476 



The Journal of Heredity 



been accustomed to take into considera- 

 tion. 



Flax, peas, beans, potherbs, are later 

 acquisitions, like rye and oats. 



Barley seems to have been the earliest 

 crop ; barleycorns were used as measures 

 of weij^ht and length by the ])rimitive 

 Indo-German peoples. 



The question at once presents itself, 

 whether the agricultural implements 

 and skill of the Indo-Germans offer a 

 means of determining at what period 

 their separation took place. Braun- 

 gart has attempted to solve this ques- 

 tion, and seems to me to have suc- 

 ceeded. 



EVOLUTION OF THE PLOW. 



He reviews, in a long and acute work, 

 all the agricultural implements which 

 he has seen either in the original or in 

 model or picture, and reaches the fol- 

 lowing conclusions : 



1. The hand implements, and the 

 hand-plow evolved from them, are of 

 Indo-German origin, and must have 

 been developed before the emigration 

 to Asia of the multitudes which later 

 figure as Persians, Iranians and Hin- 

 dus; for all the branches of the race use 

 the same type. 



The oldest example is usually con- 

 sidered to be the plow found on the 

 moor of Doestrup in Jiitland, although 

 the plow from the clifT near Bohuslan in 

 Sweden may be older. The Doestrup 

 plow is in that case neolithic. The so- 

 called Hesiod plow from Greece is 

 much more recent — about the ninth or 

 tenth century B. C. 



This type, which developed from the 

 spade, consists in its oldest form of 

 three parts, and in this form exists even 

 to the present day in various localities. 

 The well-known "hook" of Mecklen- 

 Ijurg and the instrument known at 

 Cologne as a "wessel" or Huns plow,' 

 .still in use today, are undoubtedly de- 

 rived, in part, from the l)rimiti^•e spade- 

 l)low, and can show a neolithic ancestor 

 in the plow found at Dabergotz, near 

 Berlin. This indeed shows the typical 



* Sec Cook, O. F. Wild Wheat in Palestine, U. S. Dei)artmcnt of Agriculture, Bureau of 

 Plant Industry, Bull. No. 274, Washinj^'ton, V)li. 



' So called because it was supposed to have been introduced by the Huns. 



Koernicke of Poppelsdorf fotmd wild 

 forms of wheat and barley. Lately 

 Aaronsohn has confirmed these dis- 

 coveries.* The two forms look re- 

 markably alike, and Braungart thought 

 he had discovered, in Alpine mutations, 

 the transitions between them. Aside 

 from that. North Africa yields an in- 

 digenous wild barley. Apparently the 

 ancestral home of this plant is in the 

 Mediterranean region, a fact that bears 

 witness to the antiquity of its culture 

 and the close connections between the 

 Paleolithic cave men and the Indo- 

 Gcrmans. 



Rye and oats can not be found with 

 certainty until the Bronze Age. Whence 

 the rye came is an unsolved question. 

 Hirt thinks, as a result of certain in- 

 dications, that rye was known to the 

 Indo-Germans even earlier than this. 

 Oats are European in their origin, and 

 in the form of the so-called wild or 

 "fly" oats are a common weed. 



Studies in comparative philology have, 

 according to Hoops, shown that the 

 Indo-Germans had names in common, 

 for the following things and ideas 

 relating to agriculture: among cereals, 

 barley, spelt, wheat and millet (this 

 appears to be the third oldest crop, 

 thus ])resupposing a culture in high 

 antiquity) ; grains, garden bed, couch- 

 grass {Triticiim repens), rye-grass (as a 

 weed). Chaff, furrow, arable land, 

 scythe, sickel. Broom. Meal, to grind 

 in a mortar, to pound, to grind between 

 stones, millstone, handmill, mill. 



Of these words "furrow" and "gar- 

 den bed " extend only into the Armenian ; 

 the others are common, and must there- 

 fore have been the ])ro])erty of the orig- 

 inal population Vjcfore its first great 

 sei)aration. They give the starting 

 jjoint ffjr an e\'aluation of the primitive 

 culture. Gardening with a hoc must at 

 that time have been outgrown; we find 

 ourselves in the presence of a real agri- 

 culture — otherwise words for plow, fur- 

 row and arable land would not have 

 been in use. Everything jjoints back to 

 a time much more remote than we have 



