Todd Moody rote:

>>grains.  During the brief period when grains can be harvested, it
>>is not such a chore.  If I think of it I'll try to dig up the
>>post on the Paleodiet list where the caloric yield for
>>hand-gathered ripe grain was calculated.  If I remember right,
>>the yield in dry weight was on the order of kilograms per hour,
>>which isn't bad.

Here is the relevant paragraph from what I believe is the PALIODIET posting
you mention (posted by Ruediger Hoeflechner):


"Natural stands of wild grass can give very respectable yields of
high-quality food. Yields of 500-800 kg/ha are not uncommon and 1 ton/ha
can occasionally be obtained. This is in the range of many subsistence
farmers growing domesticated cereals and as much or more than farmers in
England obtained from domesticated wheat in the Middle Ages. Harlan cites
Chevalier, who described an African wild-grass harvest and stated that one
adult could easily gather 10 kg in a mornings effort. In an experiment with
wild einkorn wheat in Turkey Harlan himself yielded almost 1 kg of
pure-grain equivalent per hour of work, and the grains were far more
nutritious than domesticated wheat. This wild wheat harvest returned 40-50
kcal of energy for every kcal expended. Harlan stated, that this was far
more efficient in terms of the ratio of consumable output energy to energy
expended in harvesting than any form of agriculture so far studied."

There is no mention of technology used, but the reference here is to
contemporary harvest of wild grain, and so I think it's safe to assume that
semi-modern implements and techniques (or at least post agr. revolution)
were used in harvesting and processing.  At the time of this posting, it
seems that the list was trying to determine if and why grains were the first
agricultural crops (as opposed to tubers and others).  The belief that
pre-agricultural people didn't harvest wild grains doesn't seem to be in
question at this point on the list, although it comes up at several other
times, I think.

B. Lischer

PS.  Here's the link to that posting plus another relevant poating by
Cordain:

http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind9808&L=paleodiet&P=R393

http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind9811&L=paleodiet&P=R964