THE STANDARD By Gerard Nyele | February 18th 2021 at 07:15:00 GMT +0300 Cereals have dominated human nutrition since the first farmers began to cultivate them, before the dawn of history. In fact, about ancient history, the agricultural revolution and everything that followed have their origins in a curious and enduring bond first established between communities of hunter-gatherers and abundant wild grasses of the Poaceae family. The invention of irrigation in Mesopotamia about 8 000 years ago was a momentous first step in the intensification of cereal production, as expanding urban populations sought to meet their food needs by raising productivity. Whilst civilisation has continued to take shape driven by massive rural to urban migration, Humans have religiously continued to depend on cereals for their food. Over millennia of agricultural practice, More than half the calories that all of human civilisation is based upon come from the seeds of just three grass species – wheat, rice and corn.