Page 32 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

technology—overview 1809

This drawing shows the different
types of arrow heads used by tropi-
cal foragerers in Africa in the nine-
teenth century. Their diversity of
size and shape indicates that even
so-called primitive peoples had
sophisticated technology to exploit
the environment.

China in the third century BCE and reached Europe of the Roman Empire after the fifth century. Yet Euro-
between the ninth and the eleventh centuries CE. peans created several ingenious innovations that allowed
them to populate the western and northern portions of
Advances in Agriculture the continent, which the Romans had found uninhabit-
(1500 BCE –1500 CE) able. One was the three-field rotation system, whereby
Agriculture was also transformed during this period. As fields lay fallow one year out of three, instead of every
Han Chinese moved from northern China into the trop- other year as in earlier times, resulting in a 50 percent
ical Chang (Yangtze) River Valley and the south, they per- increase in productivity.Another was the iron horseshoe,
fected the art of water management. Rice grows best in which prevented horses’ hooves from wearing out in wet
warm shallow ponds, but requires very careful terracing, weather. A third was the horse collar, which allowed a
plowing, planting, weeding, water control, and harvest- horse to pull much heavier loads than the throat strap
ing, most of which had to be done by human labor. In used by the Romans. Europeans were also quick to
addition to rice, Chinese farmers also grew tea bushes adopt water wheels and windmills as sources of energy
and mulberry trees, whose leaves fed the silkworms for to grind grain, saw lumber, crush ores, and accomplish
the silk industry. In return for more intensive labor inputs, other tasks.While the yields per hectare in Europe in this
the land produced ever more abundant yields per acre.As period could not compare with those in China or the
its population grew, China became the wealthiest and Middle East, the result of these innovations was to make
technologically most advanced civilization in the world, the yields per person the highest in the world.
producing such innovations as paper, printing, paper
money, and (later) the compass, oceangoing ships, and Technologies of
gunpowder. Global Interaction
A different kind of agricultural and technological rev- Ocean-going ships carried not only men and trade goods,
olution occurred in the Middle East from the seventh to but also animals and plants from one place to another.
the fifteenth centuries. The Arabs, a desert people, had Domesticated plants and animals have been essential tech-
domesticated the camel for use in regions too dry for nologies since the Neolithic, requiring knowledge and
horses. In the seventh century, they conquered the Mid- skills to grow or breed them and to transform them into
dle East and North Africa.With a long tradition of trade, foods and fibers. From the beginning of agriculture, plants
they welcomed and protected merchants and sailors. and animals had been transferred within the Eastern Hemi-
They rebuilt the irrigation works of Egypt and sphere and also, with more difficulty, within the Americas.
Mesopotamia and introduced several useful devices such The voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries allowed
as the saqiya (a chain of buckets) and the qanat, or under- transfers between the Old World and the New.The Euro-
ground tunnel, to carry water over long distances. They peans brought with them wheat, rice, sugar, and cotton,
also introduced citrus fruits from China and sugar and along with many fruits, vegetables, and trees. From the
cotton from India to the Middle East. Americas they returned with corn, potatoes, and tobacco,
European agriculture lagged far behind agriculture in among others.The Portuguese transferred cassava (manioc)
China and the Middle East, especially after the collapse from Brazil to Africa and Indonesia.