In his last posting, Dean writes:

I do not think it can be successfully argued that
cereal grains such as rice, wheat, barley, and etc. were ever a part of the
natural human diet prior to but a few millenia ago (2,4).  I have yet to
find any respectable scientific reference which seriously suggests this
might be so.

I'd like to add something here.  Although rice, wheat and barley were not part
of Australian Aboriginal diets, it sees that other cereal grains played an
important role.

I cite from Kirk's book (Aboriginal Man Adapting, RL Kirk,Oxford University
Press, Melbourne, 1983).

"Although the collection of seed was widespread across the continent, it was the
predominant actitivy in more arid areas and became high specialised in the wide
belt of grasslands which sweep across the north and down through the east of the
Continent (this means about 30% of Australia!).  Seed gathering activity was a
major activity for the Bagundji in the Darling River Basin, although in the
Murray River area, tubers were the main dietary staple.   Early in the last
century Mitchell (one of the first European explorers of Australia) observed as
he travelled down the Darling River that grass had been gathered and piled in
heaps.  Sometimes the heaped grass (native millet or Panicum sp.) was burnt and
the seed collected form the ground.  But storing the green grass in heaps also
allowed the seed to be kept fresh for several months so that a supply was
aailable during the leaner period of the year.   Reports from other places
suggest that storage of seed was not uncommon.  Howitt, for exapmple reported in
1862 a store of Portulaca seed wrapped in grass and coated with mud, and more
recently in central Australia nearly 1000 kg of grain was found stored in wooden
dishes.   Certainly in the more favoured grassland areas there were extensive
tracts of grass for harvesting and one report from south-west Queensland speaks
of Aborigines reaping areas of 1000 acres of Panicum,, using stone knives to cut
the stalks.  Tindale argues that the wet-milled grass-seed economy was greater
than that of one based on the hard seed derived form the shrublands.  This
greater edfficiency is one of the dterminants of the far larger population among
the tribes of the grassland areas.'

JBM's interpretation of all this: various AA groups seemed to have relished the
cereal grains and eaten them in significant amounts but I'm sure that much of
the carbohydrate in them must have been resistant to digestion and that which
wasn't would have been slowly absorbed.

Cheers Jennie