On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Phosphor wrote:

> I dont think anyone suggests all of grain agriculture is due to opioid
> addiction.  But why would people bother with the extra effort that wheat
> entails compared with millet?

That's a different question from that one that was being
discussed.  As Don Wiss has noted, the first evidence we have of
grain gathering that we have is from the late Paleolithic period,
about 17,000 years ago.  At that time we have evidence that
grains were gathered and ground.  Some 5,000 years later they
were cultivated as crops.  But the question is: Why did they
start gathering grains at all?  If they weren't already eating
them on an occasional basis, it hardly makes sense that they
would start collecting, grinding, and cooking them.  But if they
were already eating them, it makes much more sense.

So, in terms of *this* question and not some other question, I
submit the opioid theory has little explanatory power, for
reasons I have already given.  The opioid theory may help to
explain why, once people are eating gluten-containing grains, it
is hard for them to give them up.  It is not a plausible
explanation of why they started gathering them in the first
place, especially if the earliest grains gathered did not have
gluten.  Your question above concerns the issue of why people who
were by then already accustomed to eating millet switched to
wheat.

Todd Moody
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