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There is nothing low effort about grains. They don't simply grow abundantly in nature without other animals eating them. In addition, before manual cultivation,

There is nothing low effort about grains. They don't simply grow abundantly in nature without other animals eating them. In addition, before manual cultivation, wild, non selectively bred grains were nothing like modern grains.

hinkley 4y ago
We’ve forgotten how many cultures ate acorns when they were available. Acorns are about 40% carbs. Unlike apples and many other tree nuts, there’s not a lot of evidence they have been selectively bred for larger fruits. “Native” oaks produce a noteworthy amount of nuts. But the thing with nuts is that they have multi year cycles to break the foraging ladder. Every few years the whole forest produces five times as many seeds as in a normal year, and then famine and predation pulls the nut eating population back down. Only humans are clever enough to really exploit those patterns. A child would learn to make acorn bread, but couldn’t count on it being available except for short periods and then every so many years. [edit to add] if memory serves, in the modern era we are down to some First Nations populations and Korea for cultures that still eat acorns regularly.
- layer8 4y ago
  I believe the paleo crowd doesn’t argue against nuts.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Yes, but, acorns stand out as one of the starchiest nuts, which is why they make bread out of it. A modern walnut for instance is about 18g of fat, 4 of protein, and 4 of carbs per ounce. And while the size of the fruit would have been increased under cultivation, I'm not sure the mix of nutrients would have shifted all that far. A 'modern' acorn is 6.8:1.7:11.5. That is a starch. The limiting factor with acorns is that if you eat them raw the tannins will get you. You have to soak it out before eating them. We've had pottery for at least twice as long as the time since the end of the Paleolithic era. If soaked in leather bags or nets, then much older than that. And since oak tannins are one of the older techniques for processing leather, I think it's safe to say we've been collecting them since the back end of forever.
dahart 4y ago
That might be true, but humans have had granaries to store grains and whatever else they can gather, for more than ten thousand years. Whatever the effort was, we know people were gathering grains like corn. You can visit granaries all over the American west. They’re in South America and the Middle East as well, along with some evidence that manual cultivation was taking place ten thousand years ago https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26314333_Evidence_for_food_storage_and_predomestication_granaries_11000_years_ago_in_the_Jordan_Valley https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26314333_Evidence_f...
Retric 4y ago
Canadian wild rice for example gets extremely abundant without simply being eaten by wild animals. That’s likely representative of what similar ecosystems in other areas would have looked like. In terms of energy gained vs lost harvesting and processing Canadian wild rice using traditional methods is a huge net gain. That said in terms of diet, wild grains have a noticeably different nutritional profile so aren’t a direct analog of of modern agriculture.

hinkley 4y ago

We’ve forgotten how many cultures ate acorns when they were available. Acorns are about 40% carbs. Unlike apples and many other tree nuts, there’s not a lot of evidence they have been selectively bred for larger fruits. “Native” oaks produce a noteworthy amount of nuts. But the thing with nuts is that they have multi year cycles to break the foraging ladder. Every few years the whole forest produces five times as many seeds as in a normal year, and then famine and predation pulls the nut eating population back down. Only humans are clever enough to really exploit those patterns. A child would learn to make acorn bread, but couldn’t count on it being available except for short periods and then every so many years. [edit to add] if memory serves, in the modern era we are down to some First Nations populations and Korea for cultures that still eat acorns regularly.

layer8 4y ago
I believe the paleo crowd doesn’t argue against nuts.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Yes, but, acorns stand out as one of the starchiest nuts, which is why they make bread out of it. A modern walnut for instance is about 18g of fat, 4 of protein, and 4 of carbs per ounce. And while the size of the fruit would have been increased under cultivation, I'm not sure the mix of nutrients would have shifted all that far. A 'modern' acorn is 6.8:1.7:11.5. That is a starch. The limiting factor with acorns is that if you eat them raw the tannins will get you. You have to soak it out before eating them. We've had pottery for at least twice as long as the time since the end of the Paleolithic era. If soaked in leather bags or nets, then much older than that. And since oak tannins are one of the older techniques for processing leather, I think it's safe to say we've been collecting them since the back end of forever.

dahart 4y ago

That might be true, but humans have had granaries to store grains and whatever else they can gather, for more than ten thousand years. Whatever the effort was, we know people were gathering grains like corn. You can visit granaries all over the American west. They’re in South America and the Middle East as well, along with some evidence that manual cultivation was taking place ten thousand years ago https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26314333_Evidence_for_food_storage_and_predomestication_granaries_11000_years_ago_in_the_Jordan_Valley https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26314333_Evidence_f...

Retric 4y ago

Canadian wild rice for example gets extremely abundant without simply being eaten by wild animals. That’s likely representative of what similar ecosystems in other areas would have looked like. In terms of energy gained vs lost harvesting and processing Canadian wild rice using traditional methods is a huge net gain. That said in terms of diet, wild grains have a noticeably different nutritional profile so aren’t a direct analog of of modern agriculture.