And fishing. There is no need to date the origin of agriculture! On the one hand, we have no evidence of the very initial, most primitive forms of growing edible plants. On the other hand, in different places, depending on local conditions, on the availability of those types of plants that could be cultivated, agriculture could arise earlier or later. Therefore, the constructions according to which agriculture allegedly arose in one place of the globe and only from there spread throughout the world, seem to be completely artificial.

As mentioned, there is an opinion that the emergence of agriculture dates back to the Paleolithic, namely, to the Aurignac-Solutrean era. It is quite reliable, however, to date agriculture only to the Neolithic, for some areas - early, for others - developed. So, the emergence of agriculture in Central Asia dates back to the 5th millennium BC. e., south of the East European Plain, in the region of the Trypillian culture, also in the Transcaucasus, - by the 3rd millennium BC. e., in the Baltics, in the central regions of Eastern Europe, in the Urals and in southern Siberia - 2 millennium.

It has long been suggested that a woman was the inventor of agriculture. This is likely.

By all appearances, agriculture developed directly from gathering, which, as we know, became a special branch of female labor. We have already seen that developed gathering is characterized by some care for naturally growing edible plants and concern for their multiplication. It is quite probable, therefore, that the woman invented agriculture by observing the conditions for the growth and maturation of wild plants. This does credit to the woman's observation, and observation is the mother of invention.

At first, agriculture was, of course, very limited in scope. It was the cultivation of one or different types of plants near a dwelling on a relatively small plot of land. But already in such a primitive form, agriculture provided a new, stable and not difficult to obtain type of hearty food. Naturally, this method of obtaining livelihoods was intended to develop with greater intensity, pushing gathering, hunting and fishing to the background, and perhaps even more distant plan.

Swamp farming

But for its development, agriculture requires appropriate land plots. In primitive times, there was no ready-made field. In addition to dry, barren deserts, all the soil was either covered with forest, shrubs or steppe thickets, or there were flooded lowlands of the swampy type. The heavily overgrown land needed cleaning and preparation, which forced the use of a lot of labor against the background of a lack of necessary tools. At the same time, swampy areas covered with silt were quite suitable fertile areas for sowing. It is likely, therefore, that in some localities, agriculture began to develop precisely in such swampy places. It is not for nothing that a swamp or silt appears in the folklore of various peoples as a symbol of fertility. It is possible that Neolithic pile settlements were sometimes associated with such "swamp" or "wet" agriculture.

Irrigation

For its further development, bog agriculture still requires a special agricultural technique. Providing natural conditions for the fertile growth of crops, flooded swampy land may be too abundant in moisture. In this case, it turns out to be necessary to regulate the accumulation and distribution of moisture using a channel system. We meet this agricultural form among some peoples, more precisely in the southeast of Asia, where rice is the main plant, cultivated in this way.

Slash-and-burn system

Farming in dry, vegetated places developed in a much more difficult and difficult way. But, having overcome all difficulties, this "dry" agriculture turned out to be much more progressive than "wet", giving, in the final analysis, the main source of food for the majority of mankind.

And the difficulties were very great. Open places are unsuitable for agriculture: the sowing here was subjected to weathering. It was necessary to choose places naturally protected from the wind. But for this it was necessary to free the required area from vegetation. It was best to prepare a site in the forest where it would remain naturally protected by trees. The experience of setting fire to dry grass and forest, familiar to gatherers and hunters, gave rise to the idea of ​​setting fire to the forest and sowing in burnt places. This is probably what was done initially. But, on the one hand, it is not always easy to set fire to a growing forest, on the other hand, fire is a dangerous element, which, having raged, does not know the limit and becomes a threat to the person himself. The task arose to burn out such a site in the forest as was required, and where it was most convenient. This problem was solved by the development of technology. A kind of revolution was made here by a humble ax. The stone ax, in its even the most primitive form, made it possible to cut down the forest and bushes, so that then, when the felled one dries up, all this can be burned. At the same time, at some point, another important discovery was made: the ash remaining from the fire is a fertilizer!

This is how the slash-and-burn system arises, which has become the leading form of land cultivation in primitive societies, which is still widespread among some nationalities and tribes.

There is a naive opinion that slash-and-burn farming is an easy matter. In reality, it requires a series of sequential, well-coordinated, complex operations. First of all, clearing the forest with a stone ax, although in this, as observations of backward farmers have shown, a remarkable skill is achieved, it is still far from easy.

