Ears of plenty (the story of wheat / The story of man's staple food)

The Economist ^ | Dec 20th 2005

[SunkenCiv]

[W]heat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by—to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an "orphan crop"... And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age... [W]heat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid—it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Meat! Meat! Meat!

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[shuckmaster]

I'm amaized! I still believe grapes were the first domesticated crop though!

[SunkenCiv]

Barley -- 14,000 years before present.

Appropriate FR handle for this topic, BTW.

[Poser]

Wheat is good, but barley is king.

[ApplegateRanch]

Taters! Taters! Taters!

You just can't have all that meat, and no potatoes. ;)

[Hugin]

The History of Man

History began some 12,000 years ago. Humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundations of modern civilization and, together, were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can was invented yet, so while our early human ancestors were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to barbeque at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as "the Conservative movement."

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the Conservatives by showing up for the nightly barbeques and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlymen.

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.

Over the years, Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern Liberals like imported beer (with lime added)(& foo foo coffee), but most prefer white wine or imported, bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard Liberal fare.

Another interesting evolutionary side note: Most Liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are Liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, fighter pilots, athletes and generally anyone who works productively outside government. Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the Liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America.. They crept in after the Wild West was tame and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history.

[Servant of the 9]

Demographers, who had been watching the exponential rise with alarm, now forecast that the population will peak below ten billion—ten gigapeople—not long after 2050. Such a low forecast would have been unthinkable just two decades ago. Already, in developing countries, the number of children born per woman has fallen from six to three in 50 years. It will have reached replacement-level fertility (where deaths equal births) by 2035.

With good planning and a plague or two mankind could have the population back down to a comfy one Billion by 2200.

Best news in years.

So9

[darkocean]

The original human diet had to be some combination of fruit and shellfish. Elaine Morgan is almost certainly correct in thinking humans originally lived in water and whether a person believes in evolution is pretty much irrelevant to that question. Humans would have eaten shellfish which we could deal with with our hands and which fish can't do anything with, and fruit which they went up on shore for. Things like wheat and greens would be tastes acquired much later and it's far from obvious that anything like that is good for us.

[bannie]

It seems to me that a good culling eliminates 1/3 of a population. That seems to be the amount by which every successful plague decimates a civilization.

[Hugin]

The original human diet would have been plants, insects and lots of meat. Before humans hunted they would have scavanged. Especially they would have broken open the bones of large animals for marrow.

[dervish]

GM crops should have been welcomed by environmentalists. That they aren't betrays their knee-jerk response to corporations and anti-globalization links.

[shuckmaster]

Here ends today's lesson in world history.

You done good!

[shuckmaster]

Elaine Morgan has some smart ideas but is way off where it counts. The first division between hominids and apes was bipedalism. The next important step was long distance running. Nearly every difference between apes and pre-humans is directly related to the ability to not just run 50+ miles in a day but the ability to average 40-50 miles a day long term. It's open to speculation as to how that evolution occurred but chasing herds and picking up the ones who dropped from exhaustion is a good guess.

Less than 1 million years ago, bipedal - long distance running hominids covered the entire EuroAsian and African continuant's.

All currently living humans are descended from a relatively small tribe of such prehumans who lived on the beach between South Africa and Ethiopia 200.000 years ago. Their lifestyle (up until glacier melting led to inland rivers about 50.000 years ago) probably consisted of running the 5-20 mile lengths of beach and swimming across the dividing channels which range up to a mile or more. Such a beach/outer reef lifestyle would include exploiting the combination of offshore diving, bayside gathering, and a daily jog to beach comb for survival. In other words, humans are evolved to run and swim. Elaine is correct that we evolved to swim but she leaves out the more important long distance running part.

[shuckmaster]

The original human diet would have been plants, insects and lots of meat.

The ape/human digestive system is evolved for a vegetarian diet. Meat was added later and the addition of protein to the diet probably added to the eventual increase in brain size.

[Hugin]

Chimpanzees eat plants, insects and meat. They also hunt in groups using clubs.

[Hugin]

Also in most places fruit is only available for a few weeks or months at most each year. Survival on a diet of fruit is not practical. Even in the tropics there just isn't enough fruit for it to be a primary source of nutrition.

[Dustbunny]

Bump

[Kenny Bunk]

My vast readings in paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, philology, geology,and theology certainly corroborate your theories, Dr.Hugin.

However, my learned friend, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that refrigeration, the beer can, and the dark beer bottle are themselves examples of intelligent design, in that their sudden appearance on the planet cannot be satisfactorily explained by evolution. However, I don't think this should be discussed much in Science Class; Home Economics and Philosophy would be the proper place, not to mention those bars that proliferate around college campi.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlymen.

This part of evolution can be demonstrated scientifically, and thus should be required in every High School curriculum, gymnasium, or auditorium. In fact, I suggest beating it into the students. BTW, Since Tookie seems to still be dead, do you mind if I nominate you for a Nobel Prize?

[martin_fierro]

[Hugin]

Since Tookie seems to still be dead, do you mind if I nominate you for a Nobel Prize?

