Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
category is knowledge about the testing of soils, basically about ways and means to
distinguish fertile from infertile soils. This was of particular interest if virgin land
was to be put under the plow. The third category comprises all techniques to sustain
or amend soils, be it fertilization, lithic mulching or crop rotation, to name but a
few.
Readers have to be reminded that translation of technical texts requires not only
philological, but also technical expertise. While editors and commentators of
ancient works try to render the contents as well as possible, ambiguities do remain.
A translation is a rendering of an ancient system, which as a whole might be very
different from the current system, into the terminology of this current system. This
never works perfectly. Also, extant texts are almost never originals, historians work
from often distorted and incomplete later copies or collections. Inconsistencies
within texts therefore are rather the norm than the exception. It is dif
cult to infer
practices from these written texts, but this is still the luckiest case. Despite its
complexity, much agricultural knowledge was orally transmitted, and never doc-
umented in texts. We can only infer such knowledge from its surviving physical
effects. It is with these limitations in mind that readers should consult the following
sections.
3.3.2.1 China
China is one of the oldest agricultural civilization from which written testimony
survives. Chinese agricultural systems comprised few animals in comparison to
Europe, millet, rice and various vegetables such as cabbage being main staples. The
Chinese developed intensive uses of small-scale plots, such as combinations of
sh
ponds with mulberry trees and sericulture, and tended to invest into intensive,
horticultural ways of making optimal use of the land, one of them being the
'
pit
cultivation
system unique to China.
Joseph Needham, the great historian of Chinese science, has devoted part of his
topic on botany to the discussion of early soil science, presenting the oldest extant
testimony of human concerns with soils in agricultural societies. The Kuan Tzu Ti
Yuan Phien which was probably written between the 5th and 2nd century BCE, is
probably the oldest extant text which classi
'
es soils systematically. Three pro-
ductivity classes are discerned, and within each, six sub-classes are distinguished,
each with its own name. The author names the tree and plant species which grow
best on each soil, and informs about the yields to be expected. Farmland, literally
'
irrigable land
'
, is divided in
ve soil types and then classi
ed by means of the
depth of the water-table
a remarkably systematic approach, and one which is
based on invisible characteristics, hence testi
—
es to a kind of experimental
approach. The descriptions are very detailed. A soil called hsi thu is described as
fertile loess of silty texture, ca. 10 m above the water table, well suited for cereal
crops. After a list of plants growing on such soil, the author denotes people living
on such land as robust. When such land is dry, it gives out a ringing sound
corresponding to the musical note chio when knocked on. Other soils described
