From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 18:40:40 MDT
BillK wrote:
>
> But wild rice is a much older plant with the genus going back to the
> early Cretaceous period of more than 130 million years ago. If you
> follow the links, an interesting history is described.
>
> 'Cultivation of the wild prototypes preceded domestication. Rice grains
> were initially gathered and consumed by prehistoric people of the humid
> regions where the perennial plants grew on poorly drained sites. These
> people also hunted, fished, and gathered other edible plant parts as
> food. Eventually, however, they developed a liking for the easily cooked
> and tasty rice and searched for plants that bore larger panicles and
> heavier grains.'
>
> This seems to be claiming that stone age man could have been eating wild
> rice as part of his diet. The Paleo diet enthusiasts would surely
> disagree with that?
I wouldn't surely disagree, not unless I'd seen data on what, if anything,
rice does to the metabolism. Maybe it would just turn out that (a) rice
is paleo (b) rice is safe to eat. I don't know.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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