The chickpea or chick pea (Cicer arietinum) is an annual legume of the family Fabaceae,
The chickpea was originally domesticated along with wheat, barley, peas, and lentils during the First Agricultural Revolution about 10,000 years ago.
The closest evolutionary relative to chickpeas is Cicer reticulatum, a plant native to a relatively small area in the Southeastern part of modern-day Turkey and nearby areas in modern-day Syria.
Initially, ancient hunter-gatherer cultures harvested wild plants that they encountered, but evidence of the cultivation of some domestic food crops from 7500 BCE and possibly earlier have been documented.
