...uash in Mexico about 8000 BC. Legumes found in Thessaly and Macedonia are dated as early as 6000 BC. Flax as gron and apparently oven into textiles early in the Neolithic Period.The transition from hunting and food gathering to dependence on food production as gradual, and in a fe isolated parts of the orld this transition has not yet been accomplished. Crops and domestic meat supplies ere augmented by fish and ildfol as ell as by the meat of ild animals. The farmer began, most probably, by noting hich of the ild plants ere edible or otherise useful and learned to save the seed and to replant it in cleared land. Lengthy cultivation of the most prolific and hardiest plants yielded stable strains. Herds of goats and sheep ere assembled from captured young ild animals, and those ith the most useful traitssuch as small horns and high milk productionere bred. The ild aurochs as the ancestor of European cattle, and an Asian ild ox of the zebu, as the ancestor of the humped cattle of Asia. Cats, dogs, and chickens ere also domesticated very early.Neolithic farmers lived in simple dellingscaves and small houses of sunbaked mud brick or reed and ood. These homes ere grouped into small villages or existed as single farmsteads surrounded by fields, sheltering animals and humans in adjacent or joined buildings. In the Neolithic Period, the groth of cities such as Jericho founded about 9000 BC as stimulated by the production of surplus crops.Pastoralism individual country living may have been a later development. Evidence indicates that mixed farming, combining cultivation of crops and stock raising, as the most common Neolithic pattern. Nomadic herders, hoever, roamed the steppes of Europe and Asia, here the horse and camel ere domesticated.The earliest tools of the farmer ere made of ood and stone. They included the stone adz, an axlike tool ith blades at right angles to the handle, used for oodorking the sickle or reaping knife ith sharpened stone blades, used to gather grain the digging stick, used to plant seeds and, ith later adaptations, as a spade or hoe and a rudimentary plo, a modified tree branch used to scratch the surface of the soil and prepare it for planting. The plo as later adapted for pulling by oxen.The hilly areas of southestern Asia and the forests of Europe had enough rain to sustain agriculture, but Egypt depended on the annual floods of the Nile River to replenish soil moisture and fertility. The inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East also depended on annual floods to supply irrigation ater. Drainage as necessary to prevent the erosion of land from the hillsides through hich the rivers floed. The farmers ho lived in the area near the Huang He developed a system of irrigation and drainage to control the damage caused to their fields in the flood plain of the meandering river.Although Neolithic settlements ere more permanent than the camps of hunting peoples, villages had to be moved periodically in some areas hen the fields lost their fertility from continuous cropping. This as most necessary in northern Europe, here fields ere produced by the slash-and-burn method of clearing. Settlements along the Nile River, hoever, ere more permanent, because the river deposited fertile silt annually.See also Archaeology.BHistorical Agriculture Through the Roman Period ith the close of the Neolithic period and the introduction of metals, the age of innovation in agriculture as largely over. The historical periodknon through ritten and pictured materials, including the Bible Middle Eastern records and monuments and Chinese, Greek, and Roman ritingsas highlighted by agricultural improvements. A fe high points must serve to outline the development of orldide agriculture in this era, roughly defined as 2500 BC to AD 500. For a similar period of development in Central and South America, somehat later in date see Native Americans.Some plants became nely prominent. Grapes and ine ere mentioned in Egyptian records about 2900 BC, and trade in olive oil and ine as idespread in the Mediterranean area by the 1st millennium BC. Rye and oats ere cultivated in northern Europe about 1000 BC.Many vegetables and fruits, including onions, melons, and cucumbers, ere gron by the 3rd millennium BC in Ur no Iraq. Dates and figs ere an important source of sugar in the Middle East, and apples, pomegranates, peaches, and mulberries ere gron in the Mediterranean area. Cotton as gron and spun in India about 2000 BC, and linen and silk ere used extensively in 2nd-millennium BC China. Felt as made from the ool of sheep in Central Asia and the Russian steppes.The horse, introduced to Egypt about 1600 BC, as already domesticated in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. The ox-dran four-heeled cart for farm ork and to-heeled chariots dran by horses ere familiar in northern India in the 2nd millennium BC.Improvements in tools and implements ere particularly important. Tools of bronze and iron ere longer lasting and more efficient, and cultivation as greatly improved by such aids as the ox-dran plo fitted ith an iron-tipped point, noted in the 10th century BC in Palestine. In Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC a funnel-like device as attached to the plo to aid in seeding, and other early forms of seed drills ere used in China. Farmers in China further improved efficiency ith the invention of a cast-iron moldbar plo. Threshing as also done ith animal poer in Palestine and Mesopotamia, although reaping, binding, and innoing ere still done by hand. Egypt retained hand seeding through this period on individual farm plots and large estates alike.Storage methods for oil and grain ere improved. Granariesjars, dry cisterns, silos, and bins containing stored grainprovided food for city populations. ithout adequate food supplies and trade in both food and nonfood items, the high civilizations of Mesopotamia, northern India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome ould not have been possible.Irrigation systems in China, Egypt, and the Middle East ere refined and expanded, putting more land into cultivation. The forced labor of peasants and the groth of bureaucracies to plan and supervise ork on irrigation systems ere probably basic in the development of the city-states of Sumer no Iraq and Kuait. indmills and ater mills, developed toard the end of the Roman period, increased control over the many uncertainties of eather. The introduction of fertilizer, mostly animal manures, and the rotation of fallo and crop land increased crop production.Mixed farming and stock raising, hich ere flourishing in the British Isles and on the continent of Europe as far north as Scandinavia at the beginning of the historical period, already displaying a pattern that persisted throughout the next 3000 years. In many regions, fishing and hunting supplemented the food gron by farmers.About AD 100 Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus described the Germans as a tribal society of free peasant arriors ho cultivate...
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