The Chinese, who grew wheat 2700 B.C., considered it a gift direct from heaven.[1784] In the annual ceremony of sowing five kinds of seed, instituted by the Emperor Shen-nung or Chin-nong, wheat is one species, the others being rice, sorghum, _Setaria italica_, and soy. The existence of different names for wheat in the most ancient languages confirms the belief in a great antiquity of cultivation. The Chinese name is _mai_, the Sanskrit _sumana_ and _gôdhûma_, the Hebrew _chittah_, Egyptian _br_, Guancho _yrichen_, without mentioning several names in languages derived from the primitive Sanskrit, nor a Basque name, _ogaia_ or _okhaya_, which dates perhaps from the Iberians,[1785] and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish names, etc.,[1786] which are probably Turanian. This great diversity might be explained by a wide natural area in the case of a very common wild plant, but this is far from being the case of wheat. On the contrary, it is difficult to prove its existence in a wild state in a few places in Western Asia, as we shall see. If it had been widely diffused before cultivation, descendants would have remained here and there in remote countries. The manifold names of ancient languages must, therefore, be attributed to the extreme antiquity of its culture in the temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa—an antiquity greater than that of the most ancient languages. We have two methods of discovering the home of the species previous to cultivation in the immense zone stretching from China to the Canaries: first, the opinion of ancient authors; second, the existence, more or less proved, of wheat in a wild state in a given country.