William wrote:
> Full speed ahead into the past, yes; here's something from today's
> raw-food yahoo group:
> 
> "Yet 10,000 years ago, people who could
> not read, write, or do calculus prospered on diets composed
> of wild plants and animals. Even more remarkably, these 
> ancient peoples began a plant-breeding program that 
> transformed hundreds of wild plant species into domesticated 
> crops, including all of the most highly productive crops - 
> rice, wheat, maize - on which human survival is dependent today."

Did you tell that group that when humans started domesticating animals and
crops, that's when they made what Jared Diamond calls the biggest mistake in
human history? Of course, when it started they probably felt they didn't
have much choice, because they likely had committed another major screw
up--hunting much of the big game into extinction (probably in concert with
impacts on big game from climate change), so they faced a major shortage of
animal fats and had to start eating more carbs to avoid protein starvation,
if not ordinary starvation. In other words, according to Diamond, Cordain,
Audette and others, the development of agriculture was less a matter of
ingenuity and more a matter of survival.