Ancient Agriculture

[Beagle]

BTW, Beags. Your new avatar looks just like you!!!

Thanks Cogs! My other pic is now officially 10 yrs. old, and this depiction of a Neanderthal is probably less misrepresentative.

[spacecase0]

What goes around, comes around.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 153658.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2008) — Fifteen hundred years ago, tribes people from the central Amazon basin mixed their soil with charcoal derived from animal bone and tree bark. Today, at the site of this charcoal deposit, scientists have found some of the richest, most fertile soil in the world. Now this ancient, remarkably simple farming technique seems far ahead of the curve, holding promise as a carbon-negative strategy to rein in world hunger as well as greenhouse gases.

I have been waiting for information on how this soil was made, and I had forgot to keep tracking it in the news a few years ago.
I will make sure that this technology is not lost during the next apocalypse.
I love grow historical foods, and have a great seed collection.


as to the ancient farming,
I watched an australian aborigen talk about farming.
he said that his people knew about farming throughout there history, but that they were good enough to find food without farming, so that they did not have to resort to farming.

I bet that farming was an old idea that people only used if they had no other choice, this may be why farming pops up in very old times but without enough evidence to show that it was the way of life then, I don't think that they liked doing it.

[Beagle]

What goes around, comes around.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 153658.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2008) — Fifteen hundred years ago, tribes people from the central Amazon basin mixed their soil with charcoal derived from animal bone and tree bark. Today, at the site of this charcoal deposit, scientists have found some of the richest, most fertile soil in the world. Now this ancient, remarkably simple farming technique seems far ahead of the curve, holding promise as a carbon-negative strategy to rein in world hunger as well as greenhouse gases.

I really like this article. It seems that scientists have unlocked the riddle of "Terra Preta", that mysterious black soil of the Amazon. This stuff is still super-fertile after 1500 yrs! Here is a look back to 2005 when it was being described.
http://deltafarmpress.com/news/051114-terra-preta/

The story goes that in 1542, while exploring the Amazon Basin near Ecuador in search of El Dorado, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana began checking the area around one of the Amazon’s largest rivers, the Rio Negro. While he never found the legendary City of Gold, upon his return to Spain, Orellana reported the jungle area held an ancient civilization — a farming people, many villages and even massive, walled cities.

Later explorers and missionaries were unable to confirm Orellana’s reports. They said the cities weren’t there and only hunter-gatherer tribes roamed the jungles. Orellana’s claims were dismissed as myth.

Scientists who later considered Orellana’s claims agreed with the negative assessments. The key problem, they said, was large societies need much food, something Amazonia’s poor soils are simply incapable of producing. And without agriculture, large groups of people are unable to escape a nomadic existence, much less build cities.

More recently, though, Orellana’s supposed myths have evolved into distinct possibilities. The key part of the puzzle has to do with terra preta.

It turns out that vast patches of the mysterious, richly fertile, man-made soil can be found throughout Amazonia. Through plot work, researchers claim terra preta can increase yields 350 percent over adjacent, nutrient-leached soils.

Many well-respected researchers now say terra preta, most of it still hidden under jungle canopy, could have sustained large, agronomic societies throughout Brazil and neighboring countries.

We’re working intensively. We don’t need to take any terra preta anywhere. What we want to do is become knowledgeable about how terra preta was created and then create it elsewhere with local resources.

“Research on this is ongoing in Columbia, in Kenya. I have research colleagues in Japan and Indonesia also working on this. At the moment, there is a lot of excitement but there’s a lot of work to do.”

And now, from Min's post, they have it figured out. Plus it combats global warming. Somebody, the UN maybe, needs to get busy implementing this ancient South American agricultural and horticultural technology.

[Minimalist]

BTW, Beags. Your new avatar looks just like you!!!

I THOUGHT it was different!

[Minimalist]

Somebody, the UN maybe

I'm sure that they'll form a committee.

[spacecase0]

the UN seems kind of pointless,

I will just tell all my friends that farm so that the information can spread the old fashioned way, envious neighbors ask why the garden looks so nice,
it might only take a few hundred years for it to get popular ?

has anyone been dating how long it took to get popular in south America originally ? can precise dates be obtained from it ?

[Minimalist]

Just be careful that they don't chop down the rest of the world's trees in order to get the bark needed to make the charcoal.

That would be the Republican solution.

[Cognito]

Just be careful that they don't chop down the rest of the world's trees in order to get the bark needed to make the charcoal. That would be the Republican solution.

Min, you missed a few steps:

- Go on national TV to announce that the trees are WMDs.
- Invade country.
- Forget to pay for the cost of invading country.
- Invite corporate interests to assess damage and provide solutions.
- Line item approve 10 gazillion hand-axes.
- Get foreign (i.e. slave) labor to chop down all trees.
- Lend foreign country IMF funds to pay corporations for bark at inflated prices.
- Grab money, launder to Miami and enact austerity program.
- Place laundered money in re-election campaign account.
- Retire on full salary and benefits.
- Write memoirs.

[Minimalist]

I see you've read the whole manual, Cogs.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Burning the bush (rainforest) for the ash to mix with the soil to turn fertile for farming is as old as Methusalem. And still practiced today all over east Asia, Africa, and South America. When the annual burning season arrives Singapore and south Malaysia choke for weeks under a thick blanket of smoke from bush fires on Sumatra.

[Beagle]

Burning the bush (rainforest) for the ash to mix with the soil to turn fertile for farming is as old as Methusalem. And still practiced today all over east Asia, Africa, and South America. When the annual burning season arrives Singapore and south Malaysia choke for weeks under a thick blanket of smoke from bush fires on Sumatra.

RS, please read the article that Min posted. What you are saying has nothing to do with what the scientists have found.

[CShark]

Wow Beags, I thought you were someone else....neat avatar

[kbs2244]

The biggest effect this kind of discovery has is on the Tree Huggers claim that the current Amazon Rain Forest is “virgin.”
In fact it is the overgrown area of a diseased destroyed civilization that actively farmed, burned, and managed fish production from the mountains to the mouth of the river.

[john]

Wow Beags, I thought you were someone else....neat avatar

Beagle -


that wouldn't be an

AMERICAN (Tennessean)

HANDAXE

you are holding,

now,

would it??????


john

[Minimalist]

Of course not!

There are NO HANDAXES in North America. The Club has said so.