THE BEGINNINGS OF AGRICULTURE. 685 



on himself only, and populations increased rapidly. Under the 

 influence of these new conditions all the elements of civilization 

 were developed and advanced. Varied industries were constituted 

 to give value to the productions of the earth, habits were regu- 

 lated, and milder religions substituted for the bloody sacrifices of 

 the pastoral phase peaceful offerings of wheat, meal, oil, and wine. 



This memorable event of the adoption of the agricultural sys- 

 tem by the fitst pioneer groups probably dated from the later 

 prehistoric times, and could in no case have been anterior to 

 the subjection of the auxiliary animals during the pastoral stage. 

 The dawn of history shows us large empires, already flourishing, 

 from three to four thousand years before the Christian era Chal- 

 dea, Egypt, and China enriched and civilized by agriculture. 

 The point of beginning should undoubtedly be thrown some 

 thousands of years still further back. Probably also the mytho- 

 logical traditions relative to the origin of husbandry, in which 

 honor is rendered to deified personages, such as Ceres, Triptole- 

 mus, Minerva, Bacchus, Osiris, Noah, etc., refer not to the primary 

 institution, which was probably effected by degrees and slowly, 

 but to the extension of the processes, which may sometimes have 

 been made in a very short time and would all the more strike the 

 Imagination of the peoples. The agricultural system once fixed, 

 the initiative of a leading innovator might introduce it by imita- 

 tion into a country still barbarous, rapidly change the aspect of a 

 district still uncultivated, and bring it, in less than a generation, 

 to the point where territories that had already been transformed 

 by cultivation had arrived after centuries of efforts. Those were 

 undoubtedly benefits of this kind of which myths have trans- 

 mitted the reminiscence to us. During these ages of ancient bar- 

 barity the fertility of the soils, suddenly revealed by practical 

 sages, would appear miraculous to tribes that were acquainted 

 only with the aridity of the steppes. The prodigy of making 

 wheat and the vine grow where only grass and rushes had been 

 would seem to partake of the divine, and it is conceivable that 

 altars should have been erected to those who accomplished it. In 

 the Oriental mythologies the conquest and distribution of domes- 

 tic animals did not give rise to such legends ; whence we may 

 suppose that those achievements dated from an anterior cycle 

 when religious conceptions, more closely related to primitive 

 fetichism, induced the adoration of the animals themselves instead 

 of those who subdued or introduced them, and of whom no recol- 

 lection survived. 



It is easier to indicate the countries in which the evolution 

 occurred in which the pastoral system was supplanted by the ag- 

 ricultural. As our most valuable plants originated in regions now 

 well determined by, botanical geography, we thus know the area 



