Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898Various
History
Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Above it, however, and a very great improvement upon it, is the
agricultural stage, where the main source of the food supply is the
harvests. You observe, at once, that that means a sedentary life. When
a man sows corn, he must wait thereabout and tend it and till it and
finally reap it and store it and thrash it and then preserve the grain
and build granaries for it; and it involves, in fact, the remaining in
one place all the whole year; and then the regularity of that life led
very distinctly to making men regular, generally, in their habits.
They wanted to defend their homes—defend these grain fields of
theirs, or starvation would result; therefore, they built towers and
strong-walled cities; and they took great care in the selection of the
best men among them to do the fighting, while others looked after the
crop. We find that agriculture began at a very, very early period in
both continents. In our own continent we cannot tell when agriculture
was first in use—the main crop being the maize, or Indian corn. It
was raised by the more advanced tribes from the extreme north, where
its profitable culture invited, to the extreme south, from about the
northern line of Wisconsin in North America to the latitude of
southern Chile in South—extending, therefore, over some seven to
eight thousand miles of linear distance.
In the old world (going back to the time of the lake dwellers) we know
they had barley, rye and a species of millet; and later on they were
introduced to oats and wheat and a variety of others. Rice was of the
very earliest of our cereals, in the extreme east of the old world.
Wherever we find a very ancient civilization we also find that it is
intimately connected with some important cereal, and it has been said
that all you have to do is to study botany—the history of botany—and
you will find the history of human culture; and much there is that
could be said for that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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