Gatherers domesticated plants in just a few, widely separate parts of the world. In about 8000 B.C.E., people began cultivating wheat, barley, and peas in the Middle East; sugar cane in New Guinea; and squash in Peru. Within 500 years, similar processes had begun with rice in southern China; bananas and taro, a root crop, in New Guinea; and sorghum, a grain, in the eastern Sahara region of Africa.
