Intervention Theory: An alternative to Darwinism and Creationism

[CoinCube]

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3. The article make more assumptions, that what it calls "directed crossbreeding" is an incredibly technical process, that couldn't have been achieved by "primitive barbarians". In fact, this crossbreeding would have almost certainly started in the form of artificial selection/selective breeding, and is actually a very simple and easy concept to observe. I have no doubt that primitive humans that were capable of planting crops could have started selective breeding within a few generations. If a beneficial mutation occurred in a plant (higher yield/larger fruit etc) then this knowledge could have been applied straight away to exploit the mutation, creating huge amounts of crops even within a single human generation.

Another relevant theory (which I think you touch on in your post) is the population explosion and more sophisticated behaviour in humans that occurred about 50,000 years ago. Is it not much more plausible that this increase in population, intelligence and social sophistication allowed humans to start experimenting with plants, noting which ones grew well in certain conditions etc? There is strong evidence for their hunting techniques improving at this time, and if we look at some ancient tribes, they have incredibly specific knowledge about the plants and animals that inhabit their environment.

So to sum up, although your theory is certainly an interesting one, I don't believe there is anywhere near enough evidence for it. You are showing strong signs of confirmation bias, trying to fit selective evidence and theories into what I suspect is some sort of religious/supernatural worldview.

portokol I believe your challenges are fair. Furthermore Spendulus refuses to proceed past the initial posits rejecting them as false. My argument in the OP of course assumes the initial two posits are true.

1) That's there was outside intervention between 5,000-10,000 years ago whose end result was to stabilize and improve man's food supply.
2) That biblical events surrounding the beginnings of monotheism the exodus from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea etc are fact.

I believe the conclusion I draw is the most logical one if we assume the initial posits true. Obviously, each posit could and should be challenged. I am not in a position to defend the first as I am not a botanist or terribly familiar with the body of knowledge surrounding that field. I took the quote above from qwik2learn so we will have to rely upon him to defend the science behind it.

However, your argument that human intelligence alone led to the changes in crops carries its own assumptions. 1) that such a process would not be difficult for primitive man and would occur with limited effort or 2) that early humans were very intelligent and perceptive able to accomplish great tasks of observation and intellect with limited resources. Similarly, the early miracles in the bible are reported as being witnessed by the entire Jewish people and would be beyond the abilities of early man to fake. If we assume that they never happened we must assume that bible is a giant fake given to a gullible Jewish people complete with fabricated history and miracles. For this to be true we must assume 1) That Early Man was very dumb and suggestible, or 2) The Jewish people in particular are dumb and suggestible.

We can rule out the Jewish people being particularly dumb as they are on record as having the highest recorded IQ of any group. Therefore the only combinations of assumptions that allows one to reject both posits are.

1) Selective breeding converting wild time plants into currently domesticated plants is easy and was well within the abilities of primitive man.
2) Early Man was so dumb that even the group of Man with the highest average IQ was completely bamboozled when someone came along and made up a fictitious history and tradition for them.    

qwik2learn's argues above that the process of selective breeding is not simple. Indeed that it is so hard that even today we find it difficult or impossible to replicate.

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.

I find that very interesting. I agree it is certainly not proof but it is interesting.

You accuse me of confirmation bias. I would challenge you to show me an example of such bias. Up thread I presented an argument that rationally follows from its starting posits.

You accuse me of a supernatural/religious worldview when I have already shared my worldview elsewhere. I believe that atheism is fundamentally poisonous and that the data on human health and reproduction support this view. I have highlighted this data in the Health and Religion thread. Other than a rejection of atheism as unhealthy I have an open mind. I am not an adherent of any mainstream or alternative religious group. I am perhaps sympathetic to Torah observant Judaism but I am neither Torah observant nor Jewish.

[protokol]

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3. The article make more assumptions, that what it calls "directed crossbreeding" is an incredibly technical process, that couldn't have been achieved by "primitive barbarians". In fact, this crossbreeding would have almost certainly started in the form of artificial selection/selective breeding, and is actually a very simple and easy concept to observe. I have no doubt that primitive humans that were capable of planting crops could have started selective breeding within a few generations. If a beneficial mutation occurred in a plant (higher yield/larger fruit etc) then this knowledge could have been applied straight away to exploit the mutation, creating huge amounts of crops even within a single human generation.

Another relevant theory (which I think you touch on in your post) is the population explosion and more sophisticated behaviour in humans that occurred about 50,000 years ago. Is it not much more plausible that this increase in population, intelligence and social sophistication allowed humans to start experimenting with plants, noting which ones grew well in certain conditions etc? There is strong evidence for their hunting techniques improving at this time, and if we look at some ancient tribes, they have incredibly specific knowledge about the plants and animals that inhabit their environment.

So to sum up, although your theory is certainly an interesting one, I don't believe there is anywhere near enough evidence for it. You are showing strong signs of confirmation bias, trying to fit selective evidence and theories into what I suspect is some sort of religious/supernatural worldview.

portokol I believe your challenges are fair. Furthermore Spendulus refuses to proceed past the initial posits rejecting them as false. The augments above of course assumes the initial two posits are true.

1) That's there was outside intervention between 5,000-10,000 years ago whose end result was to stabilize and improve man's food supply.
2) That biblical events surrounding the beginnings of monotheism the exodus from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea etc are fact.

I believe the conclusion I draw is the most logical one if we assumes the initial posits true. Obviously, each posit could and should be challenged. I am not in a position to defend the first as I am not a botanist or terribly familiar with the body of knowledge surrounding that field. I took the quote above from qwik2learn so we will have to rely upon him to defend the science behind it.

Yes this was the main point of my post, these initial posits are highly unlikely. There isn't enough evidence to consider them plausible enough to formulate serious theories around, when compared to the huge amount of hard biological and historical evidence. Even discussing them in a "thought experiment" way is kind of pointless IMO, it's similar to basing theories on the plot of "Star Wars" - fun but ultimately useless.

