Greetings from Mindanao Philippines, where our field was ploughed by a carabao (Philippine Water Buffalo) earlier this year. Many people here still use animals for traction on their farms. Carabao and Brahman cattle are commonly used. Our field was fertilised with chicken dung. Essentially very similar to what the Neolithic farmers did. An excellent video!
Lads. You didn't lose any of us ( any worth keeping 😘) and you may have gained NEW members who loved your "durty talk "Michael. Keep being informed, good craic and extra !
I love the realness and candor of their conversation. So refreshing in 2024 when half of the 'educational' content is either AI or someone just reading wikipedia articles. I love seeing the host(s).....and these guys have such a warm inviting nature to them.
Thanks guys. I'm 67 and have been interested in ancient history since I was a child. My family knows to buy me a history book for any occasion. It always amazes me just how smart our ancestors were. They used what they had and didn't quite understand why things worked but they persevered. I've learned the ancient technique of Nalbinding or needle binding that was used as far back as during the Egyptian period and found in the caves in the regions of Iraq and Iran. All they used was bone or antler needles and wool. I just found your channel today and have subscribed. I have been binge watching your videos. I'm looking forward towards your next one. Love the interchange between you two that you have.
Wow, so could the blue stones of Stonehenge have been hauled by oxen teams? Reevaluation might show evidence that has been overlooked. I enjoy your humor and sense of awe. Thank you!
They did a thousand years earlier in Malta. Carts with solid wheels at least 48" in diameter. Used also in Anatolia and other areas of the Mediterranean. And yet this was a thousand years before Khufu and STILL the Egyptians were supposed to be ignorant of the wheel even THEN.
I don’t see why not. If they had cows pulling plows, which they certainly did by the time of Stonehenge obviously they would have used them to pull the stones.
@@PeachysMom while they could have used oxen, water transport was used extensively right up to the modern era. Maps of navigable rivers were the highways of the ancient world., particularly in Britain
I'm very sceptical about all dates for the start of farming - whether pastoral or agricultural. The species is at least 250 thousand years old and our most distant ancestors were no less intelligent (and far more in touch with their natural environment), why would they not know how to use both plants and animals to their advantage? Rather than assigning its "invention" to particular times and places what we are really seeing is adaptation to changing environmental conditions. If our methods were better we would detect evidence of farming older by orders of magnitude than what is currently claimed.
Always keep in mind that what archaeologists find is very little, in fact not enough to be 'evidence' of anything, only just enough to build theories on. I am happy with all they find, but I have my doubt about their conclusions...
Because the environments and the population mass wasnt sufficient enough. Only with the onset of farming did women evolve to be able to conceive another child while they already had another child on the teat and hunter gatherer societies feed their children from the teat until they are much older. Also imagine trying to plant crops with mammoths and woolly rhinos roaming the lands and trying to keep livestock with dire wolves, lions, cave bears and the like the world was a bloody tough place...
They domesticated dogs much earlier because they were useful for their lifestyle. To chose to settle down is a big change when there is plenty of food to hunt over the next hill. Early farmers did not have it easy. It is hard back breaking work, with no options to slack, you have to keep to that schedule or your crops fail and you starve. Most hunter gatherers have a 35 hour work week and if you don't like where you are you move on. Farmers were less healthy then hunter gatherers, smaller in build.
We know when certain crops were farmed based on the changes in genetics that humans caused. Before farming, the landscape was managed but not specifically cultivated. So we’re pretty sure when we started cultivating crops to plus or minus a thousand years. This is not to say they weren’t doing things other than cultivating much earlier, but that isn’t farming.
I’m not surprised, but I’m glad they found evidence. I believe there was farming several thousand years before this find. Yes the best ground has been tilled over thousands of times since virgin ground was broken. I think the best place to look for this evidence, is currently underwater in the Dogger land area. That had to be some of the most fertile, flat and easy to work farm land in all of Europe. One point that cannot be ignored is, animals take thousands of years to domesticate. You don’t take giant, wild Orox and train him play nice right away. Keep his descendants pinned up for a few hundred years. When they depend upon you for their livelihood, they will work for food.
