In Scandanavia, 'Iverson finds that the whole spectrum of pollen deposits is altered when (in early Neolithic times).. The first farmers appear. Cereal pollens increase. Plants of oak woodland lessen and disappear; birch pollen increases rapidly -- it is one of the trees which can come in after an extensive burn. For the pollen record, the effect of early agriculture is as severe as a shift in climate.
Russell Lord
Biological evidence indicates that man, evolving with his food plants, developed horticulture and agriculture in both hemispheres at a time which may well have reached far back into the Pleistocene.
history agriculture archaeology
See,' said (Liberty Hyde) Bailey, 'how the leaves of this small plant stand forth extended to bathe themselves in the light... THese leaves will die. They will rot. They will disappear into the universal mold. The energy that is in them will be released to reappear, the ions to act again, perhaps in the corn on the plain, perhaps in the body of a bird. The atoms and the ions remain or resurrect; the forms change and flux. We see the forms and mourn the change. We think all is lost; yet nothing is lost. The harmony of life is never ending.' The economy of nature provides that nothing be lost.
history anthropology agriculture archaeology
Considering the comparative lifespans of simpler tribal societies and that of the more advanced agri-urban empires of antiquity, even here in the New World, it would be possible, indeed, to make out quite a case for illiteracy as a factor of the safety in keeping population and essential supplies in a working balance, with little or no damage to the basic sources of renewal.
history anthropology agriculture gaia
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