The grass that made civilization possible — by enabling the settled surplus agriculture that produced cities, writing, mathematics, states, and the civilizational dependency structure that still governs global food security
Before wheat, the largest human settlement was a village of a few hundred people. Within 3,000 years of wheat domestication, cities of tens of thousands existed. Writing had been invented to track grain. Mathematics had been developed to manage it. Armies existed to protect it. The state existed to tax it. Everything we call civilization was, at its base, a consequence of a grass that could be stored.