Expert: John Shea - 5/12/2003

Question
Please allow me to thank you for your generosity.  My question: since when did men start (organized/planned) farming to produce grains (likes of wheat, rice, etc.) for own consumption?  Put in another way: what is the history of human consumption of grains?  I am curious for how long a time in their evolution men have been eating grains.  Also, what has been the general composition of diet before the farming practice?  
Sincerely yours,
Kris Chae

Answer
Dear Chris,
The earliest evidence of cereal agriculture (organized planting of cereal grains) dates to around 10,000-12,000 years ago in the Near East.  This is about the time one begins to see human settlements relocated from the kinds of craggy landscapes (ie. caves) near which cereals grow well to alluvial fans, where cereals grow best.  People had probably been eating cereal grains in modest amounts for quite some time before that, though.  Earliest evidence for rice agriculture in East Asia is somewhat younger.  The hard thing about determining the antiquity of cereal grain consumption is that the most popular methods of preparing these foods, grinding into flour and boiling, leave few durable remains in the archaeological records.
For a good, quick overview of agricultural origins, see T.D. Price and G.M. Feinman 1999 Images of the Past, (3rd Ed.) Mayfield, pp. 196-255.
Preagricultural diets probably had a greater variety of plant foods and higher proportions of meat (though this varied geographically, -more meat in colder habitats, less in warmer ones).  For a reference on preagricultural diets, see
Eaton, S.B., Shostak, M. and Konner, M.: The Paleolithic Prescription (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).
Cheers,
John Shea