MILPA AGRICULTURE COOK. 323 
out passing through the stages represented by the more primitive 
agricultural civilizations of tropical America. 
But the effects of agriculture can be considered apart from the 
question of origin. Budge, Breasted, and other archeologists now 
recognize that originally the Nile Valley, with its annual floods, was 
a succession of well-nigh tropical jungles and swamps, inhabited by 
elephants, hippopotami, and crocodiles, and the Valley of the Eu- 
phrates seems not less likely to have been wooded. Certainly south- 
ern Arabia and Palestine were not naturally treeless, nor other coun- 
tries around the Mediterranean. Since the milpa method of cutting 
and burning is the only way of clearing woodland for agricultural 
purposes among primitive people, it may be supposed to have been 
used in western Asia and the Mediterranean region, as in other parts 
of the world, until the forests were exterminated. A chronic scarcity 
of timber in Mediterranean countries during the historical period 
may be considered as a normal consequence of earlier agricultural 
occupation, in the prehistoric age. 
PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY SYSTEMS. 
Milpa agriculture as a system stands as in contrast with tillage 
agriculture, in which plows or other implements are used to break 
the land before planting and crops are cultivated during the period 
of growth. From our standpoint of familiarity with tillage methods 
the milpa system appears not only temporary but highly destructive 
and self-limiting, since the growth of grasses may render the land 
useless in a few decades. Even the best land can be used only at 
intervals, as long as dependence is placed entirely on fire as a means 
of clearing the soil for planting. With milpa agriculture the ques- 
tion of permanence hinges entirely on whether there are many people 
or only a few. Milpa agriculture is a permanent sj^stem if the in- 
tervals between successive clearings of the same land are very long 
and the forest has time to restore the soil to its original condition. A 
few people can live indefinitely in the same region, but limits are 
reached as civilization advances. 
The essential inferiority of the milpa system lies not so much in 
its lack of permanence, since this would be secured if a proper bal- 
ance of the population were maintained, but in the fact that the 
carrying capacity of any region must remain very small, only a fifth 
to a tenth part of tlie land being planted at the same time, even 
with a well-organized milpa system. Tillage methods have made it 
possible for the more progressive nations to maintain larger and 
more centralized populations and develop higher forms of civiliza- 
tion. Nevertheless, it is not to be inferred that tillage agriculture 
is essentially permanent, or that it is preferable to milpa agriculture 
