Page 82 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-22 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Terracing

Terraced fields snaking up hillsides are spectacular is packed smooth or paved but not tilled; serving pri-
sights and major tourist attraction in Southeast Asian marily as house and granary yards, work space for
nations such as the Philippines and Indonesia. Some grain drying, and so forth; discrete, often fenced or
of the terraces have been maintained for over 2000 walled, and named. . . .
years.The following extract describing the types of ter-
qilid “drained field” (drained terrace, ridged terrace).
races built by the Ifugao ethnic group of the northern
Leveled terrace land, the surface of which is tilled and
Philippines indicates that terracing is more complex
ditch mounded (usually in cross-contour fashion) for
than it appears from a distance.
cultivation and drainage of dry crops, such as sweet
Habal “swidden” (slope field, camote field, kaingin). potatoes and legumes. Drained fields, though pri-
Slopeland, cultivated and often contour-ridged (and vately owned, are kept in this temporary state for only
especially for sweet potatoes). Other highland dry- a minimum number of annual cycles before shifting
field crops (including taro, yams, manioc, corn, mil- (back) to a more permanent form of terrace use. . . .
let, mongo beans, and pigeon peas, but excluding rice
payo “pond field” (bunded terrace, rice terrace, rice
except at elevations below 600–700 meters (2,000
field). Leveled farmland, bunded to retain irrigation
feet) above sea level) are also cultivated in small
water for shallow inundation of artificial soil, and
stands or in moderately intercropped swiddens.
carefully worked for the cultivation of wet-field rice,
Boundaries remain discrete during a normal cultiva-
taro, and other crops; privately owned discrete units
tion cycle of several years.When fallow, succession is
with permanent stone markers; the most valued of all
usually to a canegrass association. . . .
land forms.
lattan “house terrace” (settlement, hamlet terrace, res- Source: Conklin, H. C. (1967–68). Some Aspects of Ethnographic Research in Ifugao.
idential site).Leveled terrace land,the surface of which New York Academy of Sciences, Transactions, ser. 2, 30, 107–108.

productivity. Irrigation farmers diverted small streams why change was so much more rapid during the agrarian
onto their fields, created new farm land by filling swamps era than during the era of foragers. Yet, innovation was
with soil and refuse, or built systematic networks of rarely fast enough to keep up with population growth.
canals and dams to serve entire regions. People practiced This lag explains why, on the scale of decades or even
irrigation of some kind in Afro-Eurasia, in the Americas, centuries, all agrarian societies experienced cycles of ex-
and even in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. Its impact pansion and collapse that obscured the underlying trend
was greatest in arid regions with fertile soils, such as the toward growth. These cycles underlay the more visible
alluvial basins (regions whose soils were deposited by patterns of political rise and fall, commercial boom and
running water) of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the northern re- bust, and cultural efflorescence (blooming) and decay
gions of the Indian subcontinent, northern China, and the that have so fascinated historians. (Such patterns of
lowlands of the Andean region. In these regions irrigation growth and decline can be described as “Malthusian cy-
agriculture led to exceptionally rapid population growth. cles,” after Thomas Malthus, the nineteenth-century En-
As agriculture spread and became more productive, it glish economist who argued that human populations will
supported larger, denser, and more interconnected com- always rise faster than the supply of food, leading to peri-
munities.Within these communities population pressure ods of famine and sudden decline.)
and increasing exchanges of information generated a
steady trickle of innovations in building, warfare, record Epidemic Diseases
keeping, transportation and commerce, and science and Population growth could be slowed by epidemic diseases
the arts. These innovations stimulated further demo- as well as by low productivity. Foraging communities
graphic growth in a powerful feedback cycle that explains were largely free of epidemic diseases because they were