However, your argument that human intelligence alone led to the changes in crops carries its own assumptions. 1) that such a process would not be difficult for primitive man and would occur with limited effort or 2) that early humans were very intelligent and perceptive able to accomplish great tasks of observation and intellect with limited resources.

I didn't say "human intelligence alone", other factors could have been involved, e.g. natural phenomenon such as mutation of plant DNA, environmental change (ice ages/sea level rises), causing natural selection, which could have been exploited through selective breeding by our early human ancestors that were learning to communicate more complex ideas with each other.

Both of your points are pretty much the same thing, and yes I think they are reasonably strong arguments. There are elements of assumption (there always is in science and philosphy), but as I said there's plenty of evidence that humans 20-50,000 years ago were becoming intelligent and sophisticated - fashioning weapons for hunting, forming social groups, making cave paintings (the oldest found is 40,000 years old) and building tools. This link shows the oldest tools ever found (3.3m years) and predate early humans: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32804177

I think it's likely that the changes in human intelligence and society, that evidence shows happened around 50,000 years ago, would have an accelerating impact on the knowledge and skills required to hunt, gather and farm. Information passed on from generation to generation, and being improved all the time.

Similarly, the early miracles in the bible are reported as being witnessed by the entire Jewish people and would be beyond the abilities of early man to fake. If we assume that they never happened we must assume that bible is a giant fake given to a gullible Jewish people complete with fabricated history and miracles. For this to be true we must assume 1) That Early Man was very dumb and suggestible, or 2) The Jewish people in particular are dumb and suggestible.

We can rule out the Jewish people being particularly dumb as they are on record as having the highest recorded IQ of any racial group. Therefore the only combinations of assumptions that allows one to reject both posits are.

1) Selective breeding converting wild time plants into currently domesticated plants is not a difficult process and would well within the abilities of primitive man.
2) Early Man was very dumb and suggestible.    

First of all, I don't think we should be using the Bible in this discussion. Mainly because we are talking about events that happened way before the bible existed, >20,000 years ago. The bible is not relevant here.

Anyhow, you're comparing apples and oranges here - even intelligent people today believe the most ridiculous things. Just look at how the Nazis indoctrinated their countrymen, the same with Soviet communism, people today that believe the Earth is flat. Don't forget that in biblical times there were severe consequences for people that defied the bible - look what happened to the heretic scientists when the suggested heliocentrism.

Clever people often believe ridiculous things. Doesn't mean they can't perform basic observation and communication to their piers, e.g. "keep the seeds from the juiciest plants and plant them next year, throw away the seeds from the weakest plants". It's really not that hard, right?

However, qwik2learn's argues above that the botanical literature suggests that such a process of selective breeding is not a simple one.  Indeed that it is so hard that we find it either very difficult or impossible to replicate.

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.

I find that very interesting. I agree it is certainly not proof but it is interesting.

I agree, that is interesting and it's something I won't comment on here as I was unaware of the research. However I would re-stress the fact that many of the staple grains and fruits farmed 10-20,000 years ago and eaten by early humans could have been freak beneficial mutations, that were then exploited through selective breeding. We are talking on much larger timescales here (~10,000 years) than the 100 or so years that this stuff has actually been academically studied, so obviously less natural mutations could occur.

You accuse me of confirmation bias. I would challenge you to show me an example of such bias. Up thread I presented an argument that rationally follow from its starting posits.

You accuse me of a supernatural/religious worldview when I have already shared my worldview elsewhere. I believe that atheism is fundamentally poisonous and that the data on human health and reproduction support this view. I have highlighted this data in the Health and Religion thread. Other then a rejection of atheism as unhealthy I have an open mind. I am not an adherent of any mainstream or alternative religious group. I am perhaps sympathetic to Torah observant Judaism but I am neither Torah observant nor Jewish.

An example of your confirmation bias (IMO) is basically how your OP rejects looking at the quality of the initial evidence, and then makes too many assumptions that all seem to be trying to provide evidence for a supernatural/alien intervention. Perhaps I was mistaken, however your comments about the Bible/angels etc. (and your belief that atheism is poisonous) led me to believe you were quite a religious/spiritual person.
I'm assuming you believe in some sort of god/supernatural creator? Or do you think it was... aliens?

Anyway, this is irrelevant to the topic, I might consider reading some more into this if any good evidence arises.

[CoinCube]

...There isn't enough evidence to consider them plausible enough to formulate serious theories around, when compared to the huge amount of hard biological and historical evidence. Even discussing them in a "thought experiment" way is kind of pointless IMO...
...

I might consider reading some more into this if any good evidence arises.

Here is some more interesting reading on the topic. No proof here but it does highlight the amazing difficulty involved in the conversion of wild plants to domesticated crops. If intervention theory is false we have not given our ancestors anywhere near sufficient credit for the enormity of their accomplishment. In regards to my personal beliefs I am keeping an open mind. I am also interested in evidence and consequence.

Genetic study tackles mystery of slow plant domestications
http://phys.org/news/2014-04-genetic-tackles-mystery-domestications.html

At the end of the last Ice Age, people in many spots around the globe shifted from hunting animals and gathering fruits and tubers to cultivating livestock and plants.

It seems so straightforward and yet the more scientists learn, the more complex the story becomes. Recently, geneticists and archeologists working on domestication compared notes and up popped a question of timing. Did domesticating a plant typically take a few hundred or many thousands of years?
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finding these alleles in the first place must have been difficult, Olsen said. Only a subset of the genes in the wild population would have reliably produced a favored trait regardless of the crop variety into which they were bred and regardless of where that crop was grown. So the early stages of domestication might have been beset by setbacks and incomprehensible failures that might help explain the lag in the archeological record.

"What we are learning suggests there's a whole lot of diversity out there in wild relatives of crop plants or even in landraces, varieties of plants and animals that are highly adapted to local conditions," Olsen said, "that wasn't tapped during the domestication process."
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Farmers seem to have selected for plant variants that were insensitive to epistatic and environmental interactions.
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In the limited number of examples at their disposal, the scientists found it to be generally true that that domesticated alleles were less sensitive to genetic background than wild alleles. The domestication genes, in other words, tended to be ones that would produce the same result even if they were introduced into a different crop variety.

