- What were the first agricultural civilizations?
- Mesopotamia
- Egypt
- India
- China
- Mesoamerica
- South American Andean cultures
We explain what the first agricultural civilizations were and how they developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and Mesoamerica.
What were the first agricultural civilizations?
Agricultural civilizations are known as those that depend on the generation of food by cultivating the I usually, that is, to those who exercise the farming as the main livelihood activity of its population.
This term is especially important when it comes to the prehistory of the humanity, since the invention of agriculture brought about a gigantic change in the patterns and behaviors of the society ancestral human, leading her among other things to abandon the nomadism and settle in one place throughout life.
The so-called Agricultural Revolution or Neolithic Revolution took place in the Neolithic Period of the Stone age around the year 6,000 a. C., more or less.
However, its antecedents had already been practiced for several thousand years, since the eight foundational crops of Mediterranean agriculture were domesticated around 10,000 BC. C., which were the farro, the spelled wheat, the barley, the lentils, the peas, the chickpea, the flax and the broad beans. To this was added rice, domesticated in China around 11,500 BC. C. and the potato, domesticated in the South American Andes around the year 8000 a. C.
Agricultural life established humanity and laid the foundations for the emergence of the first settlements, to the extent that crops required workforce continuous and had to defend themselves from attackers and wild beasts. At the same time, it allowed him to domesticate other animal species, such as the livestock of different kinds.
This important historical process did not take place in a single place, not even at the same time in different geographies, but rather took place in a more or less comparable way in the different cradles of human civilization, that is, in the more established prehistoric cultures. , which grew to become the main agricultural civilizations of the Old age. Next we will talk about some of them, one by one.
Mesopotamia
Probably the most studied region of agricultural antiquity is the so-called "fertile crescent" that covered all of the territories Mesopotamians, located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East, as well as parts of Phenicia in the eastern Mediterranean, Ancient Egypt and Persia in the Asian region.
It is thought that the Western Neolithic Revolution took place here, since many of these cultures were fundamental in the construction of the Mediterranean culture.
In the specific case of Mesopotamia (from the Greek meso, "Medium", and potatos, "River", that is, "between rivers"), agriculture began with the Sumerians around 8000 BC. C., and with the cultivation of wheat and barley. Since in the region the rains are scarce, the cultivation required the use of the waters of the rivers, for which large irrigation canals were built.
In numerous archaeological evidence from the famous city of Uruk from around 3,000 BC. C., there are representations of plows and beasts of burden, as well as fruit crops such as dates, apples, figs and melons.
The fertile lands of the region were key in the emergence of Sumeria. This civilization is also credited with very important contributions to the history human, like the invention of writing cuneiform, the first that existed, using fired clay tablets as a support.
Later Mesopotamian cultures, such as the Akkadians and Babylonians, inherited this significant economic and cultural legacy. They constituted a political reference in the region, controlling the region's trade and imposing its codes (such as the famous Hammurabi Code) and its language on neighboring territories.
However, in the year 539 a. C. were conquered by Ciro the great, king of the Persian Empire in its stages of maximum territorial expansion and military power.
Egypt
Very close to Mesopotamia and forming part of the "fertile crescent", the ancient Egyptian civilization arose on the banks of the River Nile, whose regular and predictable floods left a fertile silt and sediments usable for planting.
Thanks to the Nile River, Ancient Egypt could be a powerful agricultural civilization whose beginnings in agriculture date back to around 10,000 BC. C., but they reached a large-scale production around the year 3,200 a. C.
Without this generous source of food, Egypt would not have become the mighty empire that it was, the political, economic and cultural reference of the North African, Middle East and Mediterranean region for more than 2000 years.
Authors of great architectural works such as the famous pyramids and sphinxes that guard the pharaonic tombs, the Egyptians possessed a mythology rich and a system of government monarchical Y theocratic, in which the monarch, the pharaoh, was the incarnation of the god Osiris on Earth.
Among their most common crops were oats, sorghum, flax, barley, wheat and also papyrus, which they used to make supports for their writing. hieroglyphic. The Egyptians were the inventors of beer, as well as wine makers and flower growers.
Many of these techniques They were inherited by the Greek civilization, when they finally took over the Nile region in 332 BC. C., after expelling the Persian invaders who had defeated and conquered the Egyptian Empire around 525 BC. C.
India
The first farmers in the Indian subcontinent region emerged around 7,000 BC. C., and were part of the pre-Aryan cultures of the Indus Valley, arisen around the Indus River, benefiting from its regular floods just as the Egyptians did in their land.
This culture existed between 3300 BC. C. and 1300 a. C., having its time of splendor between 2600 and 1900 a. C., which revolved around two important cities: Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, both in present-day Pakistan.
Farmer settlements in the region, which later gave way to the first cities fortified, they dedicated themselves to growing wheat, barley, sesame, legumes, dates, and melons. When their crops spread to the Ganges River after 1400 BC. C., rice was incorporated as an important product.
In addition, they were excellent textile manufacturers, taking advantage of cotton and wool, and they domesticated the ox, the ass, the river buffalo and the elephants, since they were unaware of the horse.
