Cultivated Plants.
Before men learned to cultivate plants and to domesticate animals, subsistence was always an uncertain matter. They roamed about in one vicinity until nature could no longer supply their needs, then left the exhausted land to recover itself while new territory afforded means for satisfying hunger. After fire became such a potent factor, as we have seen, a fixed abode was desirable. It fell to the lot of women to stay and tend the hearth. Shut off from the long expeditions undertaken by men, they soon learned to make as much as possible of the space around about their homes. Sticks were sometimes placed around plants or bushes to protect them from the careless step until their fruits matured. Occasionally plants were dug up and replanted nearer the hut. The garden and grain field were but natural results of this spirit of husbanding the stores provided by mother earth.
While women were the first to domesticate plants in the simple way just indicated, not much came of it until men adopted the idea and carried it further. With sharp sticks they scratched the soil and with the help of animals they trod in the seeds. Irrigation was sometimes needed—as in Egypt—to insure good crops. Thus from slight beginnings developed the agriculture of the world. With reasonable labor and painstaking, the tiller of the soil could be sure of a living for himself and his family, and before historic records illumine the life of several nations, farming was well understood. Indeed it is safe to say that until very recent times methods followed by tillers of the soil in quite a number of countries advanced very little upon those of the prehistoric man.
It is interesting to trace the history of present day foods, grains, vegetables and fruits, with the attempt to ascertain where each was native. All have been greatly improved by cultivation and not alone our varieties, but even distinct fruits and plants have resulted from man's propagation. Often the original species have been vastly improved. For example, the potato was a native of Chili. Found there in the sixteenth century of our era, it was described as "watery, insipid, but with no bad taste when cooked." It is supposed that it was taken from some Spanish ship to Virginia, and in the latter part of the same century carried to Europe. Its cultivation has spread over many countries, and from a small, watery tuber it has been brought to large size, mealiness and taste agreeable to the palate. Even today it flourishes in its wild state in Chili and Peru.
The cabbage was once a weed, growing on rocks by the seashore. By man's care it has been developed to the vegetable widely used today; moreover, its blossom has been exaggerated until a wholly new vegetable in the form of the cauliflower is the result.
"When we visit a vegetable garden or see fresh, attractive fruits offered in market or inspect the wonders shown upon the tables of county fairs and agricultural shows, we seldom realize how truly they are all the work of man....
"One of the most wonderful illustrations of what man can do in changing nature is seen in the case of the peach. Some time, long ago, perhaps in Western Asia, grew a wild tree which bore fruits, at the center of which were the hardest of hard pits, containing the bitterest of kernels; over this hard stone was a thin layer of flesh—bitter, stringy, with almost no juice, and which, as it ripened, separated, exposing to view the contained seed; such was nature's gift. Man taking it found that it contained two parts which might by proper treatment be made of use for food—the thin external pulp and the bitter inner pit. He has improved both. Today we eat the luscious peaches with their thick, soft, richly-flavored juicy flesh—they are one product of man's patient ingenuity. Or we take the soft shelled almond with its sweet kernel; it is the old pit improved and changed by man: in the almond, as it is raised at present, we care nothing for the pulp and it has almost vanished. The peach and almond are the same in nature; the differences they now betray are due to man."[3]
Many of the grains were known and grown by prehistoric man. Millet, wheat and barley were known in earliest recorded times in Egypt; these grains were also cultivated before historic times. Oats and rye were early plant products. Corn was native to America and unknown to the antiquity of the Old World. Several of our vegetables, such as the radish, carrot, turnip, beet and onion, were early grown for food. The lemon, orange, fig and olive were all native to Asia. Many flowers are mentioned by early writers and they too were unquestionably carefully tended in remote times. It is a subject for pleasant investigation to find out where flowers, cultivated in some countries, grow wild in others.