A cornerstone of the Paleo diet is the understanding that grains are a very recent part of our diet. Coupled with the evidence that grains are designed NOT to be eaten and have defense mechanism's that affect us adversely.
This post is about when we started to eat them not the health aspects - for many like to claim that we ate grains for a very long time. I am no archeaologist but here is my logic based thought experiment.
For humans to eat grains at all demands that they be processed, cooked and stored. All the gear needed to do any and all of these steps was heavy, not mobile and demanded a key breakthrough in human technology. They demanded the invention of pottery and so the invention of ovens. They demanded a milling process.
Let's look at what this looked like and then you decide when we started to eat grains as a population.
At the very least you need one of these. Grains were milled using hand mills like this in late neolithic early agricultural times.
For thousands of years - this was the main task of the day and the evidence shows the damage that this repetititve work did to those that did it.
These stones are robust and heavy.
Next, the point of grains is that they can be stored. So what are you going to store them in?
Doesn't look like much - but this neolithic pot is the iPhone of its time. It represents the foundation of modern technology where we make something that had to be created out of pure thought and where we used materials that were not obvious - a stick easily becomes a club or spear - and where we used our now core process of heat to transform materials from one state to another.
This technology brought us metal working and so our world.
So back to grain. No pots - No storage - No storage - No point.
So no pot no use for grain. So the dates of pots is a starting point - about 6,000 BC. Also again as a mobile nomad you cannot carry pots. So we would have to settle. That puts a date on grain too.
How do you cook processed grain? I am sure that early bread was as it still is in the Middle east - Flat bread.
You can put this bread onto the embers of a fire. But it is better to put it into an oven.
This is a neolitic oven. Constructing an oven was a significant investment. You have to be settled to do this. They were not a casual camping act of the nomad.
Looks simple but not when it has not existed before.
Again a core piece of modern technology. For from this also comes high heat pottery, glazes and of course metal.
We can date this to about 6,000 BC. For the oven makes it easy for most people to eat bread. Only when most people take up a new thing has it Tipped the system. Only when most people participate can a novel thing effect evolution.
So a few starving nomads chewing on grains in desperation does not make grains part of their diet or effect how they might cope with grains. It took the full expression of oven technology to make grains parrt of the core diet. And that was yesterday in evolutionary time.
