Wild Apples (1862)

A case of euro-centric vision blinding the writer, understandable because nobody knew the truth in those years.

Cultured apples and wild apples didn't mixed so much as we previously thought. The men that really created this huge gift for the rest of the humanity weren't from Greece, Germany, Swiss or the Roman empire; they lived and worked probably in the mountain forests of the humble Azerbaijan.

Michael Pollan's less known book, The Botany of Desire, is an excellent read and examines four crops -- one of them the Apple -- that have shaped human history.