Sumer ian
cylinder seal, 2500 BC
Sumerian farmers grew the cereals
barley and
wheat, starting to live in villages from about 8000 BC. Given the low rainfall of the region, agriculture relied on the
Tigris and
Euphrates rivers. Irrigation canals leading from the rivers permitted the growth of cereals in large enough quantities to support cities. The first ploughs appear in
pictographs from Uruk around 3000 BC; seed-ploughs that funneled seed into the ploughed furrow appear on
seals around 2300 BC. Vegetable crops included
chickpeas,
lentils, peas, beans,
onions,
garlic,
lettuce,
leeks and
mustard. They grew fruits including
dates, grapes, apples, melons, and figs. Alongside their farming, Sumerians also caught fish and hunted
fowl and
gazelle. The meat of sheep, goats, cows and poultry was eaten, mainly by the elite. Fish was preserved by drying, salting and smoking.
Ancient Egypt , a grain store, harvesting with
sickles, digging, tree-cutting and ploughing from Ancient Egypt. Tomb of
Nakht, 15th century BC. The civilization of
Ancient Egypt was indebted to the
Nile River and its dependable seasonal flooding. The river's predictability and the fertile soil allowed the Egyptians to build an empire on the basis of great agricultural wealth. Egyptians were among the first peoples to practice agriculture on a large scale, starting in the pre-dynastic period from the end of the Paleolithic into the Neolithic, between around 10,000 BC and 4000 BC. This was made possible with the development of basin irrigation. Their staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as
flax and
papyrus.
Indian Subcontinent Jujube was domesticated in the
Indian subcontinent by 9000 BC. Barley and wheat cultivation – along with the domestication of cattle, primarily sheep and goats – followed in
Mehrgarh culture by 8000–6000 BC. This period also saw the first domestication of the
elephant.
Cotton was cultivated by the 5th–4th millennium BC. By the 5th millennium BC, agricultural communities became widespread in
Kashmir. Archeological evidence of an animal-drawn
plough dates back to 2500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilization.
Ancient China s in
Yuanyang County, Yunnan Records from the
Warring States,
Qin dynasty, and
Han dynasty provide a picture of early
Chinese agriculture from the 5th century BC to 2nd century AD which included a nationwide
granary system and widespread use of
sericulture. An important early Chinese book on agriculture is the
Qimin Yaoshu of AD 535, written by Jia Sixie. Jia's writing style was straightforward and lucid relative to the elaborate and allusive writing typical of the time. Jia's book was also very long, with over one hundred thousand written
Chinese characters, and it quoted many other Chinese books that were written previously, but no longer survive. The work and the style in which it was written proved influential on later Chinese
agronomists, such as
Wang Zhen and his groundbreaking
Nong Shu of 1313. (960–1127 AD) Chinese
watermill for
dehusking grain with a horizontal
waterwheel For agricultural purposes, the Chinese had innovated the
hydraulic-powered
trip hammer by the 1st century BC. Although it found other purposes, its main function to pound, decorticate, and polish grain that otherwise would have been done manually. The Chinese also began using the square-pallet
chain pump by the 1st century AD, powered by a
waterwheel or
oxen pulling an on a system of mechanical wheels. Although the chain pump found use in
public works of providing water for urban and palatial
pipe systems, it was used largely to lift water from a lower to higher elevation in filling
irrigation canals and
channels for
farmland. By the end of the
Han dynasty in the late 2nd century,
heavy ploughs had been developed with iron ploughshares and
mouldboards. These slowly spread west, revolutionizing farming in Northern Europe by the 10th century. (
Thomas Glick, however, argues for a development of the Chinese plough as late as the 9th century, implying its spread east from similar designs known in Italy by the 7th century.) Asian rice was domesticated 13,500 to 8,200 years ago in China, with a single genetic origin from the wild rice
Oryza rufipogon,
Ancient Greece and Hellenistic world , symbol of wealth in the city of
Metapontum in
Magna Graecia (i.e. the
Greek colonies of
southern Italy), stamped
stater, c. 530–510 BC The major cereal crops of the
ancient Mediterranean region were wheat,
emmer, and barley, while common vegetables included peas, beans,
fava, and olives, dairy products came mostly from sheep and goats, and meat, which was consumed on rare occasion for most people, usually consisted of pork, beef, and lamb.
