On Thu, 20 May 1999, I wrote:

>> But in a sense, if pre-agricultural grain use began in marginal areas
where
>> other plant foods were scarce, and in response to the gradual decline of
>> animal foods, one could assume that hunger was indeed of influence.


Todd Moody responded:

>This makes no sense to me.  In areas where plant and animal foods
>are scarce, hunter-gatherers would simply leave!  It's very hard
>for me to imagine hungry pre-agriculturalists, finding themselves
>in some inhospitable place, saying "What shall we do now?  Move
>on or plant a stand of wheat?"

I think it makes sense if you think in terms of animal foods declining on a
global scale with the megafaunal extinctions.  This is a situation where
leaving to find game elsewhere might not do any good.  So instead, you have
people all over the world slowly altering their diets to include more plant
foods.  In a few regions like the fertile crescent grains were the best
alternative and eventually became domesticated.  I'm willing to concede that
grains have become so succesful as crops because of their advantages
pre-agriculturally, and in their domesticated form, over other alternatives
(so forget about margin dwellers being forced to grain).  However, my
understanding is that grains in edible species and abundance only occured in
limmited areas (like the fertile crescent), and that until their
introduction in agricultural form, most of the world had experienced very
little exposure to them as a food source.  ( I remember reading somewhere
that edible grains did not grow to the extent of being harvestable for food
in Europe before neolithic times...  sorry, can't put a finger on a
reference).  I hope this helps to clarify the reasoning behind my belief
that European people who are not of mediterranean/ middle eastern origin
(most of us on this list, I think) are not adapted to the use of grains as a
food source.

B. Lischer