Two hypotheses may be drawn from these facts: 1. That the barleys with four and six rows were, in prehistoric agriculture anterior to that of the ancient Egyptians who built the monuments, derived from H. distichon. 2. The barleys with six and four ranks were species formerly wild, extinct since the historical epoch. It would be strange in this case that no trace of them has remained in the floras of the vast region comprised between India, the Black Sea, and Abyssinia, where we are nearly sure of their cultivation, at least of that of the six-ranked barley.
Rye—Secale cereale, Linnæus.
Rye has not been very long in cultivation, unless, perhaps, in Russia and Thrace. It has not been found in Egyptian monuments, and has no name in Semitic languages, even in the modern ones, nor in Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit. These facts agree with the circumstance that rye thrives better in northern than in southern countries, where it is not usually cultivated in modern times. Dr. Bretschneider[1864] thinks it is unknown to Chinese agriculture. He doubts the contrary assertion of a modern writer, and remarks that the name of a cereal mentioned in the memoirs of the Emperor Kanghi, which may be supposed to be this species, signifies Russian wheat. Now rye, he says, is much cultivated in Siberia. There is no mention of it in Japanese floras.
The ancient Greeks did not know it. The first author who mentions it in the Roman empire is Pliny,[1865] who speaks of the secale cultivated at Turin at the foot of the Alps, under the name of Asia. Galen,[1866] born in A.D. 131, had seen it cultivated in Thrace and Macedonia under the name briza. Its cultivation does not seem ancient, at least in Italy, for no trace of rye has been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of the north of that country, or of Switzerland and Savoy, even of the age of bronze. Jetteles found remains of rye near Olmutz, together with instruments of bronze, and Heer,[1867] who saw the specimens, mentions others of the Roman epoch in Switzerland.
Failing archæological proofs, European languages show an early knowledge of rye in German, Keltic, and Slavonic countries. The principal names, according to Adolphe Pictet,[1868] belong to the peoples of the north of Europe: Anglo-Saxon, ryge, rig; Scandinavian, rûgr; Old High German, roggo; Ancient Slav, ruji, roji; Polish, rez; Illyrian, raz, etc. The origin of this name must date, he says, from an epoch previous to the separation of the Teutons from the Lithuano-Slavs. The word secale of the Latins recurs in a similar form among the Bretons, segal, and the Basques, cekela, zekhalea; but it is not known whether the Latins borrowed it from the Gauls and Iberians, or whether, conversely, the latter took the name from the Romans. This second hypothesis appears to be the more probable of the two, since the Cisalpine Gauls of Pliny’s time had quite a different name. I also find mentioned a Tartar name, aresch,[1869] and an Ossete name, syl, sil,[1870] which points to an ancient cultivation to the east of Europe.
Thus historical and philological data show that the species probably had its origin in the countries north of the Danube, and that its cultivation is hardly earlier than the Christian era in the Roman empire, but perhaps more ancient in Russia and Tartary.
The indication of wild rye given by several authors should scarcely ever be accepted, for it has often happened that Secale cereale has been confounded with perennial species, or with others of which the ear is easily broken, which modern botanists have rightly distinguished.[1871] Many mistakes which thus arose have been cleared up by an examination of original specimens. Others may be suspected. Thus I do not know what to think of the assertions of L. Ross, who said he had found rye growing wild in several parts of Anatolia,[1872] and of the Russian traveller Ssaewerzoff, who said he saw it in Turkestan.[1873] The latter fact is probable enough, but it is not said that any botanist verified the species. Kunth[1874] had previously mentioned it in “the desert between the Black Sea and the Caspian,” but he does not say on what authority of traveller or of specimens. Boissier’s herbarium has shown me no wild Secale cereale, but it has persuaded me that another species of rye might easily be mistaken for this one, and that assertions require to be carefully verified.
Failing satisfactory proofs of wild plants, I formerly urged, in my Géographie Botanique Raisonnée, an argument of some value. Secale cereale sows itself from cultivation, and becomes almost wild in parts of the Austrian empire,[1875] which is seldom seen elsewhere.[1876] Thus in the east of Europe, where history points to an ancient cultivation, rye finds at the present day the most favourable conditions for living without the aid of man. It can hardly be doubted, from these facts, that its original area was in the region comprised between the Austrian Alps and the north of the Caspian Sea. This seems the more probable that the five or six known species of the genus Secale inhabit western temperate Asia or the south-east of Europe.
Admitting this origin, the Aryan natives would not have known the species, as philology already shows us; but in their migrations westward they must have met with it under different names, which they transported here and there.
Common Oats and Eastern Oats—Avena sativa, Linnæus; Avena orientalis, Schreber.