Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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Common sense and hindsight can provide useful perspective on past experience. Civilizations don’t disappear overnight. They don’t choose to fail. More often they falter and then decline as their soil disappears over generations. Although historians are prone to credit the end of civilizations to discrete events like climate changes, wars, or natural disasters, the effects of soil erosion on ancient societies were profound. Go look for yourself; the story is out there in the dirt. good old dirt 7
Page 2 and 3: Dirt
Page 4 and 5: Dirt the erosion of civilizations D
Page 6: For Xena T. Dog, enthusiastic field
Page 10: acknowledgments This book could nev
Page 13 and 14: 2 Yet what is dirt? We try to keep
Page 15 and 16: 4 discovered ways to enhance soil f
Page 17: 6 quent centuries, nutrient depleti
Page 21 and 22: 10 of his contemporaries thought hi
Page 23 and 24: 12 reworked the soil. Together, Eng
Page 25 and 26: 14 replaced through weathering of f
Page 27 and 28: 16 sumption of atmospheric carbon d
Page 29 and 30: 18 because it allows for free air c
Page 31 and 32: 20 Humans have not yet described al
Page 33 and 34: 22 Concentrated organic matter and
Page 35 and 36: 24 can as much as double erosion re
Page 38 and 39: three Rivers of Life Egypt is the g
Page 40 and 41: vitamin D needed to make healthy bo
Page 42 and 43: genetic analyses show that modern s
Page 44 and 45: BLACK SEA MEDITERRANEAN SEA Cairo N
Page 46 and 47: vesting crops. Once humanity starte
Page 48 and 49: Figure 4. Early Mesopotamian repres
Page 50 and 51: But the irrigation that nourished M
Page 52 and 53: Figure 5. Ancient Egyptian plow (Wh
Page 54 and 55: president Gamal Abdel Nasser and So
Page 56 and 57: ple civilizations. Years later, aft
Page 58: crop failure. Throughout history, o
Page 61 and 62: 50 Although societies dating back t
Page 63 and 64: 52 N E P I R U S IONIAN SEA 0 150 k
Page 65 and 66: 54 Valley bottom sediments of the A
Page 67 and 68: 56 ancient dams, cisterns, and ruin
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58 Republic was founded in 508 bc.
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60 Falling slave and grain prices b
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62 Some contemporary accounts suppo
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64 directly in commerce, many wealt
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66 spread erosion on slopes beyond
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68 of the Nile fed Rome. Soil erosi
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70 Figure 9. Ruins of the first cen
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72 cut primarily for timber or farm
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74 Mayan civilization provides the
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76 had filled with soils eroded aft
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78 slope soils around 700 bc coinci
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80 throughout the Southwest. Agricu
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five Let Them Eat Colonies There is
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As agriculture spread north and wes
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agricultural land lies on valley-bo
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Italy’s soil faltered. Mussolini
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ing land in pasture restored soil f
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ecause the Church seldom relinquish
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Soil husbandry began to be seen as
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Figure 11. Title page to The Whole
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the introduction of clover and othe
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Figure 12. Mid-eighteenth-century a
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While Surell fretted about how to r
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Figure 13. French farmers loading s
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food production and food demand as
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meat. With most of the country’s
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the fear of famine. The chairman’
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ticed conventional and so-called su
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116 eating into the ancient uplands
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118 Historian Avery Craven saw colo
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120 another £50,000 from Maryland
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122 Essays on Field Husbandry, and
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124 tobacco for wearing out the lan
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126 Our country is hilly and we hav
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128 Although it was known that a we
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130 Seeing secession as the only op
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132 mation implied a fundamental ch
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134 There can be no doubt that the
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136 As is often the case, insight c
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138 ALABAMA > 10 inches 4-10 inches
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140 Maryland’s colonial ports of
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142 Figure 17. Eroded land on tenan
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144 villages in the jungle of north
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146 Grazed by buffalo for at least
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148 The late nineteenth-century adv
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150 amount formed and that removed.
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152 each person in the city. The ne
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154 Figure 20. Buried machinery in
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156 Bennett calculated that it took
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158 conservation, crop diversificat
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160 As crop yields increased two- t
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162 Figure 22. Bare, rilled field i
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164 With the ground left bare durin
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166 than one hundred days in northe
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168 Soil erosion rates from West Af
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170 number political refugees, are
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172 Enough American farms disappear
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174 Designated the nation’s first
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176 resource economists downplay th
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eight Dirty Business A nation that
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A phenomenally successful adaptatio
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On a more optimistic note—as we p
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alternative farming—even as the s
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effect on crop yields. Widespread a
Page 200 and 201:
Seeking out virgin soils, Hilgard s
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in sodium sulfate and sodium carbon
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e the key elements of concern to ag
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than half of America’s farmers ha
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Ammonia plant construction began ag
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tion. The number of hungry Chinese
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experiments at Rothamsted from 1843
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Howard’s methods in the tropics w
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that portion now being farmed. ...T
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pests, provide all its own nitrogen
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soil. In contrast, the conventional
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mulching, which can triple the mass
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organic matter content of the top f
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ended in 1995 when the company agre
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nine Islands in Time When our soils
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When asked how the great stone stat
Page 232 and 233:
I doubt the Easter Islanders had an
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comparable populations at the time
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irch forest that covered thousands
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Figure 25. Professor Ulf Helldén s
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Soil loss from the uplands in the r
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Soviet collapse, Cuba began privati
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ten Life Span of Civilizations Spea
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enefits of soil conservation can be
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thirty to seventy generations. Thro
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lion people and 1.5 billion hectare
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difference between good farming and
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Emerging interest in supporting an
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ottom line is that we have to adapt
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1. Darwin 1881, 4. 2. Darwin 1881,
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14. Washington 1803, 103-4. 15. Jef
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ibliography 1. good old dirt Hooke,
Page 264 and 265:
Pringle, H. 1998. Neolithic agricul
Page 266 and 267:
Hughes, J. D. 1975. Ecology in Anci
Page 268 and 269:
Landforms and Landform Evolution in
Page 270 and 271:
Surell, A. 1870. A Study of the Tor
Page 272 and 273:
Pasternack, G. B., G. S. Brush, and
Page 274 and 275:
Lal, R. 1993. Soil erosion and cons
Page 276 and 277:
8. dirty business Appenzeller, T. 2
Page 278 and 279:
Pimentel, D., P. Hepperly, J. Hanso
Page 280 and 281:
Environmental Problems in Microcosm
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abandonment of land: American agric
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iodiversity, 206-7, 220, 244 Black
Page 286 and 287:
Saharan Africa, 165-68. See also de
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guanine, 15 guano: commercial ferti
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75, 76. See also sloping land, eros
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and, 30, 34-35, 36-37, 42, 47; rela
Page 294 and 295:
192-95, 202, 205; prairie lands and
Page 296 and 297:
Soil Management, 192; estimates of
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Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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