AbstractThis chapter describes the history, taxonomy (morphological and molecular), centre of origin, spread of culture, and evolution of the cultivated forms of lentil. Lentils were domesticated, in the Near East or, more accurately, in the foothills of the mountains of southern Turkey and northern Syria. The raw materials were populations of orientalis, but primitive farmers could also have used some other species of the genus, whose similarity has been shown in this chapter, in mixed populations rather than in pure strands. But orientalis and odemensis forms are the most likely candidates to have been companion weeds of the cultigen. However, molecular marker analyses have indicated that the genetic variability within cultivated lentils is relatively low, which supports the idea that microsperma and macrosperma morphotypes are simple variants for quantitative traits resulting from disruptive selection. It is difficult to establish how much the wild relatives have contributed to the cultigen gene pool.