THE EMERGENCE OF DOMESTICATED PLANTS
There are two basic forms of plants and animals: wild and domesticated. The wild ones far outnumber the domesticated ones, which may explain why vastly more research is done on the wild forms. But it could just as easily be that scientists shy away from the domesticated ones because the things they find when examining them are so far outside the accepted evolutionary paradigm.
Nearly all domesticated plants are believed to have appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, with different groups coming to different parts of the world at different times. Initially, in the so-called Fertile Crescent of modern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, came wheat, barley and legumes, among other varieties. Later on, in the Far East, came wheat, millet, rice and yams. Later still, in the New World, came maize (corn), peppers, beans, squash, tomatoes and potatoes.
Many have "wild" predecessors that were apparently a starting point for the domesticated variety, but others--like many common vegetables--have no obvious precursors. But for those that do, such as wild grasses, grains and cereals, how they turned into wheat, barley, millet, rice, etc. is a profound mystery.
No botanist can conclusively explain how wild plants gave rise to domesticated ones. The emphasis here is on "conclusively". Botanists have no trouble hypothesising elaborate scenarios in which Neolithic (New Stone Age) farmers somehow figured out how to hybridise wild grasses, grains and cereals, not unlike Gregor Mendel when he cross-bred pea plants to figure out the mechanics of genetic inheritance. It all sounds so simple and so logical, almost no one outside scientific circles ever examines it closely.
Gregor Mendel never bred his pea plants to be anything other than pea plants. He created short ones, tall ones and different- coloured ones, but they were always pea plants that produced peas. (Pea plants are a domesticated species, too, but that is irrelevant to the point to be made here.) On the other hand, those New Stone Age farmers who were fresh out of their caves and only just beginning to turn soil for the first time (as the "official" scenario goes), somehow managed to transform the wild grasses, grains and cereals growing around them into their domesticated "cousins". Is that possible? Only through a course in miracles!
Actually, it requires countless miracles within two large categories of miracles. The first was that the wild grasses and grains and cereals were useless to humans. The seeds and grains were maddeningly small, like pepper flakes or salt crystals, which put them beyond the grasping and handling capacity of human fingers. They were also hard, like tiny nutshells, making it impossible to convert them to anything edible. Lastly, their chemistry was suited to nourishing animals, not humans.
So wild varieties were entirely too small, entirely too tough and nutritionally inappropriate for humans. They needed to be greatly expanded in size, greatly softened in texture and overhauled at the molecular level--which would be an imposing challenge for modern botanists, much less Neolithic farmers.
Despite the seeming impossibility of meeting those daunting objectives, modern botanists are confident H Sapiens had all they needed to do it: time and patience. Over hundreds of generations of selective crossbreeding, they consciously directed the genetic transformation of the few dozen that would turn out to be most useful to humans. And how did they do it? By the astounding feat of doubling, tripling and quadrupling the number of chromosomes in the wild varieties! .... Domestic wheat and oats were elevated from an ancestor with seven chromosomes to their current 42--.... Sugar cane was expanded from a 10-chromosome ancestor to the 80-chromosome monster it is today--.... The chromosomes of others, like bananas and apples, were only multiplied by factors of two or three, while peanuts, potatoes, tobacco and cotton, among others, were expanded by factors of four. This is not as astounding as it sounds, because many wild flowering plants and trees have multiple chromosome sets.
But that brings up what Charles Darwin himself called the "abominable mystery" of flowering plants. The first ones appear in the fossil record between 150 and 130 million years ago, primed to multiply into over 200,000 known species. But no one can explain their presence because there is no connective link to any form of plants that preceded them. It is as ifÉdare I say it?Éthey were brought to Earth by something akin to You Know What. If so, then it could well be that they were delivered with a built-in capacity to develop multiple chromosome sets, and somehow our Neolithic forebears cracked the codes for the ones most advantageous to humans.
