Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1936-04-21
STARS, MEN AND ATOMS
book of Science Progress in Field,
Laboratory and Study.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

Human civilization originated indie
pendently In approximately seven GEN.
tiers.
The legendary continents of Atlantis
and Mu in the Atlantic and Pacific
never existed.
These two conclusions were presented
before the Washington Academy of
Sciences this week by Dr. E D. Merrill
of Harvard University on the basis of
his studies of the origins of mans basic
food plants.
DR.. Merrill proceeded from the thesis
that primitive agriculture, making pos
sible the storage of food and some sort
of guarantee against hunger, was the
f1rss essential of stable communities
with established institutions. Without
this man must be nomad.
Now, he said, there are only about 100
of these basic food plants, including
grains, fruits and vegetables, in the
world Every one of them has been in
cultivation from long before the dawn
of history. Man has not been able to
make single addition to the list. AS
civilization has progressed he has
enormously improved them, and added
new varieties. But he has not been able
to bring any more species of wild plants
of basic food Importance into cultivation.
Hence, he concluded, settled commune
ties must have sprang up first in the
natural habitats of these plants where
primitive man had been able to observe
them for many generations in the wild
state, and thus learn enough about them
successfully to cultivate them. This
could be done only with plants that
naturally lent themselves to cultivation.
DR.. Merrill cited as an example the
wild rice of North America. 1t grows
abundantly along the Potomac. 1t is
an excellent grain. Indians harvested
it for countless generations before the
coming of the white men. But they
never cultivated it, thus inSuring a
stable supply. White men have been
able to do no better. The reason is
that the seeds will not remain fertile
over Winter unless they are kept in
mud of just the right consistency. SINH
lar difficulties stand in the way OF the
cultivation of thousands of plants which,
at first thought, would seem to promise
vast possibilities as food crops. So no
independent civilization arose around
the wild rice marshes of North Ameri-
can rivers and lakes.
The seven centers to which the worlds
cultivated plants can be traced, as de-
termined by DR.. Merrill, are the high
lands of Mexico, the highlands of Peru
and Bolivia, the highlands of Abyssinia,
two centerS in China, one center In
Northern India, and one center in Tur-
kestan. From these centers the plants
spread to places where their cultivation
was intensified-but they must have been
brought into cultivation before starting
their migrations.
On the basis of this evidence, DR.
Merrill took strong issue with the school
of anthropologists who maintain that
civilization began N Egypt and branched
off from this center through the rest OF
the world. The great cultivated crop
of the Egyptians was barley. There Is
no wild barley in the Nile Valley. 1t is
found in the Abyssinian highlands.
There is no possible way, DIR. Merrill
said. for the wild grain to have gotten
down into Egypt. The seeds will not
float. Even if they could it would have
been impossible for them to have become
established in competition with the rich
flora of the hot lowlands.
Thus, DR.. Merrill insisted barley
civilization must have originated in
Abyssinia and have been carried into
Egypt through human migration or con-
quest. In the lowlands conditions were
more favorable for agriculture and the
cultivation became established.
There is not single cultivated plant,
DR.. Merrill said, which was common to
the Eastern and Western Hemisphere
before Columbus. The New World had
corn, beans, squaShes and pumpkins,
strawberries. tomatoes. It never had