Unlike companion-animal breeders, early farmers seem to have selected domestication-gene alleles that are insensitive to genetic background and to the environment. This process would have been slow, unrewarding and difficult to understand, because the effects of gene variants on the plant weren't stable. But once sensitive alleles had been replaced with robust ones, breeders would have been able to exert strong selection pressure on plant traits, shaping them much more easily than before, and the pace of domestication would have picked up.

[qwik2learn]

What Is Intervention Theory?

Intervention Theory states that the Earth's habitable environment and all of the life forms on it, especially all of the "domesticated" plants, animals, and humans, are the result of terraforming and genetic engineering by off-world beings--aliens. So, what "proof" do we have to make such a radical claim? There is ample evidence for it.

4,000 to 6,000 years ago, the oldest civilization, the Sumerians, left detailed written accounts of how these off-world beings they called "Anunnaki" came down from the heavens to live among them as overlords. Sumerian written records include much advanced knowledge, such as the correct number of, and location of, all planets in our solar system, which they could not have seen without sophisticated telescopes. The Sumerians claim this information was given to them by their multiple "gods," the Anunnaki, which is one of many strong supports for the truth of their account.

These same documents claim that domesticated plants and animals were created by the Annunaki, and that even humans are the product of genetic engineering and hybridization between the Anunnaki and the native upright walking primates of Earth. This statement also seems to be corroborated by the fact that humans have fewer chromosomes than the higher primates from which we are supposedly descended.



Sumerian relief showing an Annunaki (right) gifting the technology of a plow, possibly symbolic of domesticated plants, to the Sumerians, (left).

http://www.lloydpye.com/intervention/Intro-WhatIsIntervention.htm

[qwik2learn]

Ancient Stone Tech
Egyptologists and archaeologists the world over insist that megaliths are the product of many hands using primitive tools over many years. Intervention theorists disagree. They believe it is absurd to suggest that primitive people using fiber ropes and stone tools somehow cut some of the hardest stones on Earth, and built giant structures with a level of precision we could not match today.


Lee reports that "The methods that are supposed to have been used by the ancients, such as pounding, hammering, grinding, polishing with abrasives, and wedging, just don't match up with what Watkins sees under the microscope."

Hard rock hammered in the manner proposed by Egyptologist Mark Lehner, and others, will shear along the natural grain of the stone, and the minerals are unevenly fractured. When granite is polished, the softer elements in the rock wear down first, leaving microscopic and near microscopic quartz crystals protruding. When a "wedging" technique is used (when a wedge is fed into a crack or groove in the stone and used as leverage to fracture it), the direction of the fracture can't be controlled.

None of these things are observed in the stones at Sacsayhuaman. Instead, the stone is smooth, microscopically slick and even. The explanation given by Watkins is that heat can melt quartz fragments into a glaze that fills in the irregularities, like a ceramic glaze. The exact same sort of "melting" effect  produced by modern "thermal disaggregation" technology, essentially the focused heat found in lasers, which can be used to cut stone. Each pass of the laser only shaves off a couple of millimeters, but with multiple passes the stone is cut in a straight line, leaving a slick, smooth surface eerily similar to the supposedly Incan stonework.

Therefore, in the language of the Deep South, only one question remains: Who are you going to believe? Lehner and his colleagues, or what your lying eyes tell you?

http://www.lloydpye.com/intervention/Megaliths-AncientStoneTech.htm

[qwik2learn]

I think it's likely that the changes in human intelligence and society, that evidence shows happened around 50,000 years ago, would have an accelerating impact on the knowledge and skills required to hunt, gather and farm. Information passed on from generation to generation, and being improved all the time.

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.

Clever people often believe ridiculous things. Doesn't mean they can't perform basic observation and communication to their piers, e.g. "keep the seeds from the juiciest plants and plant them next year, throw away the seeds from the weakest plants". It's really not that hard, right?

These wild plants would have put no food on their tables during their lifetimes;

Nearly all domesticated plants are believed to have appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, yet 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.

However I would re-stress the fact that many of the staple grains and fruits farmed 10-20,000 years ago and eaten by early humans could have been freak beneficial mutations, that were then exploited through selective breeding. We are talking on much larger timescales here (~10,000 years) than the 100 or so years that this stuff has actually been academically studied, so obviously less natural mutations could occur.

A freak mutation indeed!
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.

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". 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.

Further down in Pye's article we read:

However it was done, it wasn't by crossbreeding. Entire suites of genes must be modified to change the physical characteristics of animals. (In an interesting counterpoint to wild and domesticated plants, domesticated animals are usually smaller than their wild progenitors.) But with animals, something more 'something ineffable' must be changed to alter their basic natures from wild to docile. To accomplish it remains beyond modern abilities, so attributing such capacity to Neolithic humans is an insult to our intelligence.

[BADecker]

<>

However it was done, it wasn't by crossbreeding. Entire suites of genes must be modified to change the physical characteristics of animals. (In an interesting counterpoint to wild and domesticated plants, domesticated animals are usually smaller than their wild progenitors.) But with animals, something more 'something ineffable' must be changed to alter their basic natures from wild to docile. To accomplish it remains beyond modern abilities, so attributing such capacity to Neolithic humans is an insult to our intelligence.

Of course, then there is the other side of this whole idea, one that nobody seems to consider. What if the whole Sumerian idea is the direct opposite of reality. What if it was designed this way by Sumerian leaders and clergy to captivate the minds of the simple people, and bring them under their subjugation. What if EVERYTHING were domesticated back in prehistory, and there were no "aliens" or whatever to improve things. What if the closest to this were only demons that caused complex domesticated things to become wild.

