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|  Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on The Origins of Agriculture |
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| The cultivation of plants, like the domestication of animals, must undoubtedly have had some accidental beginnings in the camping places of primitive man. Seeds and roots from vegetable spoil which he had gathered and brought home must often, under favourable conditions, have been seen to germinate and sprout; there may sometimes have been a return to see what might have sprung up, as if by magic, at some former camping site. But the systematic cultivation of the soil depended upon an awareness of the processes of nature and their seasons and the choice of a suitable area, such as nature provided in the great river valleys of the Near East, for a more or less deliberate act of social experiment. The result was the securing, save in bad seasons, of a far bigger surplus food-supply than man the food-gatherer or tentative domesticator of animals could have dreamed of--the food-supply which launched the Neolithic revolution. |
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| Term Paper on Agriculture » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Domestication of Animals |
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| The transition from food collection to food production, which is characteristic of the Neolithic stage in human history, was the result of a fundamental advance--it might almost be said, the fundamental advance--in technology. Every other use which we have learned to make of the material universe depends upon our ability to produce food for a given population by means which do not of themselves entirely exhaust the energy and time of that population. Man as a hunter had no such surplus; it was man the keeper of flocks and herds and cultivator of the soil who first accumulated the surplus that has always been the basis of all civilization. In ancient and modern times alike, the dietary of man the producer has derived both directly from his crops and from the flesh or milk of animals to which, in most cases, he feeds a part of the crops he grows: the proportion of food taken from these two sources varies greatly both between and within different communities. Although this interaction of crops and herds dates from the Neolithic stage, it will be convenient to consider the domestication of animals first, both because it began a little earlier than agriculture, and, more important, because its main technological history was much earlier completed. |
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| Term Paper on Animal Domestication » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Metallurgy and Armaments |
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| Though David Hume, writing in the 1750's, claimed the cast-iron cannon, along with shipbuilding, as the great specialty of English manufacturers, the weapons of war taken as a whole provide a good illustration of the uses to which Europe put its metallurgical skill. Up to about 1700 the main infantry weapon was the pike, a steel head mounted on a shaft which might be as much as 18 ft long, an effective protection against cavalry. It was superseded by the bayonet, first employed by the musketeers in the armies of Louis XIV. The sword, which the pikemen carried for hand-to-hand fighting, could then be dispensed with by the rank and file, though it continued as the thrusting (and dueling) weapon of their officers. The standard cavalry weapon was now the saber, designed for a slashing downward stroke, and there was also a lighter and shorter version of the medieval knight's lance. It is perhaps evidence of the minor part now played by all these weapons, at least in warfare between civilized nations, that the steel of which they were made was apparently inferior in average quality to the best products of the earlier age, when immense care had been taken because faulty metal might spell disaster. |
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| Term Paper on Armaments » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Ancient Pottery |
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| Pottery may have grown out of basket-making, and certainly could not become an important factor in human affairs until Neolithic man had adopted a settled mode of life: game had been roasted on a spit, but the cereals and pulses which now made up a large part of his diet required slow cooking in a container which could stand heat. Then, and only then, would he have occasion for large-scale use of containers which were as easily broken as made. They are easily manufactured, since clay is plentiful and the hardening effects of fire upon it could be discovered whenever primitive man happened to use a patch of clay for a hearth. The fact that pottery is fragile, readily discarded, and yet ultimately imperishable, is, of course, the combination of qualities that has given it so large and prominent a part in the archaeological record. But although pottery occurs in Neolithic settlements before the growth of urban cultures, its development is primarily associated with the latter; it was a product that settlers and colonists introduced to remoter areas, and that commonly suffered a setback when the urban influence declined. Britain, for example, in the second millennium B.C. had much good pottery of Mediterranean origin; for the greater part of the next millennium, very little. |
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| Term Paper on Early Pottery » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Preparation of Food and Drink |
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| The history of technology is concerned not only with the growth of foodstuffs but with the subsequent processes of preparation, to which mankind has devoted increasing ingenuity and skill. Under the early civilizations the diet of the masses came very largely from cereals or pulses, varied to some extent with fish: the flesh of animals was beyond the means of the poor save for special occasions. Animal foods are nowadays more important: a large proportion of our cereals therefore goes in fodder. But the economy of Rome, for instance, depended upon the cheap import of wheat by sea, and the population--in the time of Augustus, nearly one million--lived mainly upon a poor-quality flour which came from wheat that had been coarsely ground and sifted, and not very thoroughly cleaned. |
