When Grains Became the Source of Most of Our Calories
Modern civilization allows humans to enjoy more abundance, affluence, and security, than in any previous period in the history of our species. Because our prosperity is built upon foundations created in the Neolithic Revolution, particularly the transition to settled farming, it is easy to assume that the transition was beneficial at the time. It was not. Take our first major staple crop, wheat. It did not offer a better diet. We are an omnivorous species that evolved to thrive on the wide variety of food offered by the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Grains made up only a tiny fraction of our diet before we became farmers, but they soon formed almost the whole of most humans’ caloric consumption. Also, the grains-based diet was often poor in minerals and vitamins, and was hard to digest.
Moreover, because flour was not as finely ground and refined as today, it ground our ancestors’ teeth to nubs. Indeed, the transition to a grains-based diet reduced both the average life expectancy and the physical heights of farmers compared to their hunter-gatherer ancestors. Average height for men went from 5’10” in the hunter-gatherer era to 5’5″ after our ancestors took up farming. Women’s height decreased from 5’5″ to 5’1″. It took about 10,000 years – until the late twentieth century – for the average human height to return to what it had been before the Neolithic Revolution. Farming was also risky. Hunter-gatherers relied on dozens of species to survive. If times got hard and one or more species grew scarce, they could eat more of other species that were still around.
