I’m aware of pre-european Californian societies whose main calorie crop was acorns, rendered edible by soaking after crushing to remove irritating tannins and then cooked, and sometimes preserved by soaking in various other substances.
Yes, a good point. But weren’t these American Indians mostly hunter-gatherers? I don’t know if you can say that they engaged in agriculture. Some other tribes did, but those didn’t rely on nuts or acorns.
Eh, to my mind the boundary between agriculture and gathering is fuzzy when your plants live a long time and grow pretty thickly and you encourage the growth of those you like.
Like, there’s 11.5k year old seedless fig trees found in the middle east, a thousand years before there’s any evidence of grain field agriculture. Those simply don’t grow unless planted by humans.
All true. Still, grain very decisively won over nuts. I wonder if there’s a good reason for that or it was just a historical accident. Maybe you can just make many more yummy things our of flour than out of nuts. Or maybe nuts don’t actually store all that well because of fats going rancid...
I’m aware of pre-european Californian societies whose main calorie crop was acorns, rendered edible by soaking after crushing to remove irritating tannins and then cooked, and sometimes preserved by soaking in various other substances.
Yes, a good point. But weren’t these American Indians mostly hunter-gatherers? I don’t know if you can say that they engaged in agriculture. Some other tribes did, but those didn’t rely on nuts or acorns.
Eh, to my mind the boundary between agriculture and gathering is fuzzy when your plants live a long time and grow pretty thickly and you encourage the growth of those you like.
Like, there’s 11.5k year old seedless fig trees found in the middle east, a thousand years before there’s any evidence of grain field agriculture. Those simply don’t grow unless planted by humans.
All true. Still, grain very decisively won over nuts. I wonder if there’s a good reason for that or it was just a historical accident. Maybe you can just make many more yummy things our of flour than out of nuts. Or maybe nuts don’t actually store all that well because of fats going rancid...