Spelt (Triticum spelta), also known as dinkel wheat or hulled wheat, is a species of wheat that has been cultivated since approximately 5000 BC. Spelt was an important staple food in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times. Now it survives as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain, and it has found a new market as a health food. Spelt is sometimes considered a subspecies of the closely related species common wheat (Triticum aestivum), in which case its botanical name is considered to be Triticum aestivum subsp. spelta. Like common wheat, it is a hexaploid wheat, which means it has six sets of chromosomes. Evolution Spelt has a complex history. It is a wheat species known from genetic evidence to have originated as a naturally occurring hybrid of a domesticated tetraploid wheat such as emmer wheat and the wild goat-grass Aegilops tauschii. Genetic evidence shows that spelt wheat can also arise as the result of the hybridisation of bread wheat and emmer wheat, although only at some date following the initial Aegilops–tetraploid wheat hybridisation. The much later appearance of spelt in Europe might thus be the result of a later, second, hybridisation between emmer and bread wheat. Recent DNA evidence supports an independent origin for European spelt through this hybridisation. Whether spelt has two separate origins in Asia and Europe, or single origin in the Near East, is currently unresolved. Terminological confusion with other hulled wheats Especially in the context of descriptions of ancient cultures, there are many documents that use the English word spelt to refer to grains that, according to other sources, were not hexaploid T. spelta, but other species of hulled wheat such as tetraploid T. dicoccum (emmer wheat). This confusion may arise either from mistranslation of words found in other languages that can refer to hulled wheat in general without distinguishing between these species (such as Italian farro), or changing opinions about which actual species of wheat are described in texts written in ancient languages. The meaning of the Ancient Greek word ([zeiá]) or is either uncertain or vague and has been argued to refer to T. dicoccum or T. monococcum rather than T. spelta. Likewise, the Ancient Roman grain denoted by the Latin word , although often translated as "spelt", was in fact emmer (T. dicoccum). Similarly, references to the cultivation of spelt wheat in Biblical times (see matzo),