section_path: History/Spread
section_name: Spread
paragraph_text: Spread
  
  Domestic wheat was quickly spread to regions where its wild ancestors did not grow naturally. Emmer was introduced to Cyprus as early as 8600 BC and einkorn c. 7500 BC; emmer reached Greece by 6500 BC, Egypt shortly after 6000 BC, and Germany and Spain by 5000 BC. "The early Egyptians were developers of bread and the use of the oven and developed baking into one of the first large-scale food production industries." By 4000 BC, wheat had reached the British Isles and Scandinavia. Wheat likely appeared in China 's lower Yellow River around 2600 BC.
  
  The oldest evidence for hexaploid wheat has been confirmed through DNA analysis of wheat seeds, dating to around 6400–6200 BC, recovered from Çatalhöyük. As of 2023, the earliest known wheat with sufficient gluten for yeasted breads was found in a granary at Assiros in Macedonia dated to 1350 BC. From the Middle East, wheat continued to spread across Europe and to the Americas in the Columbian exchange. In the British Isles, wheat straw (thatch) was used for roofing in the Bronze Age, and remained in common use until the late 19th century. White wheat bread was historically a high status food, but during the nineteenth century it became in Britain an item of mass consumption, displacing oats, barley and rye from diets in the North of the country. It became "a sign of a high degree of culture". After 1860, the enormous expansion of wheat production in the United States flooded the world market, lowering prices by 40%, and (along with the expansion of potato growing) made a major contribution to the nutritional welfare of the poor.