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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.
Also more protein in wheat compared to rice. Actually a lot more nutrients in wheat compared to rice.
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?
Sounds like you’re assuming step 1 of eating it was processing it into bread. Beyond that, ancient people eventually tried to eat everything. Seeds, grains, and nuts were not uncommon.
Yeah makes sense, thats always kind of how I thought it went down. Can’t be picky about your calories, can ya, great great great great great great great granpappy Cruxifux.
You can boil whole grain wheat down into porridge. It’s not the go-to use for wheat now, but the rice cooking method still provides a nutritious meal.
Insects, cats, random mushrooms, anything when you’re hungry enough.
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.
In the conditions in which they made it, porridge was often also beer(ish).
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
Sir and/or Madam,
Have you heard the good word about maize (corn)? 🌽
WHAT UP MOTHER SHUCKERS
I live amongst yankees now. I’d even take some huitlacoche.
I’ve been wanting to try that for years
It’s an acquired taste. Definitely tastes better than it looks.
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Devil crop.
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You can boil wheat too. Ancient peoples used to make porridge
And by “porridge” you mean “beer”.
Booze was the real motivator.
Guy: look at all this wheat I grew!
Fella; Wow, we could make so many bread!
Guy: Yes… Ah… Bread
Beer is just old porridge
And porridge is just incomplete beer.
Thank you! I was looking for this comment before posting about it. Almost every grain can be cooked in large amounts of boiling water, like pasta.
Anon is not thinking enough about beer
Counterpoint: sake.
I don’t think sake could serve the role beer did, historically. Certainly in medieval Europe, they made what today would be considered a weak beer to drink for basic hydration. That was by far the easiest way for them to ensure the water was safe to drink.
I’m pretty sure if you tried that with sake, you’d die
That was by far the easiest way for them to ensure the water was safe to drink.
Actually, the alcohol in beer isn’t concentrated enough to kill off most microbes. Even yeast doesn’t die off until you start getting >13%, and there’s varieties of yeast that can tolerate twice that concentration.
The reason why beer was safer to drink than water is because the brewing process requires it to be boiled. Beer was preferrable to boiled water due to taste and because it provided an extra source of calories
Be hooman, eat much seed. Seed good. Wheat like seed. Wheat good. Rock smash seed, easy eat seed.
Rain make smash seed taste funny. Fire make rain smash seed tastey. Society.
It’s actually been theorized that beer was a driving factor for humanity discovering agriculture.
There’s also a theory (maybe the same as you mentioned) that says man settled down because they had to stay in one place for the whole brewing process.
Historical giggling intensifies.
Rice needs just as much processing. Do you think the rice you buy in the store is what it’s like in the field?
I always heard it needs more, which is why East Asian societies -notably China - achieved big cities early on and a more collective philosophy, whereas Europe ended up having a more individualist philosophy.
Wheat doesn’t actually require all that much. Soak it in water, and it becomes gruel. Let gruel sit around for awhile, the liquid becomes a rudimentary ale. Boil off the liquid, you have a rudimentary bread. Want to make it easier to eat? Grind it before you add the water.
Every other use is an evolution of those basic concepts.
The number of people who have no clue how much processing goes into making rice edible is hilarious.
Or just to grow it. Rice is stupid hard compared to wheat.
As well as regional factors. They both grow in totally different environments.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X1930082X
I remember reading about this concept and how rice growing cultures differ from wheat growing. Our agricultural past has had long lasting impacts.
Thanks for sharing, that was an interesting read.
We are genetically built by the decisions our ancestors made. As far as I know everybody can eat cereal grain, that was a massive challenge for our ancestors who until then we’re meat eaters. I can eat dairy products, a lot of people from other areas cannot, like my wife who is from Asia.
Off topic, but I find it fascinating, animals create their own vitamin c but humans don’t. I read it’s from an evolutionary mutation where our genes for vit c got turned off.
I am not old but even I remember my mom spending hours filtering all the stone from rice.
You can’t grow rice where there isn’t a proper water supply so much so that your field is basically a swamp until it’s time to harvest. Meanwhile wheat and barley doesn’t need much water to cultivate.
