Ancient Agriculture

[Beagle]

I can find a link Digit, but off the top of my head, it is one of the oldest grains cultivated in the world. The various grains that were cultivated around the world were simply grasses that had relatively large seeds, which could be picked and eaten.

Rice is no different other than the fact that it seems to be a wetland grass.

[Beagle]

Here is a lot more information fro Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice

[Beagle]

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/an ... -years-ago

Archaeologists have long thought that people in the Old World were planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting for a good 5,000 years before anyone in the New World did such things. But fresh evidence, in the form of Peruvian squash seeds, indicates that farming in the New and Old Worlds was nearly concurrent. In a paper the journal Science published last June, Tom Dillehay, an anthropological archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, revealed that the squash seeds he found in the ruins of what may have been ancient storage bins on the lower western slopes of the Andes in northern Peru are almost 10,000 years old. “I don’t want to play the early button game,” he said, “but the temporal gap between the Old and New World, in terms of a first pulse toward civilization, is beginning to close.”

Andean agriculture 10,000 yrs. ago.

[kbs2244]

How fast would you have to walk to get from Mesopotamia through Siberia, across the Bering Straight, down the whole of NA and CA then climb up into the mountains of Peru?

[Beagle]

Well, it wouldn't be done in one generation.

[john]

All -

Do some reading on the Nasca culture of Peru. There are elements of astronomy, possible zodiac (i.e., constellations identified by shape of a terrestrial species possessing symbolic/shamanistic power...... and I'll get back to that in a moment), and agriculture in their gigantic earth drawings. And, yes, I know I'm combining elements of several threads here.

But. From the practical side. Anyone here ever kept a compost heap? The seeds of members of the squash family simply explode out of a compost heap each spring. Especially the dread zucchini.

Now, the kernels of seeds of the squash family are pretty high grade protein - take pumpkin seeds for example - and are a prime candidate for being dried and or roasted for winter consumption. I believe the N. American Plains Indians were really big on both drying the flesh of the pumpkin and the seeds for winter provender, for example.

Inevitably, however, you would expect stray seeds to fetch up in the midden which is a characteristic element of these ancient bands of people staying in the same place for any extended period of time. Midden = Compost Heap in my mind. So, they winter up and, come spring, squash flourishes forth from midden. Another "aha" moment for incipient ancient agriculturalists. "Damn, if I plant some of these pumpkin seeds before I head out to the Summer range, when I get back here in the Autumn I'll have a bunch of pumpkins to eat". Which is exactly what many of the Plains Indians did.

Now, back to astronomy and the zodiac. It is logical that ancient, cognitive man figured out pretty early the relationship between certain stars appearing in a particular segment of the sky and terrestrial events: seasons, migrations of animals, growth and death of plants, weather (cyclones/anticyclones for example) and came to depend on the sky as a PRECURSOR of a cycle of events to come. Along with that came visual PATTERN. That group of stars is a salmon; that other one is a mammoth. Thus the sky-map, i.e., the sky seen as a map of visual symbolic triggers (constellations). And there is a serendipity here: "The salmon constellation is now rising over the horizon, the salmon will begin to run upriver in a month". To continue the salmon analogy, this also means that the dogwood will begin to bloom, the bracken fern will begin to sprout, the swans will be migrating North, etc., etc.. In short, the availability of various kinds of food, weather patterns, and the cyclical time of year become immediate, useable knowledge if you know how to read the sky-map.

So far, so good.

Now, two other variables present themselves.

1.) The abstract concept of time, and measuring time.

2.) The zodiacal concept of "Houses", which, combined with time, creates a period which is dominated by the constellation which rules a certain portion of the sky.

So now you have the season of the Salmon Spirit or God who rules an entire sequence of events and appearances, an increasingly exact way to measure that season, a means to predict the repetition of that season, and an intense desire to raise that ability to recognize and foretell, as that substantially raises the ability of the group to survive, and the rank of the person best able to foretell.

Enter the Shaman and/or Shamaness.

More to come.

john

[kbs2244]

John:
You can be hard to follow sometimes, but I am starting to like the outside the box thinking.
Keep mixing the pot.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I believe the N. American Plains Indians were really big on both drying the flesh of the pumpkin and the seeds for winter provender, for example.

Is there something substantial to back up that belief of yours, John?

[john]

I believe the N. American Plains Indians were really big on both drying the flesh of the pumpkin and the seeds for winter provender, for example.

Is there something substantial to back up that belief of yours, John?

R -

Look up the Pawnee tribe of N. America.

also the Mandans.

john

[Beagle]

That's not a big leap at all. We do the same thing today. I keep the seeds from the pumpkin every year and cook them up via my special recipe. The actual pumpkin becomes a pie.

.....and the Native Americans taught the Euro's how to do it.

[Beagle]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=15749697

What was a sacred crop to the Incas has been classified as a "super crop" by the United Nations because of its high protein content. It is a complete protein, which means it has all nine essential amino acids. It also contains the amino acid lysine, which is essential for tissue growth and repair, and is a good source of manganese, magnesium, iron, copper and phosphorous.

While many think of quinoa as a grain, the yellowish pods are actually the seed of a plant called chenopodium quinoa, native to Peru and related to beets, chard and spinach. The plant resembles spinach, but with 3- to 9-foot stalks that take on a magenta hue. The large seed heads make up nearly half the plant and vary in color: red, purple, pink and yellow.

In the Andes Mountains, where they have been growing for more than 5,000 years, quinoa plants have overcome the challenges of high altitude, intense heat, freezing temperatures and little annual rainfall. Peru and Bolivia maintain seed banks with 1,800 types of quinoa. It has been grown in the U.S. since the 1980s, when two farmers began cultivating it in Colorado.

As I stumbled my way toward healthful eating in my early vegetarian days, I turned again and again to these ancient seeds. They can be prepared equally well as a savory or sweet dish. A variation of a breakfast cereal, for example, with honey and dried fruit, is delicious.

Recopied from another thread.

[Rokcet Scientist]

That's not a big leap at all. We do the same thing today. I keep the seeds from the pumpkin every year and cook them up via my special recipe. The actual pumpkin becomes a pie.

.....and the Native Americans taught the Euro's how to do it.

Just like tobacco. Undoubtedly out of gratitude for the gifts the 'Euro's' brought them: small pox, flu, syphillis, etc....

[Beagle]

It's true RS. Besides the good stuff, there was sex, drugs, murder and slavery. But most researchers today believe that the Amerinds gave syphilis to the Europeans'

http://www.archaeology.org/9701/newsbri ... hilis.html

[Minimalist]

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.

[Cognito]

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