When was farming invented

Irrigation fluctuated in complexity in different areas according to the terrain and amounts of rainfall. The Lake District is not an area known for water shortages for instance, however in arid areas, man had to be inventive digging wells and channels, and building apparatus such as the shadoof in Egypt - a pole with a bucket and counterbalance used especially for raising water.

They did so for their meat and milk, rather than for riding. Some however may have been used to drag primitive sledges along the ground, to help carry goods. Most notably, the wheel had arrived by BC, and a few hundred years later they were being fixed to ox carts. One animal that receives very little credit historically but was a key player in the evolution of farming and according to George Powell, a public speaker and farming aficionado so deserves far more recognition is the humble ox, which will be explored in part.

By BC most human beings had become farmers of sorts, remaining so until the 19th or even the 20th century, depending on which part of the world; agricultural methods having been largely spread by the slow migration of the farmers themselves. It therefore took several millennia for agricultural techniques to spread throughout Western and Southern Asia, across Northern Africa into Europe.

Wherever farming developed, the more reliable food source it produced which led to a massive upswing in population. But on the downside there were dramatic reductions in the variety of local flora and fauna, as more and more land was given over to fewer varieties of plants and animals. Farming radically transformed society; hunter gatherers had previously lived in small family groups building temporary shelters and being fairly nomadic, whereas farmers now began to settle creating larger habitations wherever the land was more fertile, such as in river valleys.

Neolithic farming practices had been very unproductive, with early farmers generally able to grow only just enough food for their own needs; meaning that almost everyone had to spend their time in agriculture or related activities. Only with the spread of iron tools, less expensive than bronze in the centuries after BC, could Neolithic practices at last be developed. The spread of agriculture would have greatly stimulated trade; the benefit of growing cereal staples such as wheat and barley was that it could be stored for a long time before eating, unlike fruit, berries or meat.

Newly built granaries now enabled humans to survive extremes such as drought and also to trade with their neighbours, encouraging the growth of trade routes over longer distances. The north is not noted for arable farming, with the terrain lending itself more to rearing beef and dairy cattle, grazing sheep and growing animal feed crops such as hay and silage; although the occasional field of maize, root crops or cereal can be seen as well as the occasional pig or poultry farm.

In the lowlands, areas can sustain larger fields of rich pasture that can support dairy herds as well as beef cattle and sheep. One of the most notable historic events to influence Britain was the introduction of the General Enclosures Acts of the s which resulted in wall building on a wide scale.

This gave people the right to enclose common land, claiming it for themselves. Since this was invariably done by the nobility, it was a tragedy for the small man, who lost his right to pasture on commons — apart from the bestowing of stints 4. However the real revolution in farming, now known as an industry, was the advent of mechanisation, firstly with the steam engine and then the tractor. A Van Duzen single-cylinder gasoline engine was mounted on a Robinson engine chassis, which could be controlled and propelled by Froelich's gear box.

The tractor transformed what had been more of a village industry up until then. The agricultural tractor is specifically designed to deliver a high torque tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purpose of pulling a trailer or other machinery. However, the primary distinguishing feature between hunter-gatherers and the beginnings of modern agriculture lies in the domestication of species:.

Hunter-gatherers promoted yield and changed environmental conditions. However, the future seed bank was consistently derived from the plants that they left behind in the field, thus there were none of the selective pressures that promoted domestication. Although there are many scholarly debates about the details, it is widely recognized that there are seven main areas in the world in which domestication of plant and animals arose:.

Pause for thought Can you suggest 4 reasons why domestication arose in the seven areas listed above as opposed to elsewhere? Newly Cultivated Field - India. Photograph Courtesy of Dr. Why give up the hour work week and the fun of hunting in order to toil in the sun? Why work harder for food that is less nutritious and a supply more capricious? Why invite famine, plague, pestilence and crowded living conditions?

Why abandon the Golden Age and take up the burden? However, it did increase food production per unit area, making it easier to feed a population from the same amount of land around a settlement. The alternative scenario suggests that man had to reach a certain level of social organization or tool-making development, with a settled mode of life, before agriculture was possible, and this stage of human development was only reached 9 - 10 years ago.

The move from shifting agriculture to domesticated agriculture was preceded and made possible by the millennia of accumulated experience of wild plants and animals, and trial-and-error experimentation. There was probably a gradual shift from collecting to cultivation with continued reliance on hunting and gathering.

Finally there was almost complete reliance on agriculture as the major source of nutrition. In some areas of the world, primitive methods are still the most effective. Photographs Courtesy of Dr. The stages of harvesting, planting and storing imposed various artificial selection pressures such as the following:.

Over time, these selection pressures produced changes in the crop and seeds that are characteristic of domesticated crops. These changes referred to as domestication markers are most pronounced when comparisons are made between the domesticated crop and its wild relatives. Typical domestication characteristics exhibited by modern varieties of maize left and Wheat right. Galton - identified behavioural and physiologic characteristics of animals which would make them better candidates for domestication i.

Goats exhibit more pre-adaptations to domestication than pigs. List 5 advantages and 5 disadvantages to a community that may arise when communities become sedentary. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Early gatherers The site bears the remains of six shelters and a particularly rich assemblage of plants. ScienceDaily, 22 July American Friends of Tel Aviv University. First evidence of farming in Mideast 23, years ago: Evidence of earliest small-scale agricultural cultivation.

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