I don’t think rice requires water? It just tolerates it fine, so it’s useful for pest/weed control?
It requires water but not the same stagnant levels it used to. Modern cultivation is done with a series of inter connected Levees that allow the water to flow at lower levels than it used to be grown in.
You’re thinking of something else, rice requires the land it’s planted on to be under some centimeters of water. Just look for any image of a rice field. Only when it’s ready to harvest that the field can be drier
EDIT: thanks for the replies, folks, those are some interesting rice facts!
There are varieties of rice that don’t require flooded fields. They’re called upland rice. They have issues with weeds and pest control that regular rice doesn’t have, but these varieties still manage to feed about a hundred million people.
Just because that’s what you see on photos doesn’t mean it’s the only way to grow it, it just means it’s the most efficient way. I had a quick look and found multiple sources corroborating GPs information: rice doesn’t need to be under centimeters of water, it’s only done to improve yield (by combatting weeds and pests).
Actually flooding rice drowns it.
Unfortunately the traditional system for growing rice has prevented realisation of plants’ natural potential by transplanting them too late, by spacing them too closely, and by cutting off the oxygen supply to their roots by continuous flooding of paddies. SRI changes practices that are thousands of years old to bring out rice plants’ significant possibilities for greater yield.
AFAIK rice does not require that water, it’s just that it can survive it, unlike most weeds.
One guy can grow and harvest a wheat field large enough to feed his family, but rice requires a lot of community organization to grow.
There’s an interesting hypothesis called the Rice Hypothesis that theorizes that the different styles of farming rice vs wheat shaped our societies in ways that are still prevalent today. Farming rice led to strong collectivism in society, while farming wheat led to strong individualism in society. Perhaps this is what has led to our differences in ideologies and governing systems.
All grass based crops encouraged group cooperation. Plants like potatoes remain safe in the ground until you need them. But all cereal crops require harvesting at a specific time. You can’t just harvest enough wheat as you need it. This means you inevitably have to have a stockpile of grain to get through the year. And a stockpile of already harvested and prepared grain makes you an instant target for raids by opposing groups.
Cereal crops of all forms necessitate cooperation.
I mean, everything in life requires cooperation, but that’s not the point. Rice took twice as many labor hours as wheat and required more irrigation. According to Shenshi Nongshu, “if one is short of labor, it is best to grow wheat”. Also studies have shown that in China people in historically rice farming areas behave more collectively than those in wheat regions. Not all grasses behave the same way and need the same things, especially with how much we’ve bred them to our needs.
I also like the one where western people are good at stuff like telescopes and magnifying lenses because they drink wine, which is a pretty color, where as the Chinese drank clear alcohol so they didn’t get as good with glasswork
Oh interesting, I haven’t heard of that. I’ll have too look into it, thanks!
Also in regards to lenses and pretty things, because pottery and paper were already so massive industries in China, they didn’t see use for glass as much as Europe which needed it for windows and whatnot.
So then Europe had the advantage in glassworking and thus got some scientific instruments (such as beakers and lenses) first.
How much of that was of because wine, I couldn’t say. But I would like to mention that a gene for naturally being (much more) intolerant to alcohol is more common in Asia than in Europe. But how long it’s been more common is a question I couldn’t answer, as it might be more of a consequence than a cause, with how fast evolution works. (ie Europe has had strong liquor for centuries and you can see from places which only recently got liquor how much more prevalent alcoholism is — it gets filtered out pretty fast as if you’re dependant on alcohol and sauced all the time you prolly might not procreate, unless you’re not that intolerant to it and manage to function.)
Fascinating theory. I’ll have to go down that rabbit hole tomorrow.
Also, a very different climate and soil.
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In California, native Americans made acorn porridge. They collected the acorns, shelled and roasted them, ground it into a flour, then leached it because it’s full of bitter tannins, and then they can cook the leached acorn meal into a porridge. It is crazy and multiple steps to get there. Mind blowing stuff.
When you are hungry and have had to resort to a less desirable food source, the time for research and development becomes available.
Yeah you start by trying to eat the stuff that seems like it could be food because you need food, then once you get it edible (using the basic techniques), then you can focus on trying to make it palatable.
