Agriculture

A

Prehistoric Agriculture

Early agriculturists were, it is agreed, largely of Neolithic culture. Sites occupied by such people are located in south-western Asia, in what are now Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey; in south-eastern Asia, in what is now Thailand; in Africa, along the River Nile in Egypt; and in Europe, along the River Danube and in Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly. Early centres of agriculture have also been identified in the Huang (Yellow River) area of China; the Indus River valley of India and Pakistan; and the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico, north-west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The dates of domesticated plants and animals vary with the regions, but most pre-date the 6th millennium bc, and the earliest may date from 10,000 bc. Scientists have used dating methods (carbon-14 testing) on animal and plant remains and have dated finds of domesticated sheep that existed as long ago as 9000 bc in northern Iraq; cattle (the 6th millennium bc in north-eastern Iran); goats (8000 bc in central Iran); pigs (8000 bc in Thailand and 7000 bc in Thessaly); onagers, or asses, (7000 bc in Jarmo, Iraq); and horses (4350 bc in Ukraine). The llama and alpaca were domesticated in the Andean regions of South America by the mid-3rd millennium bc.

According to carbon dating, wheat and barley were domesticated in the Middle East in the 8th millennium bc; millet and rice in China and south-eastern Asia by 5500 bc; and squash in Mexico by about 8000 bc. Legumes found in Thessaly and Macedonia are dated as early as 6000 bc. Flax was grown and apparently woven into textiles early in the Neolithic period.

The farmer began, most probably, by noting which wild plants were edible or otherwise useful and learned to save the seed and to replant it in cleared land. Long cultivation of the most prolific and hardiest plants yielded a stable strain. Herds of goats and sheep were perhaps assembled from captured young wild animals, and those with the most useful traits—such as small horns and high milk yield—were bred. The aurochs seems to have been the ancestors of European cattle, and an Asian wild ox of the zebu, the humped cattle of Asia. The chicken was domesticated very early. The transition from hunting and food-gathering to a dependence on food production was gradual, and in a few isolated parts of the world has not yet been accomplished. Crops and domestic meat supplies were augmented by fish and wildfowl as well as by the meat of wild animals.

The Neolithic farmers lived in simple dwellings—in caves and in small houses of sun-baked mud brick or of reed and wood. These homes were grouped into small villages or existed as single farmsteads surrounded by fields, sheltering animals and human beings in adjacent or joined buildings. In the Neolithic period, the growth of cities such as Jericho (founded c. 9000 bc) was stimulated by the production of surplus crops.

Pastoralism may have been a later development. Evidence indicates that mixed farming, combining cultivation of crops and stock raising, was the most common Neolithic pattern. Nomadic herders, however, roamed the steppes of Europe and Asia, where the horse and camel were domesticated.

The earliest tools of the farmer were made of wood and stone. They included the stone adze; the sickle or reaping knife with sharpened stone blades, used to gather grain; the digging stick, used to plant seeds, and, with later adaptations, as a spade or hoe; and a rudimentary plough, a modified tree branch used to scratch the surface of the soil and prepare it for planting. The plough was later adapted for pulling by oxen.

The hilly areas of south-western Asia and the forests of Europe had enough rain to sustain agriculture, but Egypt depended on the annual floods of the Nile to replenish soil moisture and fertility. The inhabitants of the so-called Fertile Crescent, around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, also depended on annual floods to supply irrigation water. In China, the farmers who lived in the area near the Huang developed a system of irrigation and drainage to control the damage caused to their fields in the floodplain of the meandering river.

Although the Neolithic settlements were more permanent than the camps of hunting populations, villages had to be moved periodically in some areas, as the fields lost their fertility from continuous cropping. This was most necessary in northern Europe, where fields were produced by the slash-and-burn method of clearing. The settlements along the Nile, however, were more permanent, because the river deposited fertile silt annually. See also Archaeology.

B

Historical Agriculture Through the Roman Period

With the close of the Neolithic period and the introduction of metals, the age of innovation in agriculture was largely over. The historical period—known through written and pictured materials, including the Bible, Near Eastern records and monuments, and Chinese, Greek, and Roman writings—was devoted to improvement. A few high points must serve to outline the development of worldwide agriculture in this era, roughly defined as 2500 bc to ad 500. Some plants became newly prominent. Grapes and wine were mentioned in Egyptian records about 2900 bc, and trade in olive oil and wine was widespread in the Mediterranean area in the 1st millennium bc. Rye and oats were cultivated in northern Europe in about 1000 bc.

