Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
Billy wrote:
uhoh, quoting is messed up below...
The Gordian Knot solution
snip
I can't believe that I found another book to read :O(
hehehe, always more to read.
alas, i'm getting into planting season, and my
health is better than any hunter-gatherer. especially
if you consider i'd have never lived past a day in
a society that didn't have some form of medical
science and an incubator.
i'm still rather fond of the much less than 20-30%
murder rate too, but perhaps that is only a temporary
lull in the mayhem of human existance. if the future
goes wild and crazy we might get back to mass
starvations and high rates of murder as the planet
answers the question of over-population and abuse
of resources.
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
by Richard Manning
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-...ivilization/dp
/0865477132/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368981220&sr=1-4&keywords=Aga
inst+the+Grain
I'm about 60 pages into the book (a mere 240 pages).
i finished it two nights ago. quick read.
i'm not really sure what i think of it. as it
is a bit dated and the enemy of popularity has
turned from big-ag processor ADM to ag-chem-seed
producer Monsanto.
If you don't care for the murder rate of 20-30%, you probably won't like
the complete genocide that the farmers wreaked on the hunter/gathers.
Although farming startd 8,000 - 10,000 years ago, the full complement of
wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cows didn't really coalesce into a
suite until about 5,600 years ago, near the Caucasus Mountains.They are
identified by their pottery which is distinctively marked with straight
lines, or as the German anthropologists called them Linearbandkeramik
(LBK is the designation for these farmers who spoke Indo-European).
Farming wasn't spread by adaptation, but conquest. The LBK farmers made
it to the Atlantic in about 300 years, taking no prisoners. The
"cave-painters" (Cro-Magnons), hunter/gaterers, last stand was in the
south-west of France. The Cro-Magnon's descendants are most likely the
Basque, who speak a language like no other.
The book goes on to describe the encounter between the LBK, and the
"Scandahoovians", which was a stalemate.
A ripping good book.
i enjoyed parts of it. i have to conceed the
poorer health and starvation of some peoples under
the version of agriculture much practiced in the
past.
i think the current world is making up for it
in some ways, but the question is if it is
sustainable, and it doesn't look like it is as
most are currently practicing...
i certainly hope for better, i don't think a
return to hunting-gathering is likely for a vast
number of people. a subset might be able to do
it as urban hunter-gatherers or those who can
be rich enough to afford enough land and have
some way of protecting it from intruders or
governmental confiscation. the next real hunter-
gatherer societies are likely to be either those
of the post-apocalyptic or on another planet.
if that other planet is one we've had to
engineer then it's pretty likely we've also had
a good shot at doing good work here on this planet
too. at least i try to remain optimistic about
either of those cases. the world can heal itself
given time. we see this in the geological record
after huge events. so, yeah, i am optimistic,
the world will continue, the question is with
or without us?
Planted a dozen Yellow Banana Peppers yesterday. Instead of prepping in
my normal fashion, I've taken to poking a hole in the soil, and then
putting on some fertilizer, and then some potting soil, and lastly the
plant, with what ever potting soil is necessary to make the ground flush.
Today is sunflowers, lettuce, and potting some herbs.
i've been digging and burying more shredded bark
and wood pieces and then after filling it back in
and then topping it off with soil that is actually
topsoil (and not clay). into that went about 220
onions of three types and a small patch of turnips.
i was a bit worried by the lack of bees on the
blooming honeysuckle for a few days, but they were
out in force today. *whew!* we'll be planting
tomatoes and peppers within the next few weeks and
i'll be finding more spots for beans, beets and
peas, cucumbers, squash, strawberries are blooming
and the rhubarb is coming along well as are the
peas and onions already planted and the beets
sprouted days before i expected to see them.
the challenge is keeping the melon seeds from
sprouting and pushing up so much that they are
pushing all the beets out of the ground. i guess
that is one way to thin them...
rain due this week. we'll appreciate it. the
killdeer are still sitting on their eggs.
busy day today. i'm due for a bit of a snooze.
songbird