Agriculture in ancient Greece was hindered by the
topography of
mainland Greece that only allowed for roughly 10% of the land to be cultivated properly, necessitating the specialised exportation of
oil and
wine and importation of grains from
Thrace (centered in what is now
Bulgaria) and the
Greek colonies of
Pontic Greeks near the
Black Sea. During the
Hellenistic period, the
Ptolemaic Empire controlled
Egypt,
Cyprus,
Phoenicia, and
Cyrenaica, major grain-producing regions that mainland
Greeks depended on for subsistence, while the Ptolemaic
grain market also played a critical role in
the rise of the
Roman Republic. In the
Seleucid Empire, Mesopotamia was a crucial area for the production of wheat, while
nomadic
animal husbandry was also practiced in other parts.
Roman Empire harvesting machine, a
vallus, from a
Roman wall in Belgium, which was then part of the
province of
Gallia Belgica In the
Greco-Roman world of
Classical antiquity,
Roman agriculture was built on techniques originally pioneered by the Sumerians, transmitted to them by subsequent cultures, with a specific emphasis on the cultivation of crops for trade and export.
The Romans laid the groundwork for the
manorial economic system, involving
serfdom, which flourished in the Middle Ages. The farm sizes in
Rome can be divided into three categories. Small farms were from 18 to 88 iugera (one iugerum is equal to about 0.65 acre). Medium-sized farms were from 80 to 500 iugera (singular
iugerum). Large estates (called
latifundia) were over 500 iugera.
The Romans had four systems of farm management: direct work by the owner and his family; slaves doing work under the supervision of slave managers;
tenant farming or
sharecropping in which the owner and a tenant divide up a farm's produce; and situations in which a farm was leased to a tenant.
The Americas Agricultural history took a different path from the
Old World as the Americas lacked large-seeded, easily domesticated grains (such as wheat and barley) and large domestic animals that could be used for agricultural labor. Rather than the practice which developed in the Old World of sowing a field with a single crop, pre-historic American agriculture usually consisted of cultivating many crops close to each other utilizing only hand labor. Moreover, agricultural areas in the Americas lacked the uniformity of the east–west area of
Mediterranean and
semi-arid climates in southern Europe and southwestern Asia, but instead had a north–south pattern with a variety of different climatic zones in close proximity to each other. This fostered the domestication of many different plants. At the time of first contact between the Europeans and the Americans, the Europeans practiced "extensive agriculture, based on the plough and draught animals," with tenants under landlords, but also forced labor or slavery, while the
Indigenous peoples of the Americas practiced "intensive agriculture, based on human labour." Europeans wanted control of land for the grazing of their livestock and property rights for the control of production. Though they were impressed with the productivity of traditional farming techniques, they saw no connection to their system and were dismissive of Native American practices as "gardening" rather than a commercializable enterprise. Due to several thousand years of selective breeding,
maize, the hemisphere's most important crop, was more productive than Old World grain crops. Maize produced two and one-half times more calories per acre than wheat and barley.
South America . using a human-powered
foot plough The earliest known areas of possible agriculture in the Americas dating to about 9000 BC are in
Colombia, near present-day
Pereira, and by the
Las Vegas culture in
Ecuador on the
Santa Elena peninsula. The plants cultivated (or manipulated by humans) were
lerén (
Calathea allouia),
arrowroot (
Maranta arundinacea),
squash (
Cucurbita species), and
bottle gourd (
Lagenaria siceraria). All are plants of humid climates and their existence at this time on the semi-arid Santa Elena peninsula may be evidence that they were transplanted there from more humid environments. In another study, this area of South America was identified as one of the four oldest places of origin for agriculture, along with the Fertile Crescent, China, and Mesoamerica, dated between 6200 BC and 10000 BC.
Coca, still a major crop to this day, was domesticated in the Andes, as were the
peanut,
tomato,
tobacco, and
pineapple.
Animals were also domesticated, including
llamas,
alpacas, and
guinea pigs. The people of the
Inca Empire of South America grew large surpluses of food which they stored in buildings called
Qullqas. The most important crop domesticated in the
Amazon Basin and tropical lowlands was probably
cassava (
Manihot esculenta), which was domesticated before 7000 BCE, likely in the
Rondônia and
Mato Grosso states of
Brazil. The
Guaitecas Archipelago in modern Chile was the southern limit of
Pre-Hispanic agriculture near 44° South latitude, as noted by the mention of the cultivation of
Chiloé potatoes by a Spanish expedition in 1557.
