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Because they wiped their ass with a communal sponge.
The shared gut bacteria provided the micronutrients that are needed to develop the intelligence that can handle the complexity.
OP needs to get topped more to compensate.
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.
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.
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.
The ignorance around rice is what gets me on this one. It’s almost troll level.
You can eat wheat right out of the head (the top part of the wheat stalk). No processing required (other than threshing it - removing it from the husk).
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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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.
But there is bread available, isn’t there? I rest my case.
Is the Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings playing though?
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.
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.
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.
Insects, cats, random mushrooms, anything when you’re hungry enough.
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 dehydrate the gruel into a primitive bread. The drained, starchy liquid, if left to sit for awhile, will become a primitive ale. 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.
I reckon that after inventing farming, people probably just had a lot more time on their hands,
AFAIK farming actually took a lot more work hours than hunting+gathering, it’s just less risky. But yeah, simple soaked or boiled grain is pretty boring compared to meat, berries and nuts.
I mean, people obviously still engaged in hunting and gathering (they do to this day) to enrich their diet, it just wasn’t as crucial to survival.
Also, most of the work of farming happens in the spring and the fall (i.e. sowing and harvesting seasons). The rest of the year it’s pretty hands off, which gives you plenty of time to engage in other activities.
Sure, but hunter-gatherers still have tons of free time. There are still people who live like that, people have observed and studied them.
Interesting!
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.
You can also just straight up eat it. Yeah, you’ll get runny shits from eating excessive amounts of fiber, but that’s probably the first way it was eaten
I mean you’ll probably get runny shits from eating it due to the excess fiber, but I’m fairly certain the ancient nomadic tribes who first started eating wheat like that probably had significantly more fiber in their diets than modern man and eating it like that would probably be far less of a shock to their system than us puny fiber weaklings.
You are correct but no need to say “modern man”. Biologically we are the same as those humans. We would just need to adjust to the new diet. Our bodies can still handle their lifestyle
To clarify by modern man, I meant a human living in the year 2026 who eats a “modern diet” of (at least partially) processed foods with significantly lower fiber intake than that of a preindustrial man. (Obviously this would be excluding currently living humans who are living in tribal conditions, such as those living in North Sentinel Island.)
I was not attempting to imply that those living at that time were of a different species than homosapiens. To be honest if they were a different species I’m not sure my comment would have made sense as different homo species would likely have subtle differences in their digestive tracks than homosapiens.
Our bodies never stopped evolving. Where do you think lactose intolerance (or lack thereof) is coming from? Originally it was just a few that could drink milk, now it’s a significantly higher percentage of the population.
I think modern can be used in the sense of being not adjusted to harsher conditions
mmm hallucinogenic grain fungus.
And planted…
In the conditions in which they made it, porridge was often also beer(ish).
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
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.
Wheat is a more modern staple than you might imagine. Millet was more widespread than rice or wheat for much of Eurasia.
Boiled wheat is perfectly edible, actually. Tasty? Not really, but I didn’t grow up on it and we’re extremely spoilt compared to prehistoric peoples. Stuff like boiled barley kernels (AFAIK you can’t really make bread with barley) was still a relatively common dish 1-200 hundred years ago in my parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groat_(grain)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_barleySignificant point: “Edible” is subject to discussion. Not more than 100 years ago, the expected diet in large parts of Norway was boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain. For every meal. Your entire life. Vitamins? Go chew on that shrub until the scurvy goes away.
I doubt it. In winter maybe. But given the extreme abundance of wild berries in the summer I’m pretty sure people ate a lot of them.
Source: Grandparents that grew up on a plot of land (read: hunk of rock) on the west coast and lived off sustenance farming (which includes a significant amount of fishing) as late as the 1930’s.
Sure, berries and some other foraging products was part of their diet, but not a very significant one. It was mostly whatever would grow on that plot. Mostly potatoes and onions, with some other minor stuff. While berries are abundant, picking them gives you a lot fewer calories per man-hour than fishing, so fishing takes priority.
