Page 169 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

54 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

A view of small holdings in the state of Minas Gerais, north of Rio de Janeiro. Brazil is
now one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products with large industrialized
farms in the southern part of the country, leaving small farmers struggling to find niche
markets for their produce. Many of the farmers in this region sell their produce in farmers’
markets in the nearby city of Belo Horizonte.

crops and animals. However, roughly contemporary agri- sometimes ceremonial areas. There is typically little evi-
cultural settlements in the Vindhyan Hills, just south of dence of social stratification, but there are usually burial
the Ganges plain, grew rice. Agricultural communities practices that suggest that the presence of one’s ancestors
appeared in the Chang (Yangzi) valley in China from implied entitlement to property. Taking into account
7000 to 5800 BCE, growing rice in the lower part of the ethnographic analogies,the configurations generally sug-
valley and millet in the upper. The millet was domesti- gest a three-tier organization based on household,village,
cated; it has not been determined whether the rice was. and various forms of kinship based on organization gen-
Domesticated grains appear much later in Japan and erally described as “tribal.” Households, probably often
Southeast Asia, but in the former case, at least, this is connected to each other by kinship, farm their own plots
because of the importance of tubers, particularly taro. of land with village agreement and cooperation. Groups
The archaeological remains of these early communities of villages recognize themselves as affiliated and are mutu-
are consistent with peasant/household organization: ally supportive but lack any formal overriding structure.
small unwalled hamlets or villages with houses either Elite agriculture first appeared about 3000 BCE, along
adjoining or separate, with storage pits or areas and with city-states, bronze tools and weapons, large-scale