Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

>You mentioned that 17k years ago was the first *evidence* of gathered cereal
>grains (you know of). That doesn't mean that this was when they *started*
>gathering them. In fact it's miraculous that plant remains preserved so
>long.

I wrote nothing of plant remains preserved so long. I wrote: "Then
processing is required to make the seeds edible. They have to be ground.
Grinding leaves behinds tools as evidence. The evidence found so far is in
the Near East they started gathering grains 17,000 years ago." Even if they
simply used two stones, the circular motion of grinding will wear the
stones and leave behind evidence.

Don.