On Wed, 19 May 1999, Bernard Lischer wrote:

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

Yes, that's the one.

> 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."

That's quite interesting, isn't it?

> 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.

I'm not so sure.  The article also discusses wild wheat
harvesting among African hunter-gatherer peoples, who would not
be expected to have an inventory of farm tools.

> 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.

Cordain, in the other article, indicates that grains were a
subsistence food.

If we think of the origin of agriculture as a kind of cultural
evolution, in which a low-frequency practice becomes a
high-frequency practice, the pieces fit together.  If people
weren't used to eating grains at least some of the time, it makes
no sense that they would go to the trouble of planting them.  Why
would they plant crops that they didn't eat, or that made them
sick?

What makes sense to me is the idea that they noticed the fact
that when wild wheat was ready to be gathered, they obtained a
good amount of food, and the grains could be kept for a period.
Therefore, if one just planted more, one would get even more
food, etc.  If grains were a food that no one wanted to eat
unless they were starving then I just can't see anyone saying,
"Let's break our backs planting this crap so that we can eat even
more of it."

Anyway, the interesting thing to me is that this perspective
places grains and fruits and nuts into a similar paleodiet
category: foods that were available for only short periods during
the year.  On the foreign protein theory, that was enough time
for us to adapt to the fruits and nuts, so it seems that it
should have been enough time for the grains too.  On the other
hand, if foreign proteins are not such an important factor then
the link between grains and the diseases of civilization is based
on factors such as carbohydrate load and EFA imbalance and
protein shortage as meat consumption dropped.  I am coming to the
view that these were in fact the important factors and the
foreign proteins are of minor significance.  This is not to deny
that there are protein-specific disease syndromes, such as celiac
disease, but such intolerances are not limited to nonpaleo foods
anyway.

Todd Moody
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