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Researchers Discover First Use of Fertilizer
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."
We find out that we excel at the use of spreading bullshit even earlier than we thought... The joys of being human!
You're not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you...
...is that people were convinced that fertilizer was a modern "invention" in the first place. I'm sure it didn't take the genius of a particle physicist to notice that the grass grew better where the animals took a shit, but then I'm not an archaeologist. Kind of like the conspiracy theorists who claim that there was no way human beings could have build the Pyramids without some kind of advanced technology or alien intervention...people seem to seriously underestimate the wisdom of their ancestors, almost to the point of arrogance.
The funny part is that essentially nothing has changed beyond our level of technology. People believed in crazy, stupid shit in antiquity, how is that any different from today? Our ancestors had wonderful things like white make-up made from lead, they drank "radium water" to CURE illnesses. I can't imagine that worked out like it said on the tin. We're much more advanced now though. Now we have people drinking homeopathic remedies containing exactly zero molecules of often poisonous compounds like arsenic, we have walking pairs of tits like Jenny McCarthy telling people not to vaccinate their children...and for all of our wondrous technology, even despite "putting man on the moon," we still have people killing each other over what imaginary friend they've bonded with. Just like the good old days.
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.
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 (there's also a good "sequel" called 1493).
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 (there's also a good "sequel" called 1493).
Well, actually no. There were no major wars on North America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Minor tribal skirmishes, but no enduring structures overlaying prior structures. In fact the only enduring structures of any kind were in the desert southwest. Natives did not heavily work the land, and practiced slash and burn for their agriculture more than anything else. This is why early viking settlements stand out so obviously.
The net result is that many (thousands) of native north american settlements were discovered in undisturbed state, even in heavily populated areas of the north eastern states. Even Clovis and pre-Clovis sites, when found, don't show the heavy disturbance of plows, later civilizations, or buildings. Mound builder's mounds are virtually always intact. The history of the land was very different.
Middle american indigenous people did build extensive structures which were also more or less abandoned intact after the Spanish.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It still covers up to 10% of the Amazon basin, is man made, and if we could figure out how they did it:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081119-lost-cities-amazon.html
Imagine if manure spread thousands of years ago still grew crops today. The terra preta —"dark earth" — of the Amazon is still working today.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
If they learned to harness bullshit 8,000 years ago, than surely corporate bureaucracy must be that old as well!