Hey, it could have happened... we'll never know. LOL!

Batspit, I would be interested to hear what results you get from sheep dairy! Plus, in the Middle East, it's less likely that they'll feed much if any grain.

Jenny

I've been macking down some sheep cheese. Its good. I can't tell if it is affecting me or not. It is strong stuff so I only use a little bit at a time.

Lactose isn't the only issue with dairy, Wife-y.

Without being sarcastic (gawd that hurts), dairy products - for those of us of North European extraction - are so early as to be right at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution. I suspect most of us are pretty well adapted to it.

I'm almost completely Northern European heritage (English/Scottish going back to the 15/1600s which is when the records stop), and dairy gives me a stuffy nose and sinus headaches.

Then again, England was populated by about a million different ethnic groups within the last 10k years, so who knows where they all originally came from.

Oh I know it isn't just lactose, but that is the most common dairy issue.

Actually... I'd question that. Lactose intolerance can make itself noisily apparent, but casein is probably a huge issue for a lot of people that don't realize it.

I gather the idea of paleo is that it is what people ate 15,000 years and more ago, so it is what humans are adapted to?

However, we aren't genetically the same as humans of 15,000+ years ago (for example, generally people of European descent can eat milk).

Also, we have a somewhat limited understanding of what their diet was, don't we? At least, according to Taubes, we don't have a good understanding of the US diet of 1900, it would be very impressive if we understood the diet of cave people well.

Finally, according to the course I was just watching on human prehistory, cave people did eat grains (though it's hard to envision much milk). It would be surprising if they ate as much as we do, but isn't plant matter the gatherer part of hunter-gatherer?

When it comes to food, you pays your money and you takes your chance. As you can see, I'm not convinced that entire logic of paleo holds, but it does make sense that one can prosper reasonably well on it.

Beth

Grains only came around with the advent of agriculture. Certainly, paleo man ate wild vegggies, fruits, nuts, etc. Maybe someone else can give you the breakdown of when grains were first grown.

Well, not exactly. If there hadn't been wild varieties, and if people hadn't figured out how to consume these wild grains, then they couldn't have developed agriculture, could they?

However, wild varieties had much, much lower gluten contents. Eaten rarely, in small amounts, I can see how no one noticed they'd be a problem.

The really high gluten grains we have now were actually developed when bread making went commercial.

I saw a lecture once about how they are rethatching really old thatched roof houses in remote parts of the UK. I think its a safety thing. When they pull off the old layers of thatching they are finding straw that has been perfectly protected that they can accurately date back to the middle ages. Some of this straw has grains still on it that they can study, and in some cases they've been growing the crops.

These old grains are much hardier with fewer grains per head, shorter stems (that aren't as fragile) and a much, much lower gluten content. I believe that the proteins are actually structured slightly differently, but I wasn't even low carbing when I saw this lecture, and I didn't pay sufficient attention.

I think I have a disc from that conference. I'll see if I can find that particular lecture.

Or not.....

Would the sinus problems be caused by the casein?

Kim

We put our youngest son on a casein-free diet (he is autistic). Didn't help him one bit, but other moms report progress.

If they did eat grains it was probably very little. If you were to go out to a field of grain and try to eat it in its natural state, you probably wouldn't like it to much. And it seems to me that even with the advent of agriculture, the only way that most grains are palatable is when you put them with sugar, fat, and sauces. Otherwise they taste pretty bland and are unappealing. Quoting from a book I read:

"At best, raw grains taste unpleasant and bitter, even when they are sprouted. More often, grains are inedible or posonous if eaten in the field. Even birds, the only natural grain eater, feed their young on insects, as grains are deficient in protein and nutrients."

Kim

People do eat grains just boiled. Cracked wheat, oats, wild rice. But yeah, they're not very tasty. Maybe they threw them in soup sometimes?

Also... part of the agricultural period was prehistory I'd imagine. How was pre-history defined in your class?

Man, I go away for a weekend and this forum is back on the grain kick!

Of course early humans ate grain. They ate anything they could get their hands on, and probably a lot of things that they shouldn't have. But think about the caloric payoff -- go hunt wild grass seed or gather other more calorie-abundant foods? There were no amber waves of grain like we envision. When I was a kid, I used to suck the "honey" out of honeysuckle flowers, but I could never imagine it being more than a novelty, let alone getting any significant calories from it.

Perhaps I'll give you this: maybe grains were eaten but they were different, and very few and far between.