The Transition to Farming
Soon after some Middle Eastern mountain bands took the first steps towards animal husbandry with the domestication of sheep and goats, hard times reduced some hunter gatherers to eating grass – specifically, wild wheat and barley. Such grass species were probably initially viewed as particularly good grazing for the newly domesticated flocks, but at some point, some people began experimenting with wild grass recipes.
After some trials and errors, probably involving boiling wild wheat and barley entire, it was eventually discovered that only the seeds were worth eating, while the stems were best left to the sheep and goats. More experimentation likely involved boiled wheat and barley seeds – an improvement over boiled stems. Yet more experimentation, involving the grinding, mixing, and baking, eventually produced a recipe for bread.
When bread was discovered – even the early dense and unleavened loaves – it must have seemed like a miracle food: what had been useless wild grasses that had only been good for grazing, now offered an entire meal in a single lump. It meant the territory where those wild grasses grew could now sustain more people than had hitherto been imagined.
Initially, wild wheat and barley seeds were simply collected while in season and taken back to the local inhabitants’ temporary campsites. Over the years, some of those gathered seeds inevitably fell near those campsites, seeding and transforming the vicinity into new, and increasingly denser wheat or barley fields. Eventually, somebody figured out the link between dropping some seeds on the earth, and the emergence some months later of new plants with many more seeds. Thus was born farming.
An added incentive for tending the miracle wild grasses was the durability of their seeds: once gathered, a kernel of wheat, for example, could last for years. That stood in stark contrast to most other dietary staples of hunter gatherers, such as meat, fish, or fruits, which had to be consumed soon after they were collected, or they would spoil. So people began tilling, planting, and weeding, as part time farmers in the hope of raising enough grain to supplement their hunter gatherer diet. Over the generations, the farming that had started as a part time gig for the hunter gatherers who had first discovered its secrets, eventually became a full time occupation for their descendants.