Re: Sard

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:

>
> Nice article by the doctor but there is nothing in it which suggests
> that men have not been eating cereal grains since they came down
> from the trees.

Other than the fact that eating grain to excess (a cupful a day?)
would have made them go mad and die.

> Our evolutionary success is tied to the fact that men will eat
> anything that does not eat them first.

No they won't. The Chinese eat plenty of stuff we don't and never did.

> Man, the hunter, the keen observer of animal behavior, would have
> certainly noticed rut, and the regularly timed appearance of animal
> births after it.

It didn't matter to them.

> I, personally, have no doubt that seeds and roots were collected to

be eaten long before the idea of agriculture developed.

I don't think your lack of doubt counts as an argument.

> In fact, _why_ would agriculture have developed at all if men were
> not collecting and eating what they later cultivated?

Women did. They were not important to hunters.

> Accordingly, there is no real reason to suppose that the PIE's, at
> any stage of their wanderings, ever had a need to borrow terminology
> for ejaculation.

I never claimed they did. I think the term meant "disperse, fertilize,
conceive"

> Whether a given group recognized the connection
> between internal ejaculation (coition) and pregnancy or not (I can
> hardly believe any did not though they did believe pregnancy could
> be caused, in addition, by other agencies, such as the wind), male
> ejaculate externally as well.

Not 'in addition'. The connection between coition and reproduction is
important to agricultural society, not before.

> You think they needed to borrow a word from another language of a
> people practicing agriculture?

For "disperse, fertilize, conceive"? Yes. The idea that life was
generated, not spontaneous, was new, at least as a central concept of
their world image.

> I think that is plainly silly.

Erh, OK.

> You are making an unwarranted leap from the particular (gluten rich
> wheat) to the general (all cereal grains).

All the four common grains (wheat, barley, oats, rye) contain gluten,
but wheat the most.

> Had the English sent the Irish rye, would they have died in droves?

Most likely in smaller droves. I am sorry if I have hurt Irish
sensibilities (I think).

> You seem to want to connect gluten intolerance to the 'noble hunter'

Please don't attribute medical communis opinio to me.

> but the truth is, anyone with gluten intolerance is defective since
> a widely available source of nutrition is prohibited to them.

Are you implying that more Irishmen than other people of other nations
are defective? A potential source of nutrition is prohibited to those
who can't tolerate hemlock (pretty much all of us).

I realize that this insight partially robs the Irish of their
martyrhood at the hands of the English, but it might be what really
happened.


Torsten