How did ancient humans see tall growing grass (wheat), think to harvest it, mill it, mix it with water then put the mixture into fire to make ‘bread’?

Question

I am trying to comprehend how something that required methodical steps and ‘good luck’ came to be a staple of civilisations for thousands of years. Thank you. (Sorry if this question isn’t correct for ELI5, I searched and couldn’t find it asked. Hope it’s in-bounds.)

In: 1505

Answer 1

While I don’t know about this particular development, a lot of developments in technology are incremental.

This particular discovery makes some degree of sense. Eating plants is a pretty old human tradition. Crushing them up to make a denser and more palatable food is a logical step forward.

Mixing this with water and drying it follows – you can turn a powder into a solid wafer this way. We’d been doing this with many powders for a long time.

Cooking it would make some sense, too. We fired clay and dried substances by fire. Why not do that with our food wafers? Especially since we were already cooking some foods like meat.