On Monday, August 23, 2004, at 09:06 PM, LBK1 wrote:

>  pushes back the date for the processing of domesticated wheat-
> and barley-like grains to 23,000 years before the present era. The
> search for evidence of when the first wild grains were first
> systematically collected as food could even go back to 45,000 years
> before present.

I am not in the least surprised even by the older date. They were just
as smart as we are, maybe smarter, and had no trouble figuring out new
ways to get some extra calories. My personal opinion is that
domestication was less an event than a process. I suspect gardening
goes back as long as recognizable humanity in the simplest forms,
pulling weeds from around desired plants, and spreading seeds.