Wheat is easier to grow and requires less water. The first farmers in the Middle East became farmers almost acidentally. When they transported the wheat, the dropped crop started growing more and closer to where they were processing it. Eventually some of them decided they would rather grow the wheat than being part of a nomadic tribe. This will eventually lead to a population boom where women would have children every year rather than every four years.
Ok great but how did they figure out you could EAT IT if you did a shitload of seemingly random shit to it that you don’t have to do with, like, any other crop?
You don’t have to do all of that to eat it, you just have to do all of that to make bread. You can make bread from oats, you can also process it less and make porridge.
All you need to do to make wheat edible is soak it in water to make it soft enough to chew. Wheat in water is “gruel”.
You can improve upon it by boiling, which will make porridge, or baking, which will dehydrate the gruel into a primitive bread. The drained, starchy liquid, if left to sit for awhile, will become a primitive ale. Pre-grinding makes it easier to eat.
Every dietary use is an evolutionary progression from soaking wheat in water.
Yup, it’s not so much that wheat requires all of this processing, it just makes it tastier and easier to eat.
I reckon that after inventing farming, people probably just had a lot more time on their hands, so they sat around trying to come up with ways to avoid having to eat the same boring gruel every day.
It’s more accurate to say all plants have always domesticated humans. We came after them, we depend on them to survive, we’re required to consume their waste to live, so we can’t live without them. They, however, have the option of consuming our waste to live, but are perfectly capable of living without us, and will likely continue to do so after we’re extinct.
Wheat is easier to grow and requires less water. The first farmers in the Middle East became farmers almost acidentally. When they transported the wheat, the dropped crop started growing more and closer to where they were processing it. Eventually some of them decided they would rather grow the wheat than being part of a nomadic tribe. This will eventually lead to a population boom where women would have children every year rather than every four years.
Ok great but how did they figure out you could EAT IT if you did a shitload of seemingly random shit to it that you don’t have to do with, like, any other crop?
You don’t have to do all of that to eat it, you just have to do all of that to make bread. You can make bread from oats, you can also process it less and make porridge.
All you need to do to make wheat edible is soak it in water to make it soft enough to chew. Wheat in water is “gruel”.
You can improve upon it by boiling, which will make porridge, or baking, which will dehydrate the gruel into a primitive bread. The drained, starchy liquid, if left to sit for awhile, will become a primitive ale. Pre-grinding makes it easier to eat.
Every dietary use is an evolutionary progression from soaking wheat in water.
Yup, it’s not so much that wheat requires all of this processing, it just makes it tastier and easier to eat.
I reckon that after inventing farming, people probably just had a lot more time on their hands, so they sat around trying to come up with ways to avoid having to eat the same boring gruel every day.
Interesting!
Are you saying wheat domesticated early man?
It’s more accurate to say all plants have always domesticated humans. We came after them, we depend on them to survive, we’re required to consume their waste to live, so we can’t live without them. They, however, have the option of consuming our waste to live, but are perfectly capable of living without us, and will likely continue to do so after we’re extinct.
It’s not a novel observation
To be fair, I’m one of the 10,000, so it was novel to me!
Does this mean we were conned into accidentally domesticating cats?
I thought cats domesticated themselves
Also more protein in wheat compared to rice. Actually a lot more nutrients in wheat compared to rice.