For Those Interested in Archaeology

Even the Romans envied the Greek artisans and their work...pillaging most of it...I can see why.

 

Reckon they've found homo sapien skulls 300-350,000 years old in Marrakesh. Love it when things like this turn science on its head 300,000-year-old skulls could rewrite the human origin story

 

That'll upset a few folks.

 

Seen that one before, I think. Makes sense, it's unlikely they would just abandon an entire way of life overnight for a new and untried fad. It's probable they would have dabbled in both for a while.
I've actually got a Prehistoric plough in the house; it's a right-angled stone about a foot long, and you can see where one end of it has been shaped into some kind of point. Local museum dated it to about 3500-4000 years ago.
Found it completely by accident about 15 years ago; was hillwalking and tripped over what I thought was a tree stump. Then I noticed the odd shape (it looks like a kid's toy gun) and dug it out.

 

It comes down to a number of factors...availability of food and water an obvious but important factor...a decisive reason Australian aboriginals didn’t take up farming (a couple of examples, but 99% didn’t) would be because the availability of food and especially water didn’t allow for huge population growth, they stayed nomadic out of necessity...there are tipping factors into farming...it depends on numbers and free time and abundance of food and water to eventually think up and set up a farming system...not all the factors need be met to ‘tip’ but enough...I’m sure that makes things as clear as mud...

 

There is a small mound (about 20-25 feet high) on some land my family owns five miles from the Mississippi River. It's been dated to about 1200AD and was centered around a small village. The land surrounding it has been farmed for quite some time but the mound itself is in good shape.

 

You can even farm as you go...if you have a ‘range’ - the borders of your country, which you ‘wander’, they not only gather the ‘bush tucker’, but replant more of what they like to eat, so that next time they are in the area they have an abundance of the foods they want...I’m sure this happened quit a bit, and was one of those tipping factors for some...

 

In Scotland even into the early 20th Century, agricultural labour was hired at annual fairs around August, then released in the Spring because while the crops were actually growing there was no need for them to be there. It wasn't until close to harvest time that the farmers needed extra hands and hired people again.

 

The Mound Builders here in the US apparently used a mixture of farming and hunter gatherer life styles at least until the population got big enough that you had to go to far from the city to succeed in hunting or gathering. This resulted in the fall of their civilization as they were monoculture farmers growing only maize which is nutritionally incomplete for humans.

 

All year round, I would imagine. As well as livestock needing constant tending, there was a massive drive to improve field drainage systems too during the war. And then there's ditch, wall and fence maintenance.
Better qualify that; in peacetime, farmers probably did the maintenance jobs themselves to avoid having to pay anyone. The field drainage was probably seen by most as unnecessary/too costly/time consuming, and better put off as long as possible.
Mix in a wartime economy with labour shortages (men called up, casual labour from Eire drying up), constant pressure to increase production (farms were effectively run by the Ministry of Agriculture, and farmers who didn't measure up could be and were sacked), food shortages etc and it becomes a different story

 

I thought it was all year round too Gordon. Its a good question. Shame the female records are sadly lacking in Britain. I thought my aunt was in the land army, but turns out she was ATS, but they couldn't turn up her record.

 

That's strange; I know a lot of Great War service records were destroyed in the Blitz, but can't imagine why ATS ones wouldn't be kept. It's a service record, after all.
Tried the MoD records centre at Kentigern House in Glasgow? Think it's at Anderston Cross.

 

Another pothole for the apple cart-
"A 260,000-year-old skull from China could rewrite the history of human evolution.
A new analysis has found the skull is remarkably similar to the earliest known fossil of our species,found 6,200 miles (10,000 km) away in Morocco in June.
This suggests modern humans aren't solely descended from Africans as scientists previously thought.
Instead, small groups of early human ancestors first migrated to Eurasia sometime before 200,000 years ago, where they evolved modern traits in east Asia.
From here, some of the Asian early humans moved back to Africa, where they mingled with native populations.
Homo sapiens evolved from these interbred groups and spread around the world, meaning modern human DNA came from both African and Asian ancestors."
Ancient skull found in China rewrites human history | Daily Mail Online