Wheat Has Corrupted Humanity
2nd April 2022
The blight that is wheat took root 10,000 years ago, when Triticum aestivum, or bread wheat, was domesticated from wild grasses in the “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East. Initially, the local Neolithics cultivated wheat alongside traditional hunter-gathering and incipient pastoralism (livestock farming). But wheat is a slave-master, demanding in its specific and daily needs, not least the endless — or so it seems to us who have ever grown the stuff — weeding. Wheat locked us into a seasonal cycle of planting, weeding and harvesting from which we have been unable to escape ever since. It also made us more sedentary, both in terms of chaining us to static settlements, and becoming less active. Guarding a wheat field from wild boar requires less energy than hunting wild boar; the lineal ancestor of the couch potato was the campfire bun.
“Carbs! Carbs will kill ya, kid! Stay away from carbs! You’ll thank me.”