Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
soils in river valleys. Here, archeological excavations have uncovered the fi rst
remains of agriculture.
The fi rst written notes by ancient Egyptians were about two types of soil: ta
kemet and deshret. Ta kemet was the dark or black soil in the Nile valley that origi-
nated and continually kept very fertile by regular muddy fl oods of the Nile River.
But ta kemet was also the ancient Egyptian name of Egypt. At that time, it was
beyond the imagination of those Egyptians that Egypt could exist outside the allu-
vial soil of the Nile valley. Behind the boundary of the Nile valley, there was the red
desert land or the seat of death, deshret , according to Egyptians. Deshret was also
the formal name for the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. However, the written docu-
mentation of a real soil was actually mentioned much later in classical Greek litera-
ture and discussed much more in ancient Roman literature. Their dominant attention
was toward less fertile soils, namely, to sand which was considered a soil of very
low quality. When an ancient Roman intended to speak about needless work and
activity, he would say: Ex harena funiculum non est nectere. You have no chance to
knit a rope of sand. A script based on fl imsy, poor arguments was described: In
arena aedifi cas. You are constructing or building on sand. It is often found in old
chronicles: When one of two sons inherited lands with sandy soils and his brother
received through inheritance lands with loamy soils, cruel arguments started and
frequently ended in fratricide. Sand was generally considered a poor soil, while
loam was regarded as a fertile soil offering high yields. The only one exception was
salinization of soils. Ancient Sumerians made substantial distinction between black
loamy soil and white soil, i.e., loamy or heavy loamy soil with a sprinkling of
white dust having a salty taste. The salt sprinkling was sometimes merging into a
thin layer. Such soils offered no yields and were always abandoned (more about
them in Chap. 13.1).
As found in the Code of Hammurabi written about 3,800 years ago, taxes were
mandated by rulers initially according to yields of natural products estimated from
specifi c ratios of harvest. Tax collectors belonged to high society, but some of them
were crooked men increasing taxes and stealing this excess for their own benefi t.
The best-known tax-collecting crook was Tarim Dagan from the Babylonian town
Mari who sought 50 % of harvest that included newborn lambs. He entered history
because of complaints of rich noblemen as well as those of poor farmers. Their
complaints were written in cuneiform documents on clay tablets. Answers and
responses from the Babylonian king to these complaints also exist, but not one word
is mentioned about land or soil taxes. Similar situations occurred in later history
when monarchs and noblemen taxed farmers in accordance to the extent of lands
they used. Moreover, the height of the tax was dependent upon the distance from the
ruler's seat or upon various patterns of land usage. Remarkably, the quality of soil
in such locations was not considered, in spite of the fact that the farmer knew where
he could expect highest yields.
The ancient Greek philosophers were the fi rst to deal with the idea that soil is
part of nature, and since nature has many shapes, soils cannot be uniform. Xenophon,
two and a half thousand years ago, wrote that life started in soil and is ending there
as well. Hesiodos distinguished between various soils according to the type of used
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