PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 5 



have been cultivated for some time in certain localities 

 before they attracted the emperor's attention to such a 

 degree. Agriculture appears, then, to be as ancient in 

 China as in Egypt. The constant relations between 

 Egypt and Mesopotamia lead us to suppose that an 

 almost contemporaneous cultivation existed in the valleys 

 of the Euphrates and the Nile. And it may have been 

 equally early in India and in the Malay Archipelago. 

 The history of the Dravidian and Malay peoples does 

 not reach far back, and is sufficiently obscure, but there 

 is no reason to believe that cultivation has not been 

 known among them for a very long time, particularly 

 along the banks of the rivers. 



The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians propa- 

 gated many plants in the region of the Mediterranean, 

 and the Aryan nations, whose migrations towards Europe 

 began about 2500, or at latest 2000 years B.C., carried 

 with them several species already cultivated in Western 

 Asia. We shall see, in studying the history of several 

 species, that some plants were probably cultivated in 

 Europe and in the north of Africa prior to the Aryan 

 migration. This is shown by names in languages more 

 ancient than the Aryan tongues ; for instance, Finn, 

 Basque, Berber, and the speech of the Guanchos of the 

 Canarv Isles. However, the remains, called kitchen- 

 middens, of ancient Danish dwellings, have hitherto 

 furnished no proof of cultivation or any indication of the 

 possession of metal. 1 The Scandinavians of that period 

 lived principally by fishing and hunting, and perhaps 

 eked out their subsistence by indigenous plants, such as 

 the cabbage, the nature of which does not admit any 

 remnant of traces in the dung-heaps and rubbish, and 

 which, moreover, did not require cultivation. The absence 

 of metals does not in these northern countries argue a 

 greater antiquity than the age of Pericles, or even the 

 palmy days of the Roman republic. Later, when bronze 



1 De Naidaillac, Les Premiers Homines et les Temps Pr^historiques, 

 i. pp. 266, 268. The absence of traces of agriculture among these 

 remains is, moreover, corroborated by Heer and Cartailhac, both well 

 versed in the discoveries of archaeology. 