My dear Dr. Bunk, I am most honored by your kind offer. I must humbly admit that in explaining my theories I am truly standing on the shoulders of giants. That is to say, in the finest tradition of the modern university I have shamelessly plagiarized much of my material. However that should prove no impediment to the esteemed Nobel committee, especially if I express sufficiently anti-American political views. I eagerly await my invitation to Stockholm.

Kind regards,
Dr. Hugin

[darkocean]

> Less than 1 million years ago, bipedal - long distance running hominids covered the entire EuroAsian and African continuant's.

Sorry, but that's basically nonsensical. A human trying to cover 40 miles a day would just make a target out of himself for every predator on the veld. That is, if the human didn't simply keel over and starve or die of exhaustion, and women and kids trying to cover 40 or 50 miles in a day...

That's a joke. Elain Moprgan's ideas make a whole lot more sense to me at least. The most major difference between us and all apes and monkeys is legs being the major limbs, and that appears to be clearly an adaptation for swimming and wading as Morgan suggests.

[ThanhPhero]

culling eliminates 1/3 of a population. That seems to be the amount by which every successful plague decimates a civilization.

Culling by a third is much more serious trimming than a mere decimation would be.Decimation is specifically the destruction of a tenth, that is one of ten equal parts, The Reds in the Russian Civil War actually decimated army units that failed to achieve an objective or retreated. They lined up the unit and shot every tenth man. Decimation is from the Greek word for ten-tenth.

[ThanhPhero]

Moderate Environmentalists are working from an idea that the ideal population of North America would be less than 5 mil and they are determined to achieve that very soon. The extrtemists among them believe in Human Extinction but insist that everyone else has to be extinctified first after which they will consider offing themselves. Actually they are kind of walking the walk in that they are very big on aborting their children, but it is slower than the prefered famine or pandemic.

[Little Ray]

I agree! Barley was cultivated in order to brew beer, the true mother of Civilization!

[ThanhPhero]

GM crops should have been welcomed by environmentalists

Nuclear energy should have been welcomed by environmentalists if one thinks they are actually interested in untouched-by-humans wilderness and natural stuff.But that is not their goal. Most of them are displaced Communists who found it inconvenient to remain nominal Communists after the Stalinist Utopia disutoped. The purpose of Environmentalism is to get control of everything for the Vanguard of the Masses and prune back the human population to make total control more manageable.

[Kenny Bunk]

Barley was cultivated in order to brew beer, the true mother of Civilization!

Dr. Hugin, Before you begin packing for Norway (take a sweater)I am afraid more of your seminal research may be needed to counteract this classic example of the lopdsided logic now taught in the public schools:

I must ask these boys; if there were no beer, how would these primitive types have known about the Barley thing? Beer definitely antedates barley.

Barley clearly evolved from beer. Hops were added, one may speculate ... but not in Science Class, through Intelligent Design.

[Kenny Bunk]

Nuclear energy should have been welcomed by environmentalists if one thinks they are actually interested in untouched-by-humans wilderness and natural stuff.But that is not their goal. Most of them are displaced Communists who found it inconvenient to remain nominal Communists after the Stalinist Utopia disutoped. The purpose of Environmentalism is to get control of everything for the Vanguard of the Masses and prune back the human population to make total control more manageable.

Your careless dumping of facts and logic onto this thread has neen duly noted and will be punished. Robinson, take this man's name!

[Kenny Bunk]

Nuclear energy should have been welcomed by environmentalists if one thinks they are actually interested in untouched-by-humans wilderness and natural stuff.But that is not their goal. Most of them are displaced Communists who found it inconvenient to remain nominal Communists after the Stalinist Utopia disutoped. The purpose of Environmentalism is to get control of everything for the Vanguard of the Masses and prune back the human population to make total control more manageable.

Your careless dumping of facts and logic onto this thread has neen duly noted and will be punished. Robinson, take this man's name!

[Kenny Bunk]

No sniggering!

Repititio mater scientiae!

[Little Ray]

Actually, I think it was evolution:

First they picked grass seeds and made porridge of 'em.
Being slobs, they allowed the porridge to ferment (spoil).
Being disgusting slobs they ate the stuff anyway and got drunk.
They liked being drunk, so they needed grass with more and larger seeds. So, through selective breeding they created barley.

[dread78645]

Meat was added later and the addition of protein to the diet probably added to the eventual increase in brain size.

Eating animal flesh and fats provides the long chain fatty acids (DHA & DTA) required for brain growth. Additionally a nutritionally dense diet requires a less energy-intensive gut which frees up energy for the larger brain.

The four most expensive (energy-wise) organs are the heart, liver, gastrointestinal tract, and the brain.

The organ-body mass ratio of heart and liver are roughly similar amongst all the great apes, the main difference is the GI and brain ratios.
Meat eating humans have the smallest GI tract and largest brain. The fruit (& meat) eating chimpanzee has a smaller gut and larger brain than the leaf eating gorilla.

[blam]

"Less than 1 million years ago, bipedal - long distance running hominids covered the entire EuroAsian and African continuant's."

You'd come closer to the correct date if you doubled that.

