Talk:History of agriculture/Archive 1

WP credit

The article has been rewritten. The following are the last WP traces

• Pinpointing the absolute beginnings of agriculture is problematic because the transition away from purely hunter-gatherer societies in some areas began many thousands of years before the invention of writing.
• By 7000 BC sowing and harvesting reached Mesopotamia and there in the super fertile soil just north of the Persian Gulf Sumerian ingenuity systematized it and scaled it up.
• If the operative definition of agriculture includes large scale intensive cultivation of land mono-cropping organized irrigation and use of a specialized labour force the title inventors of agriculture would fall to the Sumerians starting ca.
• The ability of farmers to feed large numbers of people whose activities have nothing to do with material production was the crucial factor in the rise of standing armies.
• With such technology they managed to greatly expand the exploitable land area.
• Farming manuals were produced in every corner of the Muslim world detailing where when and how to plant and grow various crops.
• Advanced scientific techniques allowed leaders like Ibn al-Baytar to introduce new crops and breeds and strains of livestock into areas where they were previously unknown.
• Their counterparts in Europe struggled under a feudal system in which they were almost slaves serfs with little hope of improving their lot by hard work.
• These new crops included sugar cane rice citrus fruit apricots cotton artichokes aubergines and saffron.
• After 1492 the worlds agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange.
• Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted to the New and vice versa.

--AlekStos 15:25, 31 March 2007 (CDT)

Tone

Here and there the style becomes unencyclopædic (and Americocentric) — e.g., "Experienced gardeners may recall a meteoric rise in publicity and popularity during the 1970s of raised-bed vegetable production. What many of us didn't know was that farmers of several South and Central American societies practiced "raised-field" agriculture up to 4,000 years ago." --Peter J. King  Talk  07:14, 7 April 2007 (CDT)