This culture reached levels of great commercial importance in the Asian region and the Middle East, as evidenced by the fact that they are mentioned in Sumerian and Akkadian documents. The exchange with other peoples not only revolved around agricultural products, but also included metals such as tin, gold, lead and silver, precious stones such as lapis lazuli, turquoise and carnelian, or dark woods such as ebony.
In addition, the Indus Valley cultures developed their own writing system, composed of figures on fired clay stamps, the exact meaning of which has not yet been deciphered.
China
Ancient Chinese culture is one of the most important in Asian antiquity, and from its stages paleolithic He already presented evidence of the cultivation of wild plants, with his own techniques that would later be used to domesticate millet and rice. There is evidence of agricultural activity in the northern regions of China (Xinglonggou, Yuezhang, Dadiwan) dating back to 6250 BC. C.
Chinese culture has a long tradition of agricultural culture, present even in its mythology, and to which important treatises on the subject (the preparation of the land, the sowing, the cultivation, the cultivation, the Commerce or the granary system) dating from around the 5th century BC. C.
In fact, it is estimated that rice cultivation spread from ancient China to the other regions of Asia, which shows the importance that this millenary culture has had in the economic and cultural history of the continent.
Furthermore, the ancient Chinese developed numerous innovations agricultural, towards century I a. C., such as hydraulic hammers to thresh and polish the grain, systems of mechanical wheels pulled by oxen, heavy plows with iron bars, and other advances that were later disseminated in Europe and they brought with them a veritable agricultural explosion in that region.
Mesoamerica
The Mesoamerican region encompassed the territories of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Belize. There, the weather benign and fertile lands were key to the early development of agricultural activity by the Mesoamerican cultures prehistoric.
In fact, around 5000 BC. C. began the domestic cultivation of corn in the Valley of Tehuacán (located in what is now Puebla, Mexico). Corn was a key food in the diet not only of this culture, but of America all, whose presence was felt from Canada to Chile.
For this, the coa, a type of hoe with a pointed end, was used mainly, and very different techniques were developed, such as slashing or terrace cultivation. Other foods grown in the region were the cocoa, tomato, avocado, pumpkin, chayote, sweet potato, cassava, vanilla, cotton and tobacco.
Mesoamerican culture did not know the Age of metals, and their use of gold and other minerals was only ornamental and ritual, which was a limitation to the development of their agricultural techniques. Perhaps that is why a political and economic nucleus was slow to emerge that brought together the different cultures of the region, which presented important religious and cultural similarities, but also notable linguistic and cultural discrepancies. ethnic.
The highest points in Mesoamerican cultural and scientific development, however, were the cultures Maya, teotihuacana, Zapotec, mixtec, Purepecha and especially the Mexican Aztec. In fact, the Aztec empire became the most important political force in the region around the 15th century, when they were defeated and subdued by the Spanish conquerors.
Contemporary research is just beginning to reveal the immense cultural and scientific legacy of these pre-Columbian cultures, authors of important architectural works, such as the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, the city of Tenochtitlán or Chichén-Itzá.
South American Andean cultures
In the region of the South American Andes, numerous cultures emerged among which the Tahuantinsuyo, the Empire Incaic, which existed between 1438 and 1533, with capital in the sacred city of Cuzco, Peru.
The millennial agricultural development of these cultures is a source of astonishment, since it had to overcome the challenges of the mountainous terrain and the absence of rivers that made the land fertile. Therefore, the Andean peoples developed agricultural techniques adapted to their jungle, mountain and coastal environments, as well as an important road network that allowed the exchange of products between the regions.
Among the products domesticated by Andean cultures, the first figure is the potato, domesticated around 5,000 BC. C., or cotton, domesticated around 3600 BC. Along with these items, peanuts, tomatoes, quinoa, tobacco and pineapple were widely cultivated, and particularly coca, a crop that is still among the main crops in the region.
Local camelid species were also domesticated: alpacas, vicuñas and llamas, and important stone or wood tools were developed for cultivation, such as the human-powered plow (chaquitaqlla), as well as fertilization techniques that included the burial of sardines and anchovies next to the grains, or the guano of the birds.
In addition, the availability of labor for the Incas allowed them to carry out great works of agricultural engineering:
- Platforms: Terraces destined for planting on the Andean slopes, circulating the water in channels that communicated their different levels.
- Camellones: Mounds of earth around Lake Titicaca, which allowed a better drainage of the waters through artificial furrows.
- Cochas: Artificial lagoons equipped with concavities or furrows, ideal for adapting planting to the climatic conditions of the highlands.
Andean culture reached its zenith in the Inca Empire, hegemonic center of politics, culture and economy in the Andean region, encompassing the mountainous heart of South America. It was a society pro-slavery and feudal regime, in which there were neither markets nor money, and that it was ruled by a holy monarchy.
However, when the Spanish conquerors marched on the region in the 16th century, under the command of Francisco Pisarro, the Empire was in such a situation of instability and discontent, the result of a recent civil war, that they were not in a position to defend themselves.
In 1533 the conquerors executed Atahualpa, the last sovereign of the empire, formally ending the Tahuantinsuyo, despite the fact that there was fierce Inca resistance until 1572, led by the leader Tupac Amaru I.