@highendservicesbarrieont8347 imprinting is the most important part of animal domestication. If an animal a dog, cow, bied whatever. If an animal thinks you are it's mother you own it,
I was initially sceptical about this idea because it seemed like no one knew what they were talking about, but later on. It was obvious that you were just paraphrasing for the sake of the audience and when I saw that picture of the soil profile at 12 minutes it was astonishing, it was most certainly A. Ploughed profile in depth. It was amazing to watch. I'm a PhD in soil science. So I know what I see and that was just clear as a nose on your face, it most certainly depicted a buried ploughed layer. It was so dark that obtaining organic matter for a date shouldn't have been a problem. I have no doubt that whatever date you have is within the ballpark. So extremely strong evidence for stone age tillage. Well done, and no- not boring.
@ThePrehistoryGuys there was no doubt in my mind by 12 minutes in... amusingly, the first 5 minutes made it look like no one with the correct expertise had done anything! It was in reality, no one's fault, just some unfortunate cobbling together of quotes... next time if you have a similar thing to present, perhaps lead with that labelled soil profile. Anyone who knows their stuff can infer the thrust of your argument from that... then you can say whatever you like and the soil guys will be happy as a pig in mud... anyway that's only a minor thing, well done!
Even today most of the calories and profit from wheat/winter grains is the extra late fall and early spring grazing plus the feed value of straw and chaff producing meat. To do this on a scale that is worth while would need animal traction. I have a number of times grazed a field hard late summer 2 or 3 times each time leaving it shorter or even discing it while leaving the team in the field with some hay to keep nibbling the sod. Then just before a rain at the right time for fall planting sowed wheat or rye then put a herd of cattle and sheep in there during the rain and fed a little hay. This gives excellent germination of the grain. In Australia this method of planting very large wheat fields is common as the winter dormancy of the native grass makes it easier. These winter dormant grasses are very similar to the Asian grasses in the area where wheat is native as a wild plant.
My pleasure lads. Keep ploughing away at it so! You never know what will turn up when you keep digging into history. Un "till" next time, slán ...I'll just see myself out there. 🧚♂️@@ThePrehistoryGuys
Love your updates! I feel that too often any evidence is considered the earliest possible use. Anything we can identify is likely an established practice and is reasonably widespread for us to even find evidence.
Yes, it’s a safe assumption, but scientifically you can’t prove that that the practice was in use any earlier than the age of the evidence you have found.
Traction almost asks for the use of the oxen brothers. They indeed can get these big logs out of the clearance, and a sledge, if you want to do something with these big stones. Just my association/speculation.
Love the evidence of how scientists came to their conclusions. I may not be representative of the rest of your audience but it is this data that we don’t get elsewhere that endears me to your excellent and extremely informative program. Many thanks and please continue to bring us the details of the relevant research!
Love the video. It’s very common in archaeology for things like those petroglyphs to be overlooked. While trying to learn more on elephants in Mesopotamia, I could rarely find many artifacts throughout my research until I stumbled upon something in a museum! Keep up the great work!
Hi guys! What have I been saying for YEARS! Cattle traction is the only reasonable explanation for megalithic monuments getting where they they are and easily explains the feats of strength displayed by the movement of such massive stones in prehistory!
The soil analysis bit was fascinating (despite your apologies!). This level of analysis is essential for meaningfully understanding archaic agriculture and its development.
Good evening from the beautiful SF Bay Area. I came in late having had a busy day but am happy to have caught it now. Very interesting, I doubt if you lost anyone, Rupert! Keep on educating us with these videos and your very British humor. Love Y'all!
It's astonishing that the team was able to detect the *stages* of farming a particular tract through stratigraphy; from hoeing, to ploughing, to planting, to reaping.
Up in the mountains the soil get less disturbed somehow. Like up at my cabin there are trackmarks from tractors still visible on the ground more than 50 years after they where there.
I love that level of detailed analytical discussion! I learned reading astrophysics that you don't need to understand all the words to