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Common oats are a hexaploid species, (six sets of chromosomes), closely related to wild oat species such as avena sterilis. Which is considered its primary progenitor
A. sterilis and A. fatua are still common weeds and can hybridize with cultivated oats.

Oats appear to have been initially weeds that became crops
Known as Vavilovian mimicry, oats were common in fields of early cereals, and only later become delivery cultivated. Ititially they were inadvertently selected by humans during harvesting.

The wild ancestors of oat grow around the Mediterranean and Near East (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Iraq).

Originally oat plants that did not shatter, (retain seed), were more likely to be collected and replanted. Gradually leading to selection of domestication traits
As agriculture spread into cooler, wetter northern Europe, oat’s ecological flexibility made it more appealing, supporting its cultivation as a crop rather than a weed.

It appears to have been domesticated as a crop around 3 or 4 thousand years ago in Europe
Many millennia after wheat and barley.

Especially northwestern Europe, where cooler, wetter climates favored oat success as a deliberate crop. Domestication and improvement occurred in Europe

Archaeological evidence indicates wild oat grains in early neolithic contexts alongside other cereals. Domesticated (non-shattering) oats are not archaeologically common until the bronze age, and later in Europe

Particularly in cooler climates avena sativa, it became one of the worlds most major cereals

Likely spanned several centuries, or more, oats transitioned from a weed in cereal fields to a deliberately sown crop
It thrived particularly once farming expanded into better climates

Did you know? Oats are valued for high protein and beta-glucan soluble fiber, which can help reduce cholesterol and stabilize blood sugar.

Check out common oats, or avena sativa, cereal grains in the grass family poaceae. With some more neolithic architecture today!

Bibliography: Kamal, N., Tsardakas Renhuldt, N., Bentzer, J. et al. The mosaic oat genome gives insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop. Nature 606, 113–119 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04732-y

Kamal, Nadia & Renhuldt, Nikos & Bentzer, Johan & Gundlach, Heidrun & Haberer, Georg & Juhász, Angéla & Lux, Thomas & Bose, Utpal & Tye-Din, Jason & Lang, Daniel & van Gessel, Nico & Reski, Ralf & Fu (符永碧), Yong-Bi & Spégel, Peter & Ceplitis, Alf & Himmelbach, Axel & Waters, Amanda & Bekele, Wubishet & Colgrave, Michelle & Sirijovski, Nick. (2022). The mosaic oat genome gives insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop. Nature. 606. 1-7. 10.1038/s41586-022-04732-y.

Zhou, X.; Jellen, E.N.; Murphy, J.P. (1999). “Progenitor germplasm of domesticated hexaploid oat”. Crop Science. 39 (4): 1208–1214. doi:10.2135/cropsci1999.0011183x003900040042x (http
s://doi.org/10.2135%2Fcropsci1999.0011183x003900040042x). S2CID 8521495 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:8521495)

Weiss, Ehud; Kislev, Mordechai E.; Hartmann, Anat (16 June 2006). “Autonomous Cultivation Before Domestication”. Science. 312 (5780): 1608–1610. doi:10.1126/science.1127235 (https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.1127235). PMID 16778044 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16778044).