Therefore, quite often only a small forest is cut down, and large trees remain standing until, after the fire, they dry up and fall on their own. When all the felled forest is dry, it is burned. Then the site is cleared of unburned parts of the tree and leveled, and ash is evenly scattered. Further, an essential operation is soil loosening. This is followed by sowing, timed just in time for the onset of rainy time. The seeded area requires maintenance. In particular, it must be fenced off to protect it from being trampled by wild animals. Desperate enemies of crops are especially large herd animals. A herd of elephants or wild boars in a few minutes, like a hurricane, destroys the sown area. Further monitoring of the field is also necessary, in particular the regiment. When the sown ripens, the need to protect the site from the animals that now appear to devour young shoots increases. Birds are also the longtime enemies of the sown field. The protection of crops from small animals and birds is usually carried by children, screaming and noisy driving away uninvited guests. But our garden scarecrow is also a very ancient invention. At least, it is widespread in the field economy of modern backward farmers. Finally, the harvest begins. A number of types of cultivated plants will make it possible to harvest not immediately, but for a certain time, as needed. For other species, different ways of storing the crop are created.

As mentioned, the slash-and-burn system is inevitably associated with depletion of the soil and the need to change the cultivated areas. But with the multiplication of humanity, the free land becomes less. On the other hand, this system is gradually leading to the destruction of forests. All this is especially true in sparsely wooded areas. Under such conditions, it is necessary to return more and more often to the same plot, which, however, yields an ever-smaller crop. Some way out of this situation is the so-called variable fruit system, or crop rotation, that is, sowing one area with successively different crops. It is difficult to say whether this system was invented already in the primitive era, but it exists among a number of very backward tribes. Thus, the natives of Melanesia plant successively yams, taro and sugarcane, and then leave the area under fallow for a while.

Hoe farming

In addition to the ax, with the help of which the forest is cut down, one of the simplest tools of primitive agriculture is the same simple digging stick, which has a sharpened and burnt end, which is already involved in gathering.

Sometimes this stick has a flat end. This is where the shovel or spade originates. Sometimes a drilled stone is put on a digging stick for gravity. A more advanced and more widespread tool is the hoe. Therefore, the early form of farming is usually referred to as hoe farming. In its most elementary form, a hoe is an ordinary branch or shoot of a tree with a short process. There are various types of hoes. As it develops, it becomes composite, having a special “blade”, wood, stone, bone, from a shell, attached to a stick instead of a natural process. In the north of Eastern Europe, a knotweed served as a tool for loosening the earth - a part of the spruce trunk with chopped and pointed branches.

These are the simple implements of primitive agriculture. Therefore, the main role is played in it by human labor, its organization and its division. It is widely believed that hoe farming is exclusively a woman's business. It is not right. Firstly, this complex and long-term business requires collective, organized labor of a large, well-knit human group and, therefore, is possible only with a more or less developed tribal system. To prepare a plot, modern hoe farmers usually combine several related groups. In a number of production procedures, everyone, both men and women, and the elderly and children, is concerned with their strengths and abilities. Deforestation is done by men, but women often cut bushes. The cut-down area is cleared by a man and a woman jointly, and the men are fencing it off. Smoothing and loosening with a stick or a hoe is usually a woman's business, in which children also take an active part.

Often, the earth is pounded simply by hand and as thoroughly as no machine could do. Men and women sow together: a man walks in front and makes holes with a stick, a woman follows him and, taking out grain from a wicker bag, puts them into the ground and levels it with her hands. Finally, further operations - sowing and harvesting - are usually the sole business of women. Thus, both sexes are involved in developed hoe farming, and the overwhelming share of constant labor still falls on the shoulders of women. It can, however, be assumed that in its most primitive form, hoe farming was really the sole business of a woman, while a man left behind a hunting area. But with the development of this form of agriculture and its complication, a man began to enter this area of ​​productive activity.

In favorable climatic conditions, especially, of course, in the tropics, the newly cleared area gives a rich harvest for several seasons in a row. Then, however, the land is depleted and with such a primitive cultivation it cannot give more. In addition, - this is of particular importance in warmer climates - if the sown successfully grows, then the weeds grow even more violently. Weed control is hard work, and modern backward agricultural tribes prefer to clear new land rather than weed old ones. So, the slash-and-burn system necessarily turns out to be associated with the frequent change of the cultivated field and the periodic preparation of the new site. The abandoned area more or less quickly overgrows, and, depending on local conditions, they return to it again after fewer or more years. In northern Europe, this took 40-60 years, in tropical countries, of course, much less.

