중학교 영어 3 (미래엔 최연희) 연계 글

Bread, rice cakes, and tortillas are made from three different grains: wheat, rice, and maize. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, these three grains provide more than half of the world's food energy. All three began as wild grasses, each in a different part of the world.

Wheat was first grown about 10,000 years ago in Southwest Asia, in an area now called the Fertile Crescent. Wild wheat drops its seeds on the ground as soon as they are ripe. When farmers living in the area harvested their fields, the plants holding on to their seeds were the easiest to collect. Farmers planted those seeds again, so over time, more and more of their wheat kept its seeds. From Southwest Asia, wheat spread west into Europe, south into Africa, and east across Asia. It did reach China in the end, but the journey took thousands of years.

Asian rice was first grown about 9,000 years ago in what is now southern China. Rice farming later spread to other parts of Asia, including the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Asia, however, was not the only place where rice was first grown. Farmers living in West Africa did start growing their own rice about 3,000 years ago, and it came from a different wild grass.

Maize came from a wild grass called teosinte, which still grows in southern Mexico. A teosinte ear holds only about ten seeds, each locked inside a hard case. An ear of maize can hold hundreds of seeds with no such case. It may seem strange, but teosinte and maize do belong to the same species. People in southern Mexico began to grow maize about 9,000 years ago, and it slowly spread across the Americas.

Maize grew only in the Americas until 1492, when Christopher Columbus and his crew saw it on islands in the Caribbean. Ships returning to Spain soon carried the grain across the Atlantic Ocean. After that, maize did spread quickly, and during the 1500s, it reached parts of Africa and Asia.

Today, each of these grains grows far from the place where it was first farmed. A student eating a sandwich in Seoul is enjoying a gift from ancient farmers in Southwest Asia.