God, the Creator, made everything perfect. And He made it all for people, prepared right from the beginning for people to eat and use. Then Adam and Eve turned from God in the Garden. In His anger, God did two things. He started destruction which brought about genetic changes from domesticated to wild, and He promised the Savior, Jesus, way back then, which allowed a few of the plants and animals to remain "domesticated" so that people had the opportunity to live for a while, and find salvation.

Consider that many scientists and researchers recognize that old age is a programmed-in thing for people. In other words, without this programming, people might essentially live forever, but certainly a lot longer - many times longer - than what they do.

You are going to find that you have it backwards. And probably those scientists that understand these things in detail have at least a hint that they have it backwards.

[CoinCube]

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...
...
Nearly all domesticated plants are believed to have appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, yet 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.
...
As they grew, their seeds and grains became large enough to be easily seen and picked up and manipulated by human fingers. Simultaneously...

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"...

That adjustment was of extremely daunting complexity, perhaps more complex than the transformational process itself...

However it was done, it wasn't by crossbreeding...

The argument above seems to assume that a massive change in wild plants is required before they could provide any degree of nutrition to early man. However, is this really the case? The source below argues that even the wild ancestors of modern crops were eaten extensively by early man despite the difficulty in preparing them. If this is correct the wild grasses and grains did "put food on the table" just not nearly as much as their current domesticated descendants.

http://www.naturalhub.com/natural_food_guide_grains_beans_seeds.htm

The human animal evolved to eat every animal or plant that wasn't actually toxic (and, after simple treatments, some that to greater or lesser degree were). Seeds are a rich store of energy, some have good protein levels, vitamins (especially vitamin E), minerals, and protective phytochemicals. Living as wild animals for the last million years or so, we ate every seed that was worth collecting,  grass seed, legume (bean-like, pea -like, peanut and others), and any other seeds that were sustaining and productive, or big enough to be worth bothering with.
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No reasonable energy source was ignored, and wild seeds were no exception. Indeed, grindstones with adherent plant starch from before 160,000 years ago - when the first recognisably modern humans appear in the fossil record - may have been used to grind grass seeds [ref]. We, of course, ate every non-toxic seed (including tree seeds) present in the environment we had moved into. There are many plants with edible seeds in the various climatic zones of Africa, but relatively few have big enough seeds, or are productive enough, to be worth expending the energy which are nicer to eat, easier to store, and require no preparation.

Accessing the Nutrients in seeds

While grubs, meat, tubers, fish and plant foliage can be eaten raw, all these things are physically easier to eat cooked, or cause intestinal disturbance if they are not cooked. Seeds are no different.
While you 'could' eat whole rice grass seeds (for example) without parching them first, only about 25% of the proteins are able to be digested. Cook the whole seed, and about 65% of the protein is available. Grinding raw rice seeds would probably make more than 25% available, but equally, grinding and cooking would likely improve protein availablity beyond 65%. The cultural evolution of both grinding and cooking seeds brought evolutionary advantage in the form of greater access to protein  - at least, for those tribal groups who had the technology.

Grass seeds, in particular, had to be heat 'parched' anyway, to get rid of the adherent woody 'chaff' covering the seed (later, with domestication, this chaff became easy to remove by beating). So a degree of 'cooking' was more necessary than a choice.

A few seeds have somewhat less protein digestability after cooking, but they are the exception. You would have to cook grass seeds at 200-280°C (392-536°F) to reduce rather than improve, their protein digestibility. Meat protein digestibility, in comparison, decreases when cooking is above only 100°C (212°F).

Seeds contain 'antinutrients' - substances such as saponins, tannins, 'protein splitting enzymes' inhibitors, and phytates. These compounds reduce the body's ability to access the nutrients in seeds. The type, and amount of anti-nutrient varies both with the species of plant, and with the local variety of the species (common beans, Phaseolus vulgaris, for example, have a wide range of  phytic acid and tannin concentrations - with white seeded beans having least tannins-depending on the variety). Some have several different anti-nutrients, some have few, some have relatively a 'lot' of any one anti-nutrient, some have very little.

Most, but not all, antinutrients are destroyed or reduced by cooking. Soaking and leaching are necessary to reduce some antinutrients, particulalry in some varieties of bean and other legumes. Soaking and sprouting seeds also reduces phytates. Soybeans, for example, contain a contain a 'tryptophane inhibiter' that interferes with the absorbtion of the amino acid 'tryptophane'. The inhibitor can be neutralized both by cooking and by sprouting (the sprouted root must be 3 to 4 inches long for this to be largely complete).

A very low percentage of the starches in some seeds 'resist' being digested ( up to 7%  for wheat, and oats and 20% for baked beans) These undigested starches are fermented by the microflora of the colon, producing variable quantities of gas.

Guided by the practices of recent African gatherer-hunters, it seems likely our African ancestors mainly dealt with anti-nutritional factors by roasting the seeds. Sometimes they were soaked as well, either before or after roasting (and grinding). These are classic techniques that we use even today when preparing legumes; although westerners rarely roast any other than peanut seeds, and occasionally soya seeds.
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In parts of Australia, the aboriginal people regularly harvested wild grass seeds (chiefly a wild 'millet', Panicum spp.), and it is likely that given time, they would have domesticated them. Indigenous tribespeople of the grasslands of Southern South America gathered grass seeds for food, and even brought one species of brome grass into cultivation. In Mexico, one of the local 'panic grasses' (Panicum spp., a kind of 'millet') was collected, and ultimately, domesticated. Palaeanthropologists have found 19,000 year old stone mortars for grinding grain show that wild grains were not just parched, but processed, from at least since that time.[ref]
Saharan wild grass harvest There is a lovely cave art picture of women gathering wild grasses in the once productive Sahara region of Africa at the Paleologos site (www.paleologos.com).

Our ancestors probably parched the whole grains on ember-heated stones (this would have burnt off the adherent husks around the seed), and made a dough from the cooked flour (Tibetan people today eat a dough from roasted barley flour mixed with tea and yak butter and formed into a ball - tsampa). Such doughs laid on hot stones or embers would have made the first unleavened 'bread' . Or the roasted flour could perhaps have been mixed with water to make a thin 'porridge'.

