It seems like onions have always been part of our diet.
The common onion, Allium cepa, is a bulb related to lilies, in the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. (DNA evidence keeps moving the onions around, from the lily family to their own family and now with amaryllis).
The common onion is not known in the wild. That is, it is only found in gardens or where a garden was very obviously abandoned. Since it must have started as a wild plant, "not found in the wild" might mean the wild forms went extinct or that the cultivated onion is enough changed from its wild ancestors to be considered different, or the cultivated onion is a hybrid that does not occur in nature.
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| Onions in the garden |