The history of barley

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Few crops are woven as deeply into human history as barley. Hordeum vulgare is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world — a grain that fed early cities, was traded as currency, and gave humanity one of its first beers.

Origin and domestication

Barley was domesticated alongside wheat near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the region we call the Fertile Crescent, and spread from ancient Persia to North Africa, including present-day Egypt. The earliest archaeological remains, found in Iran and Syria, date to around 8000 BCE. Its wild ancestor is Hordeum spontaneum Koch — a grass with a fragile rachis (the central axis of the ear that shatters to scatter seed); both the wild and cultivated forms are diploid, with 2n = 14 chromosomes.

The Fertile Crescent was long considered a single centre of origin, but later discoveries — including six-row barleys in Morocco — pointed elsewhere. Researchers (Moralejo et al.) concluded the origin is in fact multicentric: the Mediterranean region and, possibly, Tibet.

Barley in antiquity

Barley's uses in the ancient world were remarkably broad:

• The Egyptians used barley to make beer — though as bread rose in importance, barley gradually ceded ground to wheat.
• In ancient Mesopotamia there were dedicated "barley officers" responsible for its cultivation and storage, and a text known as the "Instructions of the god Ninurta" set out the tasks needed to grow it.
• Barley was even used as a form of money in Mesopotamia.
• It appears in the Book of Exodus in connection with the plagues of Egypt.
• Greeks and Romans knew it well — using it for bread, and as the dietary base of Roman gladiators. Calcined barley-and-wheat cakes found in Switzerland date to the Stone Age.

Spread across the world

From its centres of origin, barley cultivation expanded east to Nepal, India and China, and eventually to every temperate region on Earth. Along the way the crop diversified into the two great families brewers know today: 2-row barley (Hordeum distichum), the older form that appeared around 9,000 years ago in the Near East, and 6-row barley (Hordeum hexastichum), which emerged roughly 6,000–7,000 years ago with finds in Egypt and Mesopotamia. (Read more in our guide to 2-row vs 6-row barley.)

Barley reaches the Americas

In Argentina — today a malting-barley powerhouse — cultivation likely began with European settlers. The first exports, just 2 tons, were shipped in 1875. Barley first appeared in Argentine statistics in 1909, with around 60,000 hectares grown mostly as feed barley, and malting-barley production expanded through the 20th century alongside the brewing industry (with a notable early expansion in Mendoza between 1914 and 1935).

Timeline at a glance

Year	Milestone
~8000 BCE	Earliest barley remains in Iran and Syria
~9000 BCE	Approximate start of 2-row cultivation (Near East)
~6000–7000 BCE	Six-row barley appears in Egypt / Mesopotamia
Antiquity	Egyptian beer; barley used as money in Mesopotamia
1875	First barley exports from Argentina (2 t)
1909	Barley enters Argentine statistics (~60,000 ha)
1966	Maris Otter bred in England
1981	Harrington licensed in Canada
2025–2026	Verónica INTA and Beatriz INTA released in Argentina