Ancient Wheat - how tall?

[Nathan Ross]

A simple question - how tall did wheat (or barley, etc) grow in the ancient world?

I know that modern wheat is rather stunted, and apparently at some point in the past a field of wheat could stand up to four feet tall, but I don't know to what extent this was due to more intensive farming methods than might have been available in, say, Iron Age Gaul...

Any suggestions much appreciated!

:-)

[Eleatic Guest]

That high.

[Nathan Ross]

Succinct! Thanks.

It looks from that relief that the wheat is only a little more than knee high, which is not that much more than modern crops. This reconstruction (presumably in an 'ancient' wheatfield?) seems to show the same.

This appears a lot shorter than crops from the middle ages and later, as shown here, for example. Would that be right?

[Eleatic Guest]

Well, difficult to say. There are Egyptian reliefs where the crop stands visibly higher: here and here.

K.D. White (Roman Farming p. 182) only says that "in the neighbourhood of Rome, and generally elsewhere the stalks were cut off at middle height", based on a Roman relief as evidence. The legionaries depicted have to bent their knee to use the sickle.

The New Pauly is silent on the matter.

[Vindex]

I'm meeting my saddler on Sunday who has used spelt straw as stuffing for my Roman saddle. I'll ask her how tall that is - but then we're into different weather systems, seasonal differences over the ages, soil types etc etc etc...

[Nathan Ross]

Thanks again. So it seems that fecund Egypt at least could yield crops of Breugel-like proportions!

Looking at some 19th-20th century images of traditional harvesting, it seems the stalks could range from just above knee high to nearly chest high. But these may have been different sorts of crop...

[Simplex]

Hi,
....methinks....
....there may have been differences in crop height from north to south. Naturally, since the climates were/are warmer in the south.
So while the (typical) crop length as pictured in #356622 may be correct for Gaul (the harvesting device was mostly used in Gaul and the adjacent provinces AFAIK)
....the (typical) crop length for Egypt (and other more southerly provinces of the Roamn Empire) may have been different -- one might guess: larger.
Bruegel's depictions ( in that case from 1565) are reflecting the "as is" of his lifetime , the 16th century, -- with more than 1000 years gone the crops may well have been developped to what we see in Bruegels painting.

Greez

Simplex

[Vindex]

Due to the excessively wet spring in UK, the linseed crop on Salisbury Plain has only flowered at mid calf height instead of over the knee (on my part of the Plain, anyway).

[Eleatic Guest]

In this context, the allegory of Thrasybulus also came to my mind, although it does not indicate the height of the wheat (haven't checked the two original sources, though).

[PhilusEstilius]

I was out seeing my favorite farmer friend just recently and his barley is coming along very well and stands at about 3 feet high, where the modern type of wheat is not much above knee hight and over the last 30 years I've been going there I have noticed the changes in the hight of wheat due to more modern methods
However when I think back to when I was a young boy in the 40s most wheat then was about 3 feet high and used to be stacked in rows after being cut before it was threashed.
Then where I look the links that have been put forward up to now I find that most of them are indeed artists impressions of crops so can we trust what we see, or is it that they were simply trying to show bumper harvests.
There is a wheat that was grown in the Americas known as White Sornoran that was around 40 inches high but one can't imagine wheat growing much higher or the yeald is not going to be there.

[Nathan Ross]

most of them are indeed artists impressions of crops so can we trust what we see, or is it that they were simply trying to show bumper harvests.

Yes, I wondered that - most of the taller crops seem to be in paintings or drawings, and the height is perhaps exaggerated!

There are a few early photos of what look to be very high crops, like this one (hard to make out, but the ears of wheat appear to be about chest high or a bit more).

Something like this might be more usual - waist high or so.

A page on Heritage Harvest shows traditionally grown crops at around waist high again - however, we must allow for Moi's points on changing climate and soil types.

I was mainly interested in the type of crop that might be grown in north-west europe - Gaul, essentially - in the Roman period. The 'vallus' images would seem to cover this. So a comparatively low field, but still taller than we see today seems most likely.

[Vindex]

I believe oats are the highest growing grain crop - the photo is very blurry but if the heads are not tight as wheat and barley should be, perhaps they are harvesting oats?

[PhilusEstilius]

Nathan.
That first picture shows how it was done in my earlier years and maybe that is around a possible 40 inch high.