they knew tossed out the window by some new discovery. In fact, a recent report has challenged what we thought we knew about a very fundamental part of human social history: the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies.

To manage the different needs of different crops and the people growing them, an elaborate social contract had to develop and as it did so did larger settlements develop.

The previous assumptions were that early agriculture occurred in river valleys where there is easy access to water. However, a new analysis of the humble grain millet has challenged that notion.

In the Western world today, millet is best known as birdseed but it probably played a role in the development of farming and may play a role in future food security. For the new report, a team of archaeologists traced the spread of millet from Northern China and Inner Mongolia into Europe. They found that it passed through a hilly corridor along the foothills of Eurasia and that the nature of millet was what made it possible for hunter-gatherers to grow it as a crop.

Millet favours uphill locations, does not require a lot of water and has a short growing season. Millet can be planted and harvested within 45 days whereas a crop like rice takes 100 days. This meant that nomadic tribes could combine growing a millet crop with their migration across continents around 4000-4500 years ago. So millet was probably the first farmed grain and it would not have happened in river valleys. Eventually millet was mixed in with other crops and as multi-cropping developed you had different crops growing at different times of year with different water requirements. To manage the different needs of different crops and the people growing them, an elaborate social contract had to develop and as it did so did larger settlements develop.

Millet was a crucial grain in the development of agriculture and the researchers say that it might also play a role in ensuring future food security. As they say, from little seeds big things grow.