Ancient Egyptian cattle plowing (Louvre Museum, Paris) You might think you know what work is, like homework, or having to pick up your room, right? But to scientists, work has a more definite meaning: work is force x distance. That means that you can measure work by measuring how much force, or energy, [...]
Sharecroppers picking cotton. See the little girl and the bigger boy? (ca 1890) When people didn't own any land, or they lost their land because of not being able to pay back money or food they borrowed, they often became sharecroppers. This means that they would farm land that belonged to somebody else (usually a rich man, because [...]
Soil types triangle All dirt is basically made of three different kinds of particles. These are clay, sand, and loam. Clay is very fine, small inorganic particles, worn down from rock. Sand is bigger, coarser particles, also from rock, often quartz or silica. Loam is organic particles (bits of dead plants). Geologists and [...]
Ancient Egyptian cattle plowing, ca. 1300 BC (Louvre Museum, Paris) What does plowing do? If you are going to plant seeds, like wheat seeds for example, and harvest them, then you are going to have to plow. Plowing is the hardest work of farming. Basically you have to make zillions of holes in [...]
An Egyptian using a hand plow (about 1400 BC) The first part of farming is planting the seeds in good dirt, so they can begin to grow. In most parts of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, early farmers planted their seeds in the fall, around October. You can plant seeds one at [...]
Egyptian wall painting of farm work Family farms Maybe when people first started farming, each family pretty much farmed by itself. Mom and Dad and the kids planted the grain and the vegetables, and later they harvested them. And throughout antiquity and the middle ages, many farms were family farms that worked just like [...]
History of cows: Cows in a field The wild auroch Cattle are the tame version of the wild aurochs that used to live on the grass plains of Asia, Africa, and Europe. About 7000 BC, people in North Africa began to keep tame cattle. About 5000 BC, people in Central Asia did it too. [...]
