A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s7.11

v1.c19.s7.11

Barley. All barleys, wild and cultivated, belong to the same potentially interfertile population and are grouped under one species, *Hordeum vulgare*. There is now overwhelming evidence to show that barley was domesticated from a two-row progenitor resembling *H. vulgare* subsp. *spontaneum* in the Near East region around 8000 B.C. (Harlan, 1968, 1969). The barley culture in India appears to have come from western Asia (the Near East in European terms), and can be followed with fair certainty across northern India and then southwards (Raikes and Dyson, 1961; Sankalia, Subharao and Deo, 1953; and Vishnu-Mittre, 1974). The series of archaeological finds from Ur and Mohenjo-daro have now pushed back the antiquity of India’s relations with western Asia to the third millennium B.C. At that time the ancient Indus cities were in regular and intimate contact with the Sumerian cities of Iraq (Sen, 1963).⁸