[bannie]

Thank you: I had no idea! If you look at the word, "decimation," however, it speaks for itself. I was just so used to the word that I failed to SEE it!

I love it when I learn good stuff like that!!! Thanks, again!

[blam]

Stranger In A New Land

Found in the Republic Of Georgia, he's 1.7 million years old

"Stunning finds in the Republic of Georgia upend long-standing ideas about the first hominids to journey out of Africa "

[bannie]

I wonder what you'd call it when 1/3 is extinguished? Tertiated?

[SunkenCiv]

:') And ya can't have gravy without the meat!

[SunkenCiv]

The author must have a really good head on his shoulders.

[SunkenCiv]

Morgan's claim was that a chunk of Africa was separated from the rest, and humans did all their evolving there, out of the way of other primates, other competitors, and predators. She thinks hair grows on the head because the small children clung to it. And there's plenty more where that came from. It's largely feminist drivel, spelled out in "The Descent of Woman". However, she can be nice to have around, because she's always on the lookout for evidence of an isolated environment for human evolution:

The Scars of Evolution
by Elaine Morgan

"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"

Primary Literature by Jonathan Marks
Benveniste, Raoul E. and Todaro, George J. (1976) Evolution of type C viral genes: Evidence for an Asian origin of man. Nature, 261:101-107. This study also applied DNA hybridization to the apes. They found a 3-way split.
socrates.berkeley.edu/~jonmarks/biblio.html

[SunkenCiv]

That's a very good point, as the tropics have two seasons, wet and dry, which alternate twice a year. Anyone who wants our ancestors to be from Africa has to conclude that they had an omniverous and quite opportunistic diet, pretty much as we still do as we all sit here typing and surfing and eating out of the chip bag.

mix 1 of these	with 1 of these	& serve with these

[SunkenCiv]

In that case, here's something you'll really like...

Beer Brewing Paralleled the Rise of Civilization
by Kurt Stoppkotte
National Geographic News
April 24, 2001

The idea behind the theories about the early emergence of beer is that grains could be grown in poorer soils and required less water to grow than other crops, such as grapes. Unlike grapes, however, grains had no juice to extract. Therefore, they had to be soaked in water, which led to a natural fermentation process that produced what Julius Caesar described as "a high and mighty liquor."

[SunkenCiv]

Ancient Beer, Wine Jars Found in Egypt
AP/SF Chronicle | 5/18/05 | AP
Posted on 05/18/2005 7:01:35 PM PDT by TFFKAMM
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1406063/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Message in a Bottle [History of wine snobbery]
New York Times | 12/24/05 | Tom Standage
Posted on 12/26/2005 11:56:44 PM PST by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1547470/posts

[Question_Assumptions]

Wherever they went, the farmers brought their habits: not just sowing, reaping and threshing, but baking, fermenting, owning, hoarding.

I'm really sick of this baloney idea that hunter-gatherers didn't own anything or hoard and lived ideal lives of freedom, leisure, and fun. Agriculture didn't suddenly change human nature or wreck a good thing. And until people grasp the violent, unpredictable, and often short lives that people had as hunter-gatherers, they are never going to understand why the desire to embrace agriculture and civilization was so strong. See Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization for details on how anthropologists and archaeologists ignore clear evidence of widespread violence and homicide because they so badly want to believe their myth of the peaceful savage.

[SunkenCiv]

:') Don't hold back, tell my how you really feel. ;')

Myth of the Hunter-Gatherer
Volume 52 Number 5, September/October 1999
by Kenneth M. Ames
http://www.he.net/~archaeol/9909/abstracts/hunter.html

"On September 19, 1997, the New York Times announced the discovery of a group of earthen mounds in northeastern Louisiana. The site, known as Watson Brake, includes 11 mounds 26 feet high linked by low ridges into an oval 916 feet long. What is remarkable about this massive complex is that it was built around 3400 B.C., more than 3,000 years before the development of farming communities in eastern North America, by hunter-gatherers, at least partly mobile, who visited the site each spring and summer to fish, hunt, and collect freshwater mussels."

[Churchjack]

Also by Tom Standage: A History of the World in 6 Glasses
(Walker & Company, June 2005)

An economist by trade, he tells us to follow the fermentation! to learn the story of civilization. Hear, hear!

[x]

Wheat! Wheat! Fields of Wheat!

The crops, the grains. Fields of rippling wheat.

Wheat. All there is in life is wheat.

...

Oh, wheat! Lots of wheat! Fields of wheat.

A tremendous amount of wheat!

...

Yellow wheat. Red wheat.

Wheat with feathers. Cream of wheat.

...

Soon we shall be covered by wheat.

Did you say wheat?

Wheat.

Wheat.

I'm dead, they're talking about wheat.

[SunkenCiv]

"I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,
And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green."

-- Walt Whitman

[ApplegateRanch]

:') And ya can't have gravy without the meat!

Toss in some carrots & onions to simmer, while we stew about it.

I'll et whan I'm 'ungry;
I'll drink whan I'm dry;
If'n the whuskey don' kill me,
I'll live til I die!

[SunkenCiv]

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