WI no cereals in the Fertile Crecent (9000 BC)?

(Inspired on this threat: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=108635)

What if, for what ever reason, wheat, barley and wheat hadn't been domesticated in the middle east between 9000 BC and 7000 BC?

Let's say nobody come up with the idea, or more likely, let's say a "plant disease" whipes out their wild ancestors or or makes them unsafe for human consumption. Let's say they are not domesticated elsewhere.

How much would this "delay" old-world civilizations? Could this be enough to make the Americas more developped in relative terms? Would the Americas discover the Old World in this scenario? Or would we still have an world dominated by the Old World, but shaped by a civilization whose center lies in East Asia, Indonesia or Africa? Or would the Middle East still be the Center, once foreign crops like millet or rice?

Any thoughts?

These are interesting articles concerning this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_revolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_founder_crops
 
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IIRC, the wild ancestors of wheat and barley were only found in the middle east, so no one else would domesticate them anyway. It would be a blow to the rise of civilization, delaying it greatly... but they would still have cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and burros to domesticate. So no, the Americas wouldn't catch up to Europe, since the former still lacks all large domestic animals...
 
(Inspired on this threat: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=108635)

What if, for what ever reason, wheat, barley and wheat hadn't been domesticated in the middle east between 9000 BC and 7000 BC?

Interesting WI, and something which I can actually contribute to (for a change) since I've been doing a bit of research on this subject as part of my next timeline.

To be a smart-arse for a moment, the thread title contradicts what you've written here. There's actually more than three domesticable cereal crops native to the Middle East. Emmer wheat, einkorn wheat and barley were the main ones which were used historically, but they weren't the only ones. They weren't even the first; rye was domesticated a couple of thousand years before those crops, then for some reason abandoned.

The two most important other domesticable cereals in the Middle East were rye and oats. So that would probably mean agriculture in the Fertile Crescent with rye and oats, most likely a little later than it started in OTL. (Oats and rye may need longer to domesticate.) The Middle East would still have legumes like peas and chickpeas, and all the domesticable animals which gave agriculture such a kick-start there. So probably some delay in the start of civilization, but the broad trends would still be the same.

On the other hand, if we assume "no cereal crops in the Middle East whatsoever," then things get interesting...

Let's say nobody come up with the idea, or more likely, let's say a "plant disease" whipes out their wild ancestors or or makes them unsafe for human consumption. Let's say they are not domesticated elsewhere.

How much would this "delay" old-world civilizations? Could this be enough to make the Americas more developped in relative terms? Would the Americas discover the Old World in this scenario? Or would we still have an world dominated by the Old World, but shaped by a civilization whose center lies in East Asia, Indonesia or Africa? Or would the Middle East still be the Center, once foreign crops like millet or rice?

Let's see. You've knocked out the Fertile Crescent as a source of agriculture, and still left all the others. Egypt is gone as an early centre of cultivation (its core crops came from the Fertile Crescent). So there's still domesticated cereals in China (millets and rice) and in Ethiopia and the Sahel (sorghum, millets, teff). The crops in Ethiopia would probably spread down into Egypt eventually, and from there to the Middle East, but I'd say you've really messed up the history of agriculture.

You haven't replaced the Old World with the New, though. Agriculture in New Guinea, China and Africa will be independent of what happened in the Fertile Crescent. I'm not sure about India; its rice may have been locally domesticated or imported from China, and they got pearl millet as a major crop from Africa. Europe is going to be a relative backwater, though, since it will take a long time for crops to spread that far, and there probably aren't that many cold-season crops left from the other centres of agriculture. (Wheat, barley, and rye are the best cold-season crops). So that means that Europe away from the Mediterranean is probably going to be rather isolated.
 
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