I would’ve thought there were at least lingonberries over there? Lingon preserves have been around and ubiquitous enough since at least around the 1600s here in Sweden. In addition to that, off the top of my head there’s also blueberries, juniper, and at some point rose hips were introduced. Depending on where you are you could harvest cloudberries. In late spring/early summer you could harvest pine needles, as well as young pine cones.
In some part of China (Yunnan I think, but I could be wrong) they also harvest pine pollen, though I’ve not heard of that practise around here.
Granted, the ecology is decently different between Sweden and Norway, if they actually lived on a hunk of rock with no forest in sight I’d assume it’d be hard to get berries.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.
As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.
I see you’ve all already had the discussion but my point wasn’t really to say that they were the main source of calories or something. But a small part of the diet can still make an important contribution to nutrition, particularly when it comes to vitamins.
Oh, that’s definitely true! I was honestly surprised at how much response I got to what was initially meant as a semi-joke :)
Aye, this makes sense. You can pickle fish just as easily as you can create berry preserves, and ultimately the goal is to have enough calories around to get you through winter, the more efficiently you spend your time the better I suppose.
Preserving fish is great! You can salt it, dry it, ferment it, smoke it, pickle it, soak it in lye (we have a dedicated word for that), aand that’s about it :D
You don’t need a lot of fruit to not get scurvy, though. I bet even just the boiled potatoes have enough vitamin C left to keep it away, the age-of-sail sailor diet was complete garbage even by the standards of the time.
I believe I’ve read that potato’s were, for a significant period of time, the average Norwegians primary source of vitamin C. Not because it contains loads of vitamin C, but because people ate them by the boatload. (Don’t peel them, that gives you scurvy)
boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain
tbf that sounds amazing
Nobody stops you from trying it you can afford it, I hope you can it’s pretty sad otherwise
i eat it almost every day, that’s why i can say with confidence that it sounds amazing, because it is :P
Beef barley soup is delicious
You can absolutely make barley bread. It just won’t be very fluffy or rise, since there’s no gluten in it.
There most certainly is gluten in barley! Breweries don’t just add gluten to beer just to be dicks to people with celiac disease.
Tbf, most grains have way more gluten in them than they used to, though wheat is by far the worst offender. This is because they’ve been bred for industrial purposes. If you have a grain with a lot of gluten it’ll rise more, so you can use less wheat (aka reduce cost) while keeping the size of the loaf the same
That … doesn’t sound like bread to me.
That’s because its 2026, and not 1326. It would have definitely qualified as bread in the middle ages, and probably way before.
American-pilled.
If you look at a lot of other breads outside of the US, particularly German breads, they tend to be a lot more crumbly.
The high gluten breads you’re used to came about from industrial bread makers wanting their bread to rise more so they could use less grain per loaf while keeping the size the same
I’m German myself. All bread I’ve ever seen in Germany is leavened.
I’ve got a pack of pearl barley in the cupboard right now; it’s delicious.
Same, I also regularly make meals with pearl barley, it’s absolutely great as a noodles/rice replacement or salad ingredient
Called porridge.
It being tasty or not is entirely subjective. I’m a big fan of boiled wheat. The texture is fantastic.
It’s so substantial, even chewy. I love oat groats for this too.
Is this a dish that your parents made for you when you were a child?
Nope. Think we had wheat on occasion but I don’t recall feeling strongly about it. It’s something I’ve started doing more in recent years and I was a fan from the start. You can prepare it in various ways, like cooking it in a broth makes it absorb the flavours. Or you could just boil it with salt like you’d boil pasta, in which case it’s not that different in terms of flavour.
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.
The communal sponge is peak hygiene, stop dissing it
You can boil wheat too. Ancient peoples used to make porridge
And by “porridge” you mean “beer”.
Booze was the real motivator.
Beer is just old porridge
And porridge is just incomplete beer.
Guy: look at all this wheat I grew!
Fella; Wow, we could make so many bread!
Guy: Yes… Ah… Bread
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.
