The Earliest Farming 



the kinds of food the dead person had when alive meatj game, 

 and handfuls of corn. But while the perishable things decayed, 

 the corn grew and spread over the grave, and when the tribe 

 revisited it the next summer or autumn they found a rich and 

 thick crop of the seeds which formerly they could only gather on 

 single stalks scattered among other grasses. There was twenty 

 or thirty times as much corn growing on eighteen square feet as 

 they had previously collected from as many acres. Having seen 

 this happen more than once, the tribesmen dug more ground and 

 put in more corn-seed, and to their amazement found a similar 

 return for what they had planted. 



This explanation of how corn was first grown is probably 

 correct. The discovery had a great influence on the lives and 

 habits of men. We have seen that when they ceased to be hunters 

 only and became owners of flocks and herds they lost some of 

 their freedom of movement. They had more wealth and they 

 had to look after it. As grazing farmers it was an advantage for 

 them to move their cattle and sheep frequently to fresh pastures, 

 but now when they were becoming cultivators, they had to think 

 of giving up this roaming life. If they were to be sure of getting 

 a crop, they must not only sow their corn ; they had to protect 

 it from wild animals and from their own cattle. They had to 

 reap and store it for their use in winter ; they could not carry 

 their whole crop of corn on their journeys. They had to settle 

 beside their little plots of delved land and their little stacks of 

 corn, and learn how to plough and put up fences. Their camps 

 became permanent settlements, and they built the best houses 

 they could of turf, or of logs and turf, 



Strabo, a Greek and the greatest writer on geography among 

 the Greeks and Romans, has described the kind of life led by the 

 German tribes before they adopted the cultivation of land. He 

 wrote a few years before the birth of Christ, and was referring to 

 the tribes who lived between the Rhine and the Elbe, and perhaps 



