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.

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.


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.