Researchers Discover First Use of Fertilizer 71
sciencehabit writes "Europe's first farmers helped spread a revolutionary way of living across the continent. They also spread something else. A new study reveals that these early agriculturalists were fertilizing their crops with manure 8000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than previously thought."
Early Discovery Due to Regional Climate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Farmers in the Near East—what is today Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and neighboring countries—began cultivating plants and herding animals about 8000 B.C.E., but there are no signs that they used animal dung for anything other than as fuel for fires.
Since it's far more arid in the Middle East, the use of dung for fuel was more obvious due to dried dung being a common thing to find laying around. Where as in Europe, which is far wetter, seeing green things sprout up in dung in the Spring was more easily observed.
Re:Early Discovery Due to Regional Climate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since it's far more arid in the Middle East, the use of dung for fuel was more obvious due to dried dung being a common thing to find laying around. Where as in Europe, which is far wetter, seeing green things sprout up in dung in the Spring was more easily observed.
Not true. 8000 years ago was smack dab in the middle of the middle of the ‘African Humid Period’ [allianz.com].
Much of north Africa and ME countries were much wetter, and much more lush in prior times, beginning 12,000 years ago and lasting until 3,500 years ago. There is no way civilization would have begun in a middle east as arid as it is now, let alone flourished.
Re:Fertilizer... (Score:5, Interesting)
And much more of it is preserved and undisturbed by 12 thousand years of European warfare and constant reworking of the land.
Instead it was disturbed by 12000 years of warfare and reworking of the land in the Americas. It is a shame though that most of the Amerindians didn't have writing. There are so many things we could learn, for example, about the Mississippian culture, the spread of maize agriculture northward and its effect on how people lived, ecological problems they encountered in say the Southwest and Ohio Valley, etc. etc., etc. Not to mention the eternal riddle of why they tolerated those hairy smelly invaders from across the Atlantic.
P.S. Great book on the pre-Columbian Americas is 1491 [wikipedia.org] (there's also a good "sequel" called 1493).