Journal of Biology and Today's World

Cereals were the foundation of human civilization. Cereal frontiers coincided with civilizational frontiers. The term Fertile Crescent explicitly implies the spatial dependence of civilization on cereals. The Great Wall of China and the Roman limes demarcated the same northern limit of the cereal cultivation. The Silk Road stretched along the cereal belt of Eurasia. Numerous Chinese imperial edicts stated: “Agriculture is the foundation of this empire,” while the foundation of agriculture were the Five Grains. Cereals determined how large and for how long an army could be mobilized. For this reason, Shang Yang called agriculture and war “the One.” Guan Zhong, Chanakya (the author of Arthashastra) and Hannibal expressed similar concepts. At the dawn of history, the Sumerians believed that if agriculture of a state declines, Inanna, the goddess of war, leaves this state. Several gods of antiquity combined the functions of what Shang Yang called “the One” – agriculture and war: the Hittite Sun goddess of Arinna, the Canaanite Lahmu and the Roman Janus. These were highly important gods in their time leaving their legacy until today. We still begin the year with the month of Janus (January). The Jews believe that Messiah will be born in the town of Lahmu (Bethlehem) and the Christians believe that he was already born there. Lahmu is the responsible why in Hebrew until today bread (lehem) and warfare (lehima) are of the same root. In fact, most persistent and flourishing empires throughout history in both hemispheres were centered in regions fertile for cereals. Historian Max Ostrovsky argues that this historic pattern never changed, not even in the Industrial Age. He stresses that all modern great powers have traditionally remained first and foremost great cereal powers. The “finest hour” of the Axis powers “ended precisely the moment they threw themselves against the two largest cereal lebensraums” (the United States and the USSR). The outcome of the Cold War followed the Soviet grave and long-lasting cereal crisis, exacerbated by the cereal embargo imposed on the USSR in 1980. And, called “the grain basket of the world,” the most productive “cereal lebensraum” dominates the world ever since.