It’s pretty simple, really. Rice doesn’t grow everywhere.
Can confirm. I’m currently at Tim Horton’s and there’s no rice growing.
Is the Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings playing though?
But there is bread available, isn’t there? I rest my case.
Chaffing it, and then grinding it and adding water aren’t exactly rocket science. Also you didn’t have any smartphones to keep you from being bored.
This phenomenon is even stronger with (most types of) Maize (excluding sweet corn). It requires heavy processing to be turned into glucose sirup or anything resembling edible food. By default, the grains are extremely durable and very difficult to digest.
But this is essentially what protects it from insects and fungus. Because the grains are so hard to digest by default, they can only be eaten by humans who have the tools to heavily process them before eating; for everyone else it’s essentially uninteresting as a food source and that prevents mold and insects.
What type of corn are you referring to? I’m not familiar with the history of corn, but what you’re saying doesn’t match my experiences with any variety
Dent corn is used as livestock feed, and is generally considered the less edible version. Sweet corn can be eaten by humans raw. Basically every variety I’ve ever seen can be eaten if boiled long enough
Sweet corn is a mutation that was only really cultivated in the late 1700s. Before that dent and flint corn were the norm. These corns require nixtamalization to soft the corn and then need boiling, grinding, and cooking to make something like tortillas.
Sweet corn is also harder to store if harvested at a flavorful stage. Up until canning became widespread, there was no easy way to store corn without drying it out.
Yeah, the effect is stronger for dent corn.
Dent corn can last upwards of 20 years when stored correctly.
I’m not sure what that number is for other cereals but i guess it’s less long.
Have you not heard of corn on the cob? Just pull off the husk, boil, and eat.
I can’t tell if this is in jest or ignorance.
Sweet corn is a recent invention.
And great, you’ve got the months of July and August covered. How are you going to survive fall, winter, and spring? Corn doesn’t become a staple crop until it can be stored year round, maybe between years to alleviate famine.
My point being that corn only needs to be boiled to be easy to eat. Going around like it’s completely inedible is ridiculous.
And your second “point” is a complete red herring. It applies to almost any crop outside of its harvest season. Those vegetables you’re buying at the grocery store? They’re not being stored year round. They’re grown in Mexico and South America before being imported. That’s how you’re able to get tomatoes in March.
My point being that corn only needs to be boiled to be easy to eat.
Sweet corn harvested at the milky stage, sure. But wait until the kernels are reddish brown and they won’t be great. And that’s a variety that was developed like 1500 years after the Romans were wiping their asses with sponges, so not relevant to the conversation about ancient prehistoric people developing a staple crop.
Go boil a jar of popcorn and see how practical it would be to try to eat flint corn with just some boiling.
Plus nixtamalization improves the nutrition of cornmeal so that it can meet more of human nutritional needs.
And your second “point” is a complete red herring. It applies to almost any crop outside of its harvest season.
It doesn’t apply to staple crops. Wheat, rice, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, beans, and potatoes can be stored long term, so entire civilizations came up around them millennia ago. Sweet corn harvested at an edible stage can’t be, at least not without refrigeration or canning technology.
All this is to say yeah, the civilizations built around maize as a staple crop had to figure out nixtamalization.
Corn (Maize) is a selected grass. (Teosinte) Wheat is also a grass (Emmer) which hasn’t been nearly as modified.
The american indigenous people cultivated and developed corn over 10,000 some years. An ear of corn can be boiled and eaten. Wheat? Not so much.
You can absolutely boil wheat, so I am not sure I follow…
I guess I meant more along the lines of: “An ear of corn can be husked by hand and boiled.” Individual processing is far more accessible and feasible compared the threshing, hulling, and winnowing processes of wheat.
We have tried to grind, dry, ferment, bake, broil, boil, and fry everything on the face of the earth. Countless times. Humans have had the same brainpower for ages, just not the same knowledge base.
wheat makes beer
beer yeast and wheat makes bread
wheat made pasta
wheat grows well in colder climates.
Wheat is a bit of a weed so it’s grown on more marginal land while more profitable (finicky) plants are grown in the better land.
This weirdly makes wheat more vulnerable to climate change.
