Page 6 - Introduction to Agriculture by: Aqleem Abbas

Introduction to Agriculture Notes prepared by: Aqleem Abbas

According to carbon dating, wheat and barley were domesticated in the Middle East in the 8th millennium BC; millet and
rice in China and Southeast Asia by 5500 BC; and squash in Mexico 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 transition from hunting and food gathering to dependence on food production was gradual, and in a few isolated parts of the
world this transition 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 farmer began, most probably, by noting which of the wild plants were edible or
otherwise useful and learned to save the seed and to replant it in cleared land. Lengthy cultivation of the most prolific and
hardiest plants yielded stable strains. Herds of goats and sheep were assembled from captured young wild animals, and
those with the most useful traits—such as small horns and high milk production—were bred. The wild aurochs was the
ancestor of European cattle, and an Asian wild ox of the zebu, was the ancestor of the humped cattle of Asia. Cats, dogs,
and chickens were also domesticated very early.

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

Pastoralism (individual country living) may have been a later development. Evidence indicates that mixed farming, combining
cultivation of crops and stock rising, was the most common Neolithic pattern. Nomadic herders, however, roamed (wander
aimlessly) the steppes (tree less plains covered by grasses} 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 adz, an ax like tool with blades at right
angles to the handle, used for woodworking; 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 plow, a modified tree
branch used to scratch the surface of the soil and prepare it for planting. The plow was later adapted for pulling by oxen.

The hilly areas of southwestern Asia and the forests of Europe had enough rain to sustain agriculture, but Egypt
depended on the annual floods of the Nile River to replenish soil moisture and fertility. The inhabitants of the Fertile
Crescent around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East also depended on annual floods to supply irrigation
water. Drainage was necessary to prevent the erosion of land from the hillsides through which the rivers flowed. The farmers
who lived in the area near the Huang He developed a system of irrigation and drainage to control the damage caused to
their fields in the flood plain of the meandering river.

Although Neolithic settlements were more permanent than the camps of hunting peoples, villages had to be moved
periodically in some areas when 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. Settlements along the Nile River, however, were
more permanent, because the river deposited fertile silt annually.

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; Middle Eastern records and