Many vegetables and fruits, including onions, melons, and cucumbers, were grown by the 3rd millennium bc in Ur. Dates and figs were an important source of sugar in the Near East, and apples, pomegranates, peaches, and mulberries were grown in the Mediterranean area. Cotton was grown and spun in India about 2000 bc, and linen and silk were used extensively in 2nd-millennium China. Felt was made from the wool of sheep in central Asia and the Russian steppes.

The horse, introduced to Egypt about 1600 bc, was already known in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. The ox-drawn four-wheeled cart for farm work and two-wheeled chariots drawn by horses were familiar in northern India in the 2nd millennium bc.

C

Tools, Storage, and Irrigation

Improvements in tools and implements were particularly important. Metal tools were longer lasting and more efficient, and cultivation was greatly improved by such aids as the ox-drawn plough fitted with an iron-tipped point, noted in the 10th century bc in Palestine. In Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium bc a funnel-like device was attached to the plough to aid in planting seeds, and other early forms of drills were used in China. Threshing was done with animal power in Palestine and Mesopotamia, although reaping, binding, and sifting were still done by hand. Egypt retained hand seeding through this period, on individual farm plots and large estates alike.

Storage methods for oil and grain were improved. Granaries—jars, dry cisterns, silos, and bins of one sort or another containing stored grain—supported city populations. Indeed, without adequate food supplies and trade in food and non-food items, the high civilizations of Mesopotamia, northern India, Egypt, and Rome would not have been possible.

Irrigation systems in China, Egypt, and the Near East were elaborated, putting more land into cultivation. The forced labour of peasants and the bureaucracy built up to plan and supervise the work of irrigation were probably fundamental to the development of the city states of Sumer. Windmills and watermills, developed towards the end of the Roman period, increased control over the many uncertainties of weather. The introduction of fertilizer, mostly animal manures, and the rotation of fallow and crop land made agriculture more productive.

Mixed farming and stock raising were flourishing in the British Isles and on the continent of Europe as far north as Scandinavia at the beginning of the historical period, already displaying a pattern that persisted throughout the next 3,000 years. According to the region, fishing and hunting supplemented the food grown by agriculture.

C

1

Beginnings of Serfdom

Shortly after the time of Julius Caesar, the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus described the “Germans” as a tribal society of free peasant warriors, who cultivated their own lands or left them to fight. About 500 years later, a characteristic European village had a cluster of houses in the middle, surrounded by rudely cultivated fields comprising individually owned farmlands; meadows, woods, and wasteland were used by the entire community. The oxen and plough were passed from one field to another, and harvesting was a cooperative effort.

Rome appears to have started as a rural agricultural society of independent farmers. In the 1st millennium bc, after the city was established, however, agriculture started a capitalistic development that reached a peak in the Christian era. The large estates that supplied grain to the cities of the empire were owned by absentee landowners and were cultivated by slave labour under the supervision of hired overseers. As slaves, usually war captives, decreased in number, tenants replaced them. The late Roman villa of the Christian era approached the medieval manor in organization; slaves and dependent tenants were forced to work on a fixed schedule, and tenants paid a predetermined share to the estate owner. By the 4th century ad, serfdom was well established, and the former tenant was attached to the land.

D

Feudal Agriculture

The feudal period in Europe began soon after the fall of the Roman Empire, reaching its height about ad 1100. This period also saw the development of the Byzantine Empire and the power of the Saracens in the Middle East and southern Europe. Spain, Italy, and southern France, in particular, were affected by events outside continental Europe.

In the Arab period in Egypt and Spain, irrigation was extended to previously sterile or unproductive land. In Egypt, grain production was sufficient to allow the country to sell wheat on the international market. In Spain, vineyards were planted on sloping land, and irrigation water was brought from the mountains to the plains. In some Islamic areas, oranges, lemons, peaches, and apricots were cultivated.

Rice, sugar cane, cotton, and such vegetables as spinach and artichokes, as well as the characteristic Spanish flavouring saffron, were produced. The silkworm was raised, and its food, the mulberry tree, was grown.

By the 12th century, agriculture in the Middle East was static, and Mesopotamia, for example, fell back to subsistence level when its irrigation systems were destroyed by the Mongols. The Crusades increased European contact with Islamic lands and familiarized western Europe with citrus fruits and silk and cotton textiles.

The structure of agriculture was not uniform. In Scandinavia and eastern Germany, the small farms and villages of previous years remained. In mountainous areas and in the marshlands of Slavic Europe, the manorial system could not flourish. Stock raising and olive and grape culture were normally outside the system.