ABSTRACT
The swift emergence from the last Ice Age 10 thousand years ago meant that grasses of various types spread beyond the tropics, as they had in earlier interglacial periods. None was a new species, and the seeds of each were edible for humans, but no means of gathering them efficiently had previously been possible (there is evidence for gathering of wild cereals from sites around the Sea of Galilee dated at 19 ka). The widespread and new use of small flakes from stone tool making-so called microliths-signifies that grass seeds did enter the human diet in volume in the Neolithic. By making composite tools, such as sickles of microliths embedded in wood or bone, humans began to adopt eating habits previously confined to paranthropoids. No human in full possession of their senses or a care for their teeth would contemplate chewing uncooked grain for sustenance. Cooking grain or grinding it and then baking makes grain an easy and abundant source of carbohydrate and protein. By 6 ka agriculture based on selective planting of the most productive grains and, through that, unconscious breeding, arose in the Middle East and the Indus valley (wheat, barley and oats), Africa (sorghum and millet), east Asia (rice) and central America (maize). Figure 11.1 shows when and where the world’s dominant agricultural crops and domesticated animals originated.