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| Term Paper on Food and Drink » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on The Effect of Geographical Discoveries on Food Production |
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| The era of the geographical discoveries brought about a transplantation of crops in both directions--from Europe as well as into it--and a modification of diet, taste, and habit, which became fully effective only with the development of modern means of transportation in later centuries. Pride of place must be given to the potato, which had been cultivated in South America for at least 2,000 years before its conquest by the Spaniards, who first introduced the plant to Europe in or before the year 1570. It was probably first brought to England independently, though not by Sir Walter Raleigh. From England it reached Ireland, though we cannot exclude the possibility that it came direct, as it figured among the plunder from Spanish ships wrecked along the coast of Connaught. The English in turn introduced it to Virginia, where it was originally called 'the Irish potato' to distinguish it from the sweet potato. In the eighteenth century the potato began to be used commonly for the preparation of alcohol by fermentation. But its spread as a foodstuff was the direct product of necessity: it became staple diet in Ireland during the seventeenth century. In the rest of Britain, and in France, it was not much used before the late eighteenth century, when Britain needed it to feed a growing industrial population. In Prussia its use was commanded by Frederick the Great, but in central and northern Europe as a whole the potato did not become one of the main crops until the nineteenth century. Maize, or Indian corn, was also brought at an early date to Europe. Magellan is believed to have spread its use to the Philippines and the East Indies, and the Portuguese also took it to West Africa, where it was apparently first grown for ships' stores for slavers. It was not adapted to the climate of northern Europe, but flourished in the south-east, where maize porridge quickly became a staple food. |
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| Term Paper on Geographical Discoveries » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Greek and Roman Contribution to Technologies |
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| In the Classical period the most revolutionary developments were in glassmaking. The sand-core technique went out of fashion, while Egypt took the lead with an output of mould-pressed ware, beautifully finished by grinding and polishing. Colored rods or 'canes' were fused together and then cut transversely in order to make polychrome glasses; this culminated in mosaic glasses and bowls such as graced the Roman emperors' table. But the biggest change came not from the Alexandrian centre but almost certainly from Syria, whence it spread across the Roman world with astonishing speed in the early years of the empire. This was the art of glass-blowing, which probably began with the blowing of vessels within moulds; as skill improved, moulds were dispensed with. Free-blown glass was produced as a bubble on the end of a blowpipe, and shaped with pliers; transferred while still molten on to the end of a second rod; the process was completed by detaching the blowpipe, leaving a mouth to be trimmed with shears. Reheating his glass when necessary, the blower could blow and spin it into almost any shape, from flat dishes 2 ft in diameter to a small jug inserted into a larger one. By the second century A.D. the glass industry had spread from Italy to important new manufacturing centers with improved techniques round Cologne and Trier, whence it also reached Britain. Minor technical changes were diffused so fast that there must have been a constant movement of skilled glass-makers from the Near Eastern centers all across the empire. Finds ranging from Afghanistan to the Sahara, Scandinavia, and the northern highlands of Scotland show the popularity of imperial glass even among the outer barbarians. |
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| Term Paper on Greek and Roman Technologies » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Ancient Handicraft Industry |
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| Ivory-work resembles basketry in that it was brought quickly to perfection, but, unlike basketry, it began and has continued as a luxury craft. In Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete, and Greece alike, it was used especially for decorative knife-handles, toilet articles, and statuettes, and in furniture for panels, as at the tomb of Tutankhamen, though we also hear of Solomon's 'great throne of ivory' and the luxurious ivory beds denounced by the prophets. Ivory combs and inlaid trinket-boxes were made in Syria 3,000 years ago, much as they are made today, while no modern hand has surpassed the skillfulness of certain small Cretan figures. |
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| Term Paper on Handicraft Trade » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on The Early Iron Age |
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| The Bronze Age had rested upon two difficult techniques: the miner's work in the dark bowels of the earth, and the smelting together or mixing together of two metals (one of which, tin, was always in short supply) to form an alloy. Since iron ore, in the form of bog ore, was plentiful enough on the surface to dispense for a very long time with any need of mining, and since the metal had multifarious uses without admixture, it is at first sight surprising that the long Iron Age dawned so late. For it does not really begin until about 1200 B.C., when the destruction of the Hittite empire scattered the smiths, though a few pieces of man-made iron were in circulation before 2500 B.C., and iron ornaments and ceremonial weapons soon after 2000 B.C. Two reasons may be suggested for the delay. The early finds of meteoric iron would not prompt any inquiry into the iron ore of the earth, with which they had no obvious connexion. Moreover, an experimental smelting of iron ore to see if it behaved like ores of copper or other known metals would be most discouraging: because pure iron melts at 1,535o C. (compared with 1,083o C. for copper), experiments in smelting it would produce only a mass of slag and cinders concealing unmelted globules of iron. Until the introduction of the blast-furnace in the Middle Ages there was no means of producing molten iron for casting, though from pre-Christian times the furnace temperature was increased either by securing a better natural draught or by using bellows. Repeated hammerings at red heat were required in order to beat most of the slag out of the bloom of crude iron, before it was usable. |