We should remember that our ancestors 10,000 ago were just as smart as we are today. They lacked only formal education and the history of prior discovery that we have. They would have put considerable thought into their sources of food and later their crops as this was literally a matter of life and death. I agree that the process of converting wild plants into domesticated crops is dauntingly complex requiring drastic and multiple genetic changes. I am not yet convinced that it could not have been achieved by sustained and selective breeding over a 5,000 year window.

There is likewise no arguing the fact that nearly all modern domesticated plants appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago and since then there have been few new staple crops. However, this could also be explained by the fact that perhaps it takes two to three thousand years of dedicated and selective breeding to achieve the large changes that we see. Such a process may be very labor intensive requiring detailed examination of each and every plant every single generation with decisions made regarding which plants to use the following generations. It would have to be sustained over generations and this level of vigilance would only occur if existence itself depended on it. Once success was achieved with a few crops it would be inefficient to repeat the process from scratch with new plants when better results would be achieved by building on past success for the reasons outlined in my post above.

Yes changing wild plants into their current highly optimized crops required modifications of entire suites of genes. Yes it would be very difficult to accomplish even today if we tried to repeat the feet. However, the time scales involved here are vastly different. For ancient man we are talking about multiple thousands of years to achieve results. That is a very different undertaking than trying to repeat that multi thousand year process in a year or two.

[qwik2learn]

http://www.naturalhub.com/natural_food_guide_grains_beans_seeds.htm

Sure, it may be that some wild varieties of seeds are nutritious and relatively easy to utilize; however, Pye is not convinced that this applies for all varieties, he points out many problems not least of which is the fact that some of these domesticated species have no obvious ancestor (man is one example, even Darwin observed that man was a kind of domesticated animal).

We should remember that our ancestors 10,000 ago were just as smart as we are today. They lacked only formal education and the history of prior discovery that we have. They would have put considerable thought into their sources of food and later their crops as this was literally a matter of life and death. I agree that the process of converting wild plants into domesticated crops is dauntingly complex requiring drastic and multiple genetic changes. I am not yet convinced that it could not have been achieved by sustained and selective breeding over a 5,000 year window.

This feat was achieved numerous times in eight different geographic areas with many different plant varieties, and "Once the advantages of growing these 'new technology' seeds was apparent, wild harvesting (and thus the possibility of domestication) of other equally promising species effectively ended", so to think that this happened independently and with numerous wild species throughout man's history is really stretching credulity. The odds of a beneficial mutation are already astonishingly small; this definitely sounds like another Darwinian "just-so story".

This feat of domesticating plants at some point in the future was not a "life and death" matter because in fact "hominids were able to survive for around one million years because they could successfully forage".

There is likewise no arguing the fact that nearly all modern domesticated plants appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago and since then there have been few new staple crops. However, this could also be explained by the fact that perhaps it takes two to three thousand years of dedicated and selective breeding to achieve the large changes that we see. Such a process may be very labor intensive requiring detailed examination of each and every plant every single generation with decisions made regarding which plants to use the following generations. It would have to be sustained over generations and this level of vigilance would only occur if existence itself depended on it. Once success was achieved with a few crops it would be inefficient to repeat the process from scratch with new plants when better results would be achieved by building on past success for the reasons outlined in my post above.

"This level of vigilance would only occur if existence itself depended on it"
But CoinCube, there is no way for early man to know that existence itself depended on his long-term experimental breeding program. Many groups of people in eight different geographic areas would ALL have had to know this fact. Then, once the plants were domesticated all of the world's people would have had to forget this fact and stop passing it down through oral traditions.

Yes changing wild plants into their current highly optimized crops required modifications of entire suites of genes. Yes it would be very difficult to accomplish even today if we tried to repeat the feet. However, the time scales involved here are vastly different. For ancient man we are talking about multiple thousands of years to achieve results. That is a very different undertaking than trying to repeat that multi thousand year process in a year or two.

Well, we can agree that 5k years is different from 2 years, but take a look at the wild rye in Russia; they have been trying for 150 years to make a notable change in the plant and it still has not yet appeared; this is already an entire human generation. I can tell that you have no evidence that a multi-thousand year breeding operation will do any better a job than a 150-year operation. You are merely repeating a dogma advanced by the Darwinian theory that is now under scrutiny. Furthermore, if we look at cheetahs, as mentioned in Pye's article, we are forced to conclude that the fact that they are all genetically identical indicates that even a multi-thousand year breeding operation does not necessarily result in ANY changes at all.

Even if early humans were smarter than us (see their Ancient Stone Tech), it is not likely that they would labor at something like this for generations with little reward and succeed in such rapid time; it is implied that the alleles were selected with expert precision despite the inability of early man to examine anything more than the plant's phenotype: "early farmers seem to have selected domestication-gene alleles that are insensitive to genetic background and to the environment. This process would have been slow, unrewarding and difficult to understand, because the effects of gene variants on the plant weren't stable. "

OK, so there are a lot of miracles involved, but that is basically what Darwinian theory demands from its believers: Just believe in the pre-existing freak beneficial mutations (they are just waiting to be activated by a clever breeder), the intelligence of early man (who is globally engaged in long-term experimental biology), add time and luck as "fudge factors" due to the lack of hard evidence and voila! Any trained Darwinist can now EASILY see how humans would have done this without ever remembering that they were smart enough to do so!

"But once sensitive alleles had been replaced with robust ones, breeders would have been able to exert strong selection pressure on plant traits, shaping them much more easily than before, and the pace of domestication would have picked up."

This 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 [typically] put no food on their tables during their lifetimes, but which might feed their descendants in some remotely distant future.

[Spendulus]

....such complex manipulations of nature could be carried out by primitive yeomen in eight geographical areas over 5,000 years.....

It's no different than the meticulous records for millenia kept to enable predicting eclipses of the sun and moon.

A lot of people have difficulty understanding that "primitive yeomen" were as smart as you or I.