Mesoamerica (top), maize-teosinte hybrid (middle), to maize (bottom) In Mesoamerica, wild
teosinte was transformed through human selection into the ancestor of modern maize, about 7,000 BC. It gradually spread across North America and to South America and was the most important crop of Native Americans at the time of European exploration. Other Mesoamerican crops include hundreds of varieties of locally domesticated
squash and
beans, while
cocoa, also domesticated in the region, was a major crop. The
turkey, one of the most important poultry birds, was probably domesticated in Mexico or the U.S. Southwest. In
Mesoamerica, the
Aztecs were active farmers and had an agriculturally focused economy. The land around
Lake Texcoco was fertile, but not large enough to produce the amount of food needed for the population of their expanding empire. The Aztecs developed irrigation systems, formed
terraced hillsides, fertilized their soil, and developed
chinampas or artificial islands, also known as "floating gardens". The
Mayas between 400 BC to 900 AD used extensive canal and raised field systems to farm swampland on the
Yucatán Peninsula.
North America village of grass houses surrounded by maize fields in the United States The indigenous people of the
Eastern U.S. domesticated numerous crops.
Sunflowers,
tobacco, varieties of squash and
Chenopodium, as well as crops no longer grown, including
marsh elder and
little barley. Wild foods including
wild rice and
maple sugar were harvested. The domesticated
strawberry is a hybrid of a Chilean and a North American species, developed by breeding in Europe and North America. Two major crops,
pecans and
Concord grapes, were used extensively in prehistoric times but do not appear to have been domesticated until the 19th century. The
indigenous people in what is now California and the Pacific Northwest practiced various forms of
forest gardening and
fire-stick farming in the forests, grasslands, mixed woodlands, and wetlands, ensuring that desired food and medicine plants continued to be available. The
natives controlled fire on a regional scale to create a low-intensity
fire ecology which prevented larger, catastrophic fires and
sustained a low-density agriculture in loose rotation; a sort of "wild"
permaculture. A system of
companion planting called
the Three Sisters was
developed in North America. Three crops that complemented each other were planted together:
winter squash,
maize (corn), and climbing
beans (typically
tepary beans or
common beans). The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles. The beans provide the
nitrogen to the soil that the other plants use, and the squash spreads along the ground, blocking the
sunlight, helping prevent the establishment of
weeds. The squash leaves also act as a "living
mulch".
Sub-Saharan Africa .
Thomas E. Bowdich – 1817 In the Sahel region, civilizations such as the
Mali and
Songhai empires cultivated
sorghum and
pearl millet, which were domesticated between 3000 and 2500 BC. Archaeological evidence suggests that
Sanga cattle may have been independently domesticated in
East Africa at around 1600 BC. In the tropical region of
West Africa, crops such as
black-eyed peas,
Sea Island red peas,
yams,
kola nuts,
Jollof rice and
kokoro were domesticated between 3000 and 1000 BC. The
guineafowl is a poultry bird that was domesticated in West Africa, and while the time of the guineafowl's domestication remains unclear, there is evidence that it was present in
Ancient Greece during the 5th century BC. Several species of
coffee were also domesticated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, with
Coffea arabica originating in
Ethiopia and serving as the main production of modern-day coffee since the late 15th century.
Oceania Australia '', was planted and harvested by
Indigenous Australians in eastern central Australia.
Indigenous Australians were predominately nomadic
hunter-gatherers. Due to the policy of
terra nullius, Aboriginals were regarded as not having been capable of sustained agriculture. However, the current consensus is that various agricultural methods were employed by the indigenous people. In the 1970s and 1980s archaeological research in south west Victoria established that the
Gunditjmara and other groups had developed sophisticated eel farming and fish trapping systems over a period of nearly 5,000 years. The archaeologist
Harry Lourandos suggested in the 1980s that there was evidence of 'intensification' in progress across Australia, a process that appeared to have continued through the preceding 5,000 years. These concepts led the historian
Bill Gammage to argue that in effect the whole continent was a managed landscape. ==Middle Ages and Early Modern period==