According to a recent study, researchers have found that a specific plant known as Barley was used to help humans live at high altitudes. Barley was used as far back as 5200 years ago where people used to live on mountains or other high altitude locations.Scientists and researchers have mentioned that this brings new possibility for food that can enhance our tolerance to certain environments, including high altitudes.
People as far back as 20,000 years ago attempted to live at high altitudes but found it uncomfortable and very dangerous for a variety of reasons, however, a recent study has shown that people back then used a plant named ‘Barley’ to improve their chances of living up there. Most of the evidence of a settlement came from around 5000 years ago.
Barley is a frost-resistant crop that allows for farmers to grow plants and start farms up in colder environments, this allowed them to build the foundation for a settlement where people could live and grow. Many scientists have commented that around 5000 years ago, there was an expansionist period where farmers were seeking new exotic crops in hopes of growing them in environments where most wouldn’t thrive. Agriculture allows for entire villages to move to new locations provided they have the food needed, and Barley was the necessary resource for people to move to higher altitudes.
These types of establishments provided many benefits that would be missed when living on lowlands, some of the many include safety from bandits and other dangerous groups. Another is thatcertain animals only lived on higher altitudes. Author Dong Guanghui has mentioned that the decreasing temperature on lowlands made it hard for them to grow crops during the winter or fall season so they relocated to mountains where frost-resistant crops like barley could be grown and lived on.
Researchers have shown that the effects of agriculture on settlements are quite significant and that even a simple characteristic such as frost-resistance can encourage an entire village to move to more dangerous environments.Some farmers have also made the decision to permanently stay at high altitudes due to the stability of crop growth since the temperature is often the same.This also shows the potential to grow crops in different environments as most of your resources are grown on lowland and could be quite disastrous if a famine should occur.
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