But they were.

[qwik2learn]

....such complex manipulations of nature could be carried out by primitive yeomen in eight geographical areas over 5,000 years.....

It's no different than the meticulous records for millenia kept to enable predicting eclipses of the sun and moon.

A lot of people have difficulty understanding that "primitive yeomen" were as smart as you or I.

But they were.

Not even you or I are smart enough to breed a domesticated plant from a wild variety.

[BADecker]

....such complex manipulations of nature could be carried out by primitive yeomen in eight geographical areas over 5,000 years.....

It's no different than the meticulous records for millenia kept to enable predicting eclipses of the sun and moon.

A lot of people have difficulty understanding that "primitive yeomen" were as smart as you or I.

But they were.

Not even you or I are smart enough to breed a domesticated plant from a wild variety.

The Sumerians weren't, either. But they were really good at embedding science fiction into their culture. And many people today believe it as truth.

[CoinCube]

This feat was achieved numerous times in eight different geographic areas with many different plant varieties, and "Once the advantages of growing these 'new technology' seeds was apparent, wild harvesting (and thus the possibility of domestication) of other equally promising species effectively ended", so to think that this happened independently and with numerous wild species throughout man's history is really stretching credulity. The odds of a beneficial mutation are already astonishingly small; this definitely sounds like another Darwinian "just-so story".
...
there is no way for early man to know that existence itself depended on his long-term experimental breeding program. Many groups of people in eight different geographic areas would ALL have had to know this fact. Then, once the plants were domesticated all of the world's people would have had to forget this fact and stop passing it down through oral traditions.
...
take a look at the wild rye in Russia; they have been trying for 150 years to make a notable change in the plant and it still has not yet appeared; this is already an entire human generation. I can tell that you have no evidence that a multi-thousand year breeding operation will do any better a job than a 150-year operation.
...

Even if early humans were smarter than us (see their Ancient Stone Tech), it is not likely that they would labor at something like this for generations with little reward and succeed in such rapid time; it is implied that the alleles were selected with expert precision despite the inability of early man to examine anything more than the plant's phenotype: "early farmers seem to have selected domestication-gene alleles that are insensitive to genetic background and to the environment. This process would have been slow, unrewarding and difficult to understand, because the effects of gene variants on the plant weren't stable. "

OK, so there are a lot of miracles involved, but that is basically what Darwinian theory demands from its believers: Just believe in the pre-existing freak beneficial mutations (they are just waiting to be activated by a clever breeder), the intelligence of early man (who is globally engaged in long-term experimental biology), add time and luck as "fudge factors" due to the lack of hard evidence and voila! Any trained Darwinist can now EASILY see how humans would have done this without ever remembering that they were smart enough to do so!

"But once sensitive alleles had been replaced with robust ones, breeders would have been able to exert strong selection pressure on plant traits, shaping them much more easily than before, and the pace of domestication would have picked up."

This 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 [typically] put no food on their tables during their lifetimes, but which might feed their descendants in some remotely distant future.

I question the implied assumption above that early humans needed to plan generations in advance achieving no reward to successfully domesticate plants. The correct question to ask in my opinion is:

1) Would ancient man have obtained a survival benefit in the cultivation and growing of the wild ancestors of today's modern crops.

If the answer is yes then the foundations of agriculture and plant domestication are set without any need for genetic mutation at all and that leads us to the second question:

2) Given the numbers of humans involved and the time frame in question is it reasonable to conclude that the genetic changes required to transform wild ancestors to modern crops could have taken place through selective breeding and spontaneous mutations.

This is the heart of the matter and I suspect it cannot be definitively answered from the data available. However, I do not feel Intervention Theory has proven it's case. I am skeptical of the following arguments for Intervention theory.

A) I am skeptical of the claim that it is impossible that these genetic changes occurred gradually over many generations of selective breeding. Indeed we have experiments showing impressive examples microevoluation (admittedly in bacteria) occur under selective pressure given sufficient numbers and time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8
I would need better data to convince me that these changes could not have occurred via mutation and selective breeding.

B) I am skeptical of the argument that because we have had no major new plant domestication's in the last 5,000 years outside intervention must have been responsible. The article I cited upthread
http://phys.org/news/2014-04-genetic-tackles-mystery-domestications.html
implies that the initial genetic changes would by far be the most difficult and that once achieved further crop improvements would occur more quickly. If that is the case then farmers focusing on further improving plants already domesticated would out compete those experimenting with new crops once a critical threshold of improvement in a few staple crops was obtained. Perhaps it simply becomes economically unfeasible for early man to domesticate new crops from scratch once a few good staple crops have already been developed due to the large opportunity costs involved.

C) I am also skeptical of the argument that because the Russians have failed to cultivate a new form of wild rye over 150 years that it could not have been done in antiquity. I am unfamiliar the Russian research but have to wonder how much effort and diligence they are they really putting in compared to the efforts of antiquity. For the ancient farmer the success or failure of his crops determined if his children could eat or if they went hungry. He could be expected to very closely monitor each plant in his field and put tremendous thought and effort into every generation of seedlings in the hopes of being able to feed his family the following year. I cannot help but suspect that the efforts of antiquity would exceed that of well fed Russian academics who manage a small field of wild rye every so often in between other academic projects. The failure to introduce new changes from wild rye is certainly interesting. It calls for further research but I would not call it conclusive.

None of my arguments disprove Intervention Theory. Indeed it remains is entirely possible that Intervention Theory is true. However, in regards to ancient crops I do not yet feel a definitive case has been made. If there was an intervention we should see genetic changes to crops that vastly exceed the rate of change if these plants had be subjected to pressure via selective breeding alone. I would be interested to know if this is the case.

[CoinCube]

...
What if EVERYTHING were domesticated back in prehistory, and there were no "aliens" or whatever to improve things. What if the closest to this were only demons that caused complex domesticated things to become wild.

What if everything still is domesticated. Perhaps the only things that are wild are man and that which man has bent to his will and corrupted.

