I am reading "Germs, Guns, and Steel" by Jared Diamond (I need a break from work and learning sometime; yes, I am a geek who considers reading a leisure activity) and discovered that the earliest domesticated crops were wheat and barely in the Fertile Crescent. "A next stage of crop development included the first fruit and nut trees... They comprised olives, figs, dates, pomegranates, and grapes."(p. 124) Is it a coincidence that this list so perfectly matches the 7 minim that Eretz Yisrael is praised for?
(I intentionally did an elipses where the author dates the domestication of these crops to avoid the Torah dating vs.anthropological dating conflict. Whatever the date, these crops were viewed in Ancient culture as almost the definition of domestic farming, so a land bountiful in those crops would be treasured).
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