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| Term Paper on Iron Age » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on The Development of Irrigation |
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| The methods of early agriculture might be dismissed as being mainly of archaeological interest, were it not for the advanced techniques that were developed in the great river valleys to feed water to the crops. It is possible that man as a food-gatherer early learned to encourage the growth of wild plants by splashing water on to the banks of a spring or stream; it is certain that the shaduf, still widely used, was being employed to water the date palms and vines, the vegetable plots and flower beds of the Egyptians in the second millennium B.C. |
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| Term Paper on Irrigation » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Metal-Working in the Middle Ages |
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| Practically nothing is known about mining in the Dark Ages, not even whether the coins issued by Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian monarchs were made from old metal or from the products of new mining. By the time of Charlemagne, the great Spanish mines had passed into the hands of the Moors; output at first declined, but it was the Moors who discovered means of utilizing sulphide ores of copper, from which they obtained copper sulphate by oxidization. When the sulphate was dissolved in water and run over iron, pure copper was deposited. But the severance of Spain from Mediterranean Christendom is perhaps more important as part of the process by which, when the scene becomes clear again, the centre of European mining is found to have been transferred to the Saxon miners of central Europe. They were at work in the Harz mountains before A.D. 1000, at Freiberg about 1170, and in the following century as far as Hungary. |
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| Term Paper on Medieval Metal-Working » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Earliest Use of Metals |
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| The history of metal-working begins well before that of the extraction of metals from their ores, for a number of metals, such as gold, occur naturally in their uncombined state. The precious metals probably first attracted man's attention by their glitter and the same quality led to their extensive use for decorative purposes. Of metals useful mainly for strictly practical purposes, iron was literally heavensent, for iron from meteors was greatly prized for tool-making: much more recently, the iron in a meteor that fell in Greenland was utilized by Eskimos for more than a century. Copper was another metal originally known in its elementary state, though deposits of this kind were soon exhausted and extraction from ores became necessary. |
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| Term Paper on Metal Working » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Early Textile Production |
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| The nimble fingers which molded clay had from earliest times a parallel task in the entangling of vegetable or animal fibers so as to make some things serviceable to man. It is probable that baskets, mats, and even ropes were made by Paleolithic man at an earlier stage than textile fabrics, which require the use of a twisted or spun thread and the criss-cross weaving pattern of weft and warp: this, however, is conjecture. Our earliest specimens, which are Egyptian and from the early part of the fifth millennium B.C., include mats, coiled basketry, and primitive fabrics; the earliest examples of rope in Egypt occur a few centuries later. |
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| Term Paper on Textile Production » |
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| Essay, Research Paper: Free Essay on Growth of Tillage in Europe |
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| Irrigation was the dominant factor in the agriculture of Mesopotamia and Egypt: the rivers, when properly controlled, provided the necessary moisture and even carried deposits of rich new soil, which kept the land in good heart. The Romans, too, practiced irrigation on a large scale in Algeria, as the Arabs did later in Spain and Sicily, when they introduced rice, cotton, and the sugar-cane. But the Mediterranean area as a whole, and still more the heavy soils of northern Europe, required the application of quite different agricultural techniques.
Such countries as Greece and Italy have in the main light soil, torrential rivers, and a climate that combines regular drought in summer with short but heavy winter rains, which tend to wash essential plant nutrients out of the soil. Stock-raising land is scarce, so that soil fertility cannot readily be replenished with animal manure. The average crop yield in Roman times was not more than about fourfold, and to obtain this the land had to be left fallow in alternate years and pulverized before every crop. If labor costs permitted, the ground was dug, and in any case there were at least three ploughings--successively at right angles to each other and sometimes obliquely. It has been calculated that this method of preparing the ground doubled the quantity of moisture retained in the dry summer months. |
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| Term Paper on Tillage » |
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