[qwik2learn]

If there was an intervention we should see genetic changes to crops that vastly exceed the rate of change if these plants had be subjected to pressure via selective breeding alone. I would be interested to know if this is the case.

I found an example, it shows that the 5' UTR associated with tb1 faced far more selection pressure than the coding region of tb1; in other words, more selection pressure was applied to that region of the genome which does NOT express a phenotype than to its associated allele:

Selection on Candidate Genes and Linked Regions

Tests for selection have been applied most commonly to data from genes for which there has been a priori evidence of a role in domestication or crop improvement. One example is tb1 in maize, where the pattern of nucleotide polymorphism was particularly striking ( Wang et al., 1999). As expected after a domestication bottleneck, the coding region of tb1 contains less genetic diversity in maize than teosinte; the maize coding region retains ∼40% of the genetic diversity in teosinte. The more surprising observation was that the reduction in diversity was far more severe in the 5′ untranslated region (UTR), where maize retains only 2% of teosinte diversity. Further, the pattern changed abruptly over a narrow ∼100 base pair region. Based on these observations, Wang et al. (1999) made two conclusions. First, they concluded that selection targeted the tb1 5′ UTR during domestication, consistent with previous observations that tb1 expression differs between maize and teosinte ( Doebley et al., 1997). Second, based on the abrupt shift in the pattern of diversity, they concluded that recombination had been sufficient to uncouple the history of the 5′ UTR from the coding region.

...

Notably, the cultivated sh4 allele weakens, but does not fully eliminate, the shattering phenotype, which might be critical, because farmers need seed that stays on the plant long enough to be harvested but which can subsequently be freed from the plant by threshing.

Finally, the ability to detect selection also depends on the history of the favored allele. Selection can be difficult to detect if the beneficial variant pre-existed as a common neutral polymorphism prior to domestication (Innan and Kim, 2004 and Przeworski et al., 2005). In this special case, the variant had the opportunity to recombine onto a number of haplotypes prior to the onset of selection. When selection commenced, it favored the variant and dragged along multiple linked haplotypes. These different haplotypes may encompass substantial genetic diversity. As a result, selection does not substantially reduce genetic diversity around the selected site, and nucleotide polymorphism data may not provide a clear signature of a selection event. However, it is not clear whether this model conforms to reality. Many mutations for domestication traits, such as shattering, would have been deleterious in the wild population; thus, it is unlikely that such variants pre-existed as common, neutral alleles in wild populations.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867406015923

[Spendulus]

....such complex manipulations of nature could be carried out by primitive yeomen in eight geographical areas over 5,000 years.....

It's no different than the meticulous records for millenia kept to enable predicting eclipses of the sun and moon.

A lot of people have difficulty understanding that "primitive yeomen" were as smart as you or I.

But they were.

Not even you or I are smart enough to breed a domesticated plant from a wild variety.

Smart enough?

We're smart enough to want more of what tastes better, and that's about all it takes.

You are actually trying to make something out of nothing.

[qwik2learn]

You are actually trying to make something out of nothing.

What is wrong with finding examples of domestication and asking questions about these traits?
The hereditary basis of this phenomenon constitutes one of the oldest problems in genetics.
...and this problem is still not solved, despite some attempts...
Source: http://www.genetics.org/content/197/3/795

I suspect that you are trying to NOT talk about Lloyd Pye's ideas because he has the physical evidence to back up what he is saying about intervention:


Source: http://www.lloydpye.com/starchildskull.htm

[CoinCube]

You are actually trying to make something out of nothing.

What is wrong with finding examples of domestication and asking questions about these traits?

Nothing wrong at all. Having an open mind and questioning accepted consensus is what allows progress. However, I am also not yet fully convinced of the validity of the first posit in the OP.  Given this uncertainty I would note that my argument in the OP can proceed if only the second posit is true.
 
Intervention Theory in regards to plant domestication is a bold claim. It is a factual claim and one that with time and study we should be able to find increasing and objective evidence for one way or another. As we lack definitive data currently it is not unreasonable for most to support the status quo of modern biology.

However, I also believe it unwise to totally reject the theoretical possibility of intervention theory. Our overall knowledge is limited. Until the history of crop domestication is fully understood one cannot completely rule it out.

[jstern]

That's a lot of words to read. Anyway, just like the wide variety of dogs that we have, people bread them and bread the animal with the interesting characteristics that they are looking for. . It's not rocket science.

I'll throw in this dog breed as an example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briard

They were originally bred to herd as well as guard flocks of sheep. And they were often left to their own devices in order to accomplish their assigned tasks. This makes the Briard different from those breeds that only guard and those that only herd.

All dog come from wolves. Yet a long, long, long time ago some humans, picking specific personality characteristics where able to create a dog that could do a specific function for them. In this case herd sheep. And they do it naturally.

[jstern]

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...
...
Nearly all domesticated plants are believed to have appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, yet 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.
...
As they grew, their seeds and grains became large enough to be easily seen and picked up and manipulated by human fingers. Simultaneously...

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"...

That adjustment was of extremely daunting complexity, perhaps more complex than the transformational process itself...

However it was done, it wasn't by crossbreeding...

The argument above seems to assume that a massive change in wild plants is required before they could provide any degree of nutrition to early man. However, is this really the case? The source below argues that even the wild ancestors of modern crops were eaten extensively by early man despite the difficulty in preparing them. If this is correct the wild grasses and grains did "put food on the table" just not nearly as much as their current domesticated descendants.

http://www.naturalhub.com/natural_food_guide_grains_beans_seeds.htm

The human animal evolved to eat every animal or plant that wasn't actually toxic (and, after simple treatments, some that to greater or lesser degree were). Seeds are a rich store of energy, some have good protein levels, vitamins (especially vitamin E), minerals, and protective phytochemicals. Living as wild animals for the last million years or so, we ate every seed that was worth collecting,  grass seed, legume (bean-like, pea -like, peanut and others), and any other seeds that were sustaining and productive, or big enough to be worth bothering with.
..
No reasonable energy source was ignored, and wild seeds were no exception. Indeed, grindstones with adherent plant starch from before 160,000 years ago - when the first recognisably modern humans appear in the fossil record - may have been used to grind grass seeds [ref]. We, of course, ate every non-toxic seed (including tree seeds) present in the environment we had moved into. There are many plants with edible seeds in the various climatic zones of Africa, but relatively few have big enough seeds, or are productive enough, to be worth expending the energy which are nicer to eat, easier to store, and require no preparation.