However the codes were cracked, the great expansion of genetic material in each cell of the domestic varieties caused them to grow much larger than their wild ancestors. As they grew, their seeds and grains became large enough to be easily seen and picked up and manipulated by human fingers. Simultaneously, the seeds and grains softened to a degree where they could be milled, cooked and consumed. And at the same time, their cellular chemistry was altered enough to begin providing nourishment to humans who ate them. The only word that remotely equates with that achievement is: miracle.
Of course, "miracle" implies that there was actually a chance that such complex manipulations of nature could be carried out by primitive yeomen in eight geographical areas over 5,000 years. This strains credulity because, in each case, in each area, someone actually had to look at a wild progenitor and imagine what it could become, or should become, or would become. Then they somehow had to ensure that their vision would be carried forward through countless generations that had to remain committed to planting, harvesting, culling and crossbreeding wild plants that put no food on their tables during their lifetimes, but which might feed their descendants in some remotely distant future.
It is difficult to try to concoct a more unlikely, more absurd, scenario, yet to modern-day botanists it is a gospel they believe with a fervour that puts many "six day" Creationists to shame. Why? Because to confront its towering absurdity would force them to turn to You Know What for a more logical and plausible explanation.
To domesticate a wild plant without using artificial (i.e., genetic) manipulation, it must be modified by directed crossbreeding, which is only possible through the efforts of humans. So the equation is simple. Firstly, wild ancestors for many (but not all) domestic plants do seem apparent. Secondly, most domesticated versions did appear from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. Thirdly, the humans alive at that time were primitive barbarians. Fourthly, in the past 5,000 years, no plants have been domesticated that are nearly as valuable as the dozens that were "created" by the earliest farmers all around the world. Put an equal sign after those four factors and it definitely does not add up to any kind of Darwinian model.
Botanists know they have a serious problem here, but all they can suggest is that it simply had to have occurred by natural means because no other intervention--by God or You Know What--can be considered under any circumstances. That unwavering stance is maintained by all scientists, not just botanists, to exclude overwhelming evidence such as the fact that in 1837 the Botanical Garden in St Petersburg, Russia, began concerted attempts to cultivate wild rye into a new form of domestication. They are still trying, because their rye has lost none of its wild traits, especially the fragility of its stalk and its small grain. Therein lies the most embarrassing conundrum botanists face.
To domesticate a wild grass like rye or any wild grain or cereal (which was done time and again by our Neolithic forebears), two imposing hurdles must be cleared. These are the problems of "rachises" and "glumes", which I discuss in my book, Everything You Know Is Wrong &endash; Book One: Human Origins (pp. 283&endash;285) (Adamu Press, 1998). Glumes are botany's name for husks, the thin covers of seeds and grains that must be removed before humans can digest them. Rachises are the tiny stems that attach seeds and grains to their stalks.
While growing, glumes and rachises are strong and durable, so rain won't knock the seeds and grains off their stalks. At maturity, they become so brittle that a breeze will shatter them and release their cargo to propagate. Such a high degree of brittleness makes it impossible to harvest wild plants because every grain or seed would be knocked loose during the harvesting process.
So, in addition to enlarging, softening and nutritionally altering the seeds and grains of dozens of wild plants, the earliest farmers also had to figure out how to finely adjust the brittleness of every plant's glumes and rachises.
That adjustment was of extremely daunting complexity, perhaps more complex than the transformational process itself. The rachises had to be toughened enough to hold seeds and grains to their stalks during harvesting, yet remain brittle enough to be collected easily by human effort during what has come to be known as "threshing". Likewise, the glumes had to be made tough enough to withstand harvesting after full ripeness was achieved, yet still be brittle enough to shatter during the threshing process. And--here's the kicker--each wild plant's glumes and rachises required completely different degrees of adjustment, and the final amount of each adjustment had to be perfectly precise! In short, there is not a snowball's chance that this happened as botanists claim it did.