Agriculture arose not only in forest areas, as described above, but also in steppe regions, for example, in the steppe zone of Eastern Europe. And in these geographical conditions, the primitive farmer faced no less difficulties in the development of the cultivated land, in particular, the most difficult task of destroying the thick layer of age-old sod that covered the land. Unfortunately, the question of the emergence of agriculture in the steppe regions remains, one might say, completely unexplored. Farming in the steppe regions did not require those movements that were associated with the slash-and-burn system, however, in order to restore soil fertility after several years of its use, here the cultivated field was left unseeded for at least a short period until the grasses began to grow again. And here, apparently, the technique of cultivating the land in one form or another included the use of fire. This farming system is called fallow, or shifting. It should also be noted that steppe agriculture, especially in a harsh climate and poorly fertile soil, could be in the economy of the local primitive population only a secondary branch of productive activity, along with hunting and fishing, which retained the main importance.

Hoe farming has become the main branch of the productive activity of a developed primitive society. It was widespread and is now retained by some backward tribes and nationalities. Hoe farming was widespread throughout pre-Columbian America, throughout Africa between 18 ° north and 22 ° south latitude, throughout Oceania, Indonesia and throughout Indochina, in large parts of India, in parts of China and in several other areas of Asia. This form of land cultivation was widespread throughout Europe in the historical past. In certain localities and among certain peoples, for example, among the Iroquois in North America, hoe farming with a crop of maize reached a very large scale and a high technical level. The well-cultivated, carefully kept fields of Iroquois maize astonished the European colonists of America.

The World History. Volume 1. Stone Age Badak Alexander Nikolaevich

The emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry

The tribes, which in the Stone Age, using the favorable natural conditions surrounding them, switched from gathering to agriculture and from hunting wild animals to cattle breeding, life developed completely differently. New forms of economy soon radically changed the conditions of existence of these tribes and advanced them far ahead in comparison with hunters, gatherers and fishermen.

Of course, these tribes experienced the cruel consequences of the vagaries of nature. And it is not surprising, because they still did not know metal, they were still limited in their technique by the Mesolithic and Neolithic methods of processing stone and bone. They often did not even know how to make clay pots.

But of fundamental importance for their life was the fact that they could already look ahead, think about the future and provide themselves with sources of livelihood in advance, and produce food for themselves.

Undoubtedly, this was the most important step of primitive man on the path from powerlessness in the struggle with nature to power over its forces. This was the impetus for many other progressive changes, caused profound changes in the way of life of a person, in his worldview and psyche, in the development of social relations.

The work of the first farmers was very hard. To be convinced of this, it is enough to look at those crude tools that were found in the most ancient agricultural settlements. They convincingly show how much physical effort, how much exhausting labor was required in order to dig up the ground with simple wooden sticks or heavy hoes, in order to cut off the tough stalks of cereals - ear by ear, bunch by bunch - with sickles and flint blades, so that, finally, grind the grains on a stone slab - grain grater.

However, this work was necessary, it was compensated by its results. Moreover, the field of labor activity has expanded over time, and its very nature has qualitatively changed.

It should be especially noted that the development of almost all currently known agricultural cultures and the domestication of the most important species of animals was a tremendous achievement of mankind during the period of the primitive communal system.

As mentioned above, the first animal that humans managed to tame was a dog. Its domestication, most likely, occurred during the Upper Paleolithic and was associated with the development of the hunting economy.

When agriculture began to develop, man tamed a sheep, a goat, a pig, and a cow. Later, man domesticated the horse and camel.

Unfortunately, the oldest traces of livestock breeding can only be established with great difficulty, and even then very conditionally.

The most important source for the study of the issue is bone remains, but a very long time had to pass in order for the structure of the skeleton of domesticated animals to change significantly as a result of changes in the conditions of existence, in contrast to wild ones.

Nevertheless, it can be considered proven that cows, sheep, goats, pigs were bred in Neolithic Egypt (VI-V millennium BC), Western and Central Asia, as well as in India (V-IV millennium BC). BC), in China, as well as in Europe (III millennium BC. besides this animal and the dog, which appeared here along with all migrants from Asia, there were no other animals suitable for domestication.

Along with domesticated animals, domesticated animals, for example, elephants, continued to play a certain role in the economy and life.

As a rule, the first farmers in Asia, Europe, Africa first used meat, skins and wool of domestic animals. After a while, they began to use milk.

Some time later, animals began to be used as a pack and animal-drawn transport, as well as a draft force in plow agriculture.

Thus, the development of animal husbandry, in turn, contributed to the progress in agriculture.

However, this is not all. It should be noted that the introduction of agriculture and cattle breeding contributed to the growth of the population. After all, now a person could expand the sources of existence, more and more efficiently using the developed lands and mastering more and more of its spaces.