Accessing the Nutrients in seeds

While grubs, meat, tubers, fish and plant foliage can be eaten raw, all these things are physically easier to eat cooked, or cause intestinal disturbance if they are not cooked. Seeds are no different.
While you 'could' eat whole rice grass seeds (for example) without parching them first, only about 25% of the proteins are able to be digested. Cook the whole seed, and about 65% of the protein is available. Grinding raw rice seeds would probably make more than 25% available, but equally, grinding and cooking would likely improve protein availablity beyond 65%. The cultural evolution of both grinding and cooking seeds brought evolutionary advantage in the form of greater access to protein  - at least, for those tribal groups who had the technology.

Grass seeds, in particular, had to be heat 'parched' anyway, to get rid of the adherent woody 'chaff' covering the seed (later, with domestication, this chaff became easy to remove by beating). So a degree of 'cooking' was more necessary than a choice.

A few seeds have somewhat less protein digestability after cooking, but they are the exception. You would have to cook grass seeds at 200-280°C (392-536°F) to reduce rather than improve, their protein digestibility. Meat protein digestibility, in comparison, decreases when cooking is above only 100°C (212°F).

Seeds contain 'antinutrients' - substances such as saponins, tannins, 'protein splitting enzymes' inhibitors, and phytates. These compounds reduce the body's ability to access the nutrients in seeds. The type, and amount of anti-nutrient varies both with the species of plant, and with the local variety of the species (common beans, Phaseolus vulgaris, for example, have a wide range of  phytic acid and tannin concentrations - with white seeded beans having least tannins-depending on the variety). Some have several different anti-nutrients, some have few, some have relatively a 'lot' of any one anti-nutrient, some have very little.

Most, but not all, antinutrients are destroyed or reduced by cooking. Soaking and leaching are necessary to reduce some antinutrients, particulalry in some varieties of bean and other legumes. Soaking and sprouting seeds also reduces phytates. Soybeans, for example, contain a contain a 'tryptophane inhibiter' that interferes with the absorbtion of the amino acid 'tryptophane'. The inhibitor can be neutralized both by cooking and by sprouting (the sprouted root must be 3 to 4 inches long for this to be largely complete).

A very low percentage of the starches in some seeds 'resist' being digested ( up to 7%  for wheat, and oats and 20% for baked beans) These undigested starches are fermented by the microflora of the colon, producing variable quantities of gas.

Guided by the practices of recent African gatherer-hunters, it seems likely our African ancestors mainly dealt with anti-nutritional factors by roasting the seeds. Sometimes they were soaked as well, either before or after roasting (and grinding). These are classic techniques that we use even today when preparing legumes; although westerners rarely roast any other than peanut seeds, and occasionally soya seeds.
...
In parts of Australia, the aboriginal people regularly harvested wild grass seeds (chiefly a wild 'millet', Panicum spp.), and it is likely that given time, they would have domesticated them. Indigenous tribespeople of the grasslands of Southern South America gathered grass seeds for food, and even brought one species of brome grass into cultivation. In Mexico, one of the local 'panic grasses' (Panicum spp., a kind of 'millet') was collected, and ultimately, domesticated. Palaeanthropologists have found 19,000 year old stone mortars for grinding grain show that wild grains were not just parched, but processed, from at least since that time.[ref]
Saharan wild grass harvest There is a lovely cave art picture of women gathering wild grasses in the once productive Sahara region of Africa at the Paleologos site (www.paleologos.com).

Our ancestors probably parched the whole grains on ember-heated stones (this would have burnt off the adherent husks around the seed), and made a dough from the cooked flour (Tibetan people today eat a dough from roasted barley flour mixed with tea and yak butter and formed into a ball - tsampa). Such doughs laid on hot stones or embers would have made the first unleavened 'bread' . Or the roasted flour could perhaps have been mixed with water to make a thin 'porridge'.

We should remember that our ancestors 10,000 ago were just as smart as we are today. They lacked only formal education and the history of prior discovery that we have. They would have put considerable thought into their sources of food and later their crops as this was literally a matter of life and death. I agree that the process of converting wild plants into domesticated crops is dauntingly complex requiring drastic and multiple genetic changes. I am not yet convinced that it could not have been achieved by sustained and selective breeding over a 5,000 year window.

There is likewise no arguing the fact that nearly all modern domesticated plants appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago and since then there have been few new staple crops. However, this could also be explained by the fact that perhaps it takes two to three thousand years of dedicated and selective breeding to achieve the large changes that we see. Such a process may be very labor intensive requiring detailed examination of each and every plant every single generation with decisions made regarding which plants to use the following generations. It would have to be sustained over generations and this level of vigilance would only occur if existence itself depended on it. Once success was achieved with a few crops it would be inefficient to repeat the process from scratch with new plants when better results would be achieved by building on past success for the reasons outlined in my post above.

Yes changing wild plants into their current highly optimized crops required modifications of entire suites of genes. Yes it would be very difficult to accomplish even today if we tried to repeat the feet. However, the time scales involved here are vastly different. For ancient man we are talking about multiple thousands of years to achieve results. That is a very different undertaking than trying to repeat that multi thousand year process in a year or two.

I don't even think it would take that long. Every year pick the seeds from your best crop, and next year plant those, and repeat the process. The people don't have to even be aware of the fact that over time the crop will change into something very different after a couple hundreds of years. They might not even notice the subtle changes, just like we don't noticed the difference in someone we've known for many years, until we see a picture of them from back in the day.