Wheat is easier to grow and requires less water. The first farmers in the Middle East became farmers almost acidentally. When they transported the wheat, the dropped crop started growing more and closer to where they were processing it. Eventually some of them decided they would rather grow the wheat than being part of a nomadic tribe. This will eventually lead to a population boom where women would have children every year rather than every four years.
Are you saying wheat domesticated early man?
It’s more accurate to say all plants have always domesticated humans. We came after them, we depend on them to survive, we’re required to consume their waste to live, so we can’t live without them. They, however, have the option of consuming our waste to live, but are perfectly capable of living without us, and will likely continue to do so after we’re extinct.
Also more protein in wheat compared to rice. Actually a lot more nutrients in wheat compared to rice.
Ok great but how did they figure out you could EAT IT if you did a shitload of seemingly random shit to it that you don’t have to do with, like, any other crop?
You don’t have to do all of that to eat it, you just have to do all of that to make bread. You can make bread from oats, you can also process it less and make porridge.
You can also just straight up eat it. Yeah, you’ll get runny shits from eating excessive amounts of fiber, but that’s probably the first way it was eaten
I mean you’ll probably get runny shits from eating it due to the excess fiber, but I’m fairly certain the ancient nomadic tribes who first started eating wheat like that probably had significantly more fiber in their diets than modern man and eating it like that would probably be far less of a shock to their system than us puny fiber weaklings.
You are correct but no need to say “modern man”. Biologically we are the same as those humans. We would just need to adjust to the new diet. Our bodies can still handle their lifestyle
Our bodies never stopped evolving. Where do you think lactose intolerance (or lack thereof) is coming from? Originally it was just a few that could drink milk, now it’s a significantly higher percentage of the population.
In the conditions in which they made it, porridge was often also beer(ish).
Sounds like you’re assuming step 1 of eating it was processing it into bread. Beyond that, ancient people eventually tried to eat everything. Seeds, grains, and nuts were not uncommon.
You can boil whole grain wheat down into porridge. It’s not the go-to use for wheat now, but the rice cooking method still provides a nutritious meal.
Insects, cats, random mushrooms, anything when you’re hungry enough.
Yeah makes sense, thats always kind of how I thought it went down. Can’t be picky about your calories, can ya, great great great great great great great granpappy Cruxifux.
Boiled wheat is perfectly edible, actually. Tasty? Not really, but I didn’t grow up on it and we’re extremely spoilt compared to prehistoric peoples. Stuff like boiled barley kernels (AFAIK you can’t really make bread with barley) was still a relatively common dish 1-200 hundred years ago in my parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groat_(grain)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_barleySignificant point: “Edible” is subject to discussion. Not more than 100 years ago, the expected diet in large parts of Norway was boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain. For every meal. Your entire life. Vitamins? Go chew on that shrub until the scurvy goes away.
I doubt it. In winter maybe. But given the extreme abundance of wild berries in the summer I’m pretty sure people ate a lot of them.
Source: Grandparents that grew up on a plot of land (read: hunk of rock) on the west coast and lived off sustenance farming (which includes a significant amount of fishing) as late as the 1930’s.
Sure, berries and some other foraging products was part of their diet, but not a very significant one. It was mostly whatever would grow on that plot. Mostly potatoes and onions, with some other minor stuff. While berries are abundant, picking them gives you a lot fewer calories per man-hour than fishing, so fishing takes priority.
I would’ve thought there were at least lingonberries over there? Lingon preserves have been around and ubiquitous enough since at least around the 1600s here in Sweden. In addition to that, off the top of my head there’s also blueberries, juniper, and at some point rose hips were introduced. Depending on where you are you could harvest cloudberries. In late spring/early summer you could harvest pine needles, as well as young pine cones.
In some part of China (Yunnan I think, but I could be wrong) they also harvest pine pollen, though I’ve not heard of that practise around here.
Granted, the ecology is decently different between Sweden and Norway, if they actually lived on a hunk of rock with no forest in sight I’d assume it’d be hard to get berries.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.
As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.
You can boil wheat too. Ancient peoples used to make porridge
I often wondered this about potatoes. Wild potatoes are extremely poisonous, so who went, the last time we ate one of those we all got sick and a few people died.
Let’s cultivate them. I’m sure in just a few thousand years we can turn it into something useful. Of course until then it’s kind of just wasted effort but our children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children will thank us.
Boiling them in a clay pot, one of the only materials available to them, renders them edible and famously almost nutritionally complete. They are incredibly easy to grow and grow almost anywhere. They were immediately available. “What happens if we boil it” is the basis for quite a lot of staple foods and would have been a human go-to.
