Prehistoric hunter-gatherers ate fruit, berries and nuts, so how did early farmers decide to cultivate grain?

Question

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers ate fruit, berries and nuts, so how did early farmers decide to cultivate grain?

In: 12

Answer 1

Prehistoric hunter gatherers also ate grain. Modern hunter gatherers don’t eat much grain, but that’s because modern hunter gatherers now only live in the areas where farming is difficult, because farming has replaced hunting and gathering everywhere else.

Around the time of the origin of agriculture though, hunter gatherers lived everywhere. Including the parts of the world where wild grains thrived and grew naturally in thick stands. And hunter gatherers in those parts of the world gathered and ate grains, and eventually some wound up domesticating them.

But now, areas where wild grains grow easily are pretty much all farmland where domestic grains are grown, so there’s not much wild grain around for anybody left to eat anymore.