Lucknow, January 20: “It is ironical that whenever we are talking about ancient civilasations and farming communities, the archaeological finds and reseaches have always been based on wheat and rice. Findings prove that millets have been cultivated even more than wheat and rice and can be helpful be identifying the real period and place of first farming.’’

Giving this opinion, Steve Weber of Washington State University and Dorian Q Fuller of the Institute of Archaeology, London say that archaeologists and researches across the world have always been biased towards millets.

‘‘These are the facts. In Southern India, millets were being cultivated as old as 3000 BC to 2500 BC, while rice came into existence only by 500 BC. and in North India, millet cultivation was even there before it made an entry in South India’’ said Fuller.

Weber added, “There have been sites in Gujarat, India, and even a few Harappan sites, which have been primarily millet-dominant.’’

Weber says that since millets were more nutritious and were even drought- resistant, perhaps more and more people started cultivating them before anything else. “In India, China and South Africa, millets were the staple diet. And surprisingly, the so very Indian millets like ragi, jowar and bajra actually come from South Africa.’’

Talking about the bias against millets, the duo, who were in the city to participate at the International Seminar on First Farmers in Global Perspective, organised by the state’s Directorate of Archaeology, said that since the 19th century, the bias has continued.

“The British started researching with rice and wheat and even today, organisations like the UN and FAO concentrate on that. This may have been because rice and wheat are bigger grains and easier to identify, whereas millets were smaller and more time-consuming to find,” they opined.