The Oldest Bread

[ysabetwordsmith]

... predates agriculture by thousands of years.

See, this is why I laugh at the "paleo" diet excluding grains.  People have always eaten grains, when they could get some.  But for a long time that relied on luck and hours of assbusting labor.  You had to find a patch of grain dense enough to be worth working, then walk back and forth over the whole damn thing pulling the heads off by hand and dropping them in a basket.  Then you had to beat the hulls off, which was a lot harder before the selective breeding made it easier.  Eventually someone figured out you could cut the whole grass, thresh off the seeds, and have the stems left to make baskets or soak up mud.  That meant a lot of bending over, which also really sucked.

You know what I love about modern civilization?  Being able to buy  a fucking bag of flour or a loaf of bread instead of having to hand-pick handfuls of grain all day.  Sadly, the quality is at the marginal edge of edibility now, but I do still appreciate the convenience.  And not having sand in it from the grinding stones.  Pure flour is really nice.

Comments

[zesty_pinto]

I mean it makes sense; the podcast Gastropod pointed out that wheat itself is made from the seed of plants. Seeds in general are nutrient-dense in order to make sure whatever life is carried out can sustain itself. So of course a culture that is in an immensely food insecure environment would go for the most nutrient rich products possible and if it involves less energy to catch then, well...

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Less risk to gather wheat too, but it often takes more time. So there's a tipping point in density where it becomes worthwhile to gather in mass quantity, rather than just grabbing a few handfuls to throw in stew as you walk through a loose stand.