So by now you’ve all heard about the 105,000 year old grain processing and I know what you are thinking – so much for the grain-free Paleo-diet as a product of evolution theory. Well I decided to dust off my 5 years of post-secondary training and investigate these claims.
The first thing I noticed is that the evidence in question consists of starch residues on ancient tools. The source of the starch was determined to be Sorghum grass a plant food currently in wide use in the area. Albeit one that requires a lot of processing.
The Achilles heel of the Big Grain conspiracy in my opinion is the drill. Starch residue on the drill implies to me that the Sorghum grass was probably being used as tinder. One could probably also presume being used as bedding and even basket weaving are uses much less complex than processing the Sorghum as food. I’d be more inclined to buy into the assertion of Sorghum as a part of the ancient diet if they could turn up some likely grain processing specific tools with grain starch residue –like the grinding stone that pushed the grain date back to 20,000 years ago.
In a nutshell (ha ha) I agree with these guys:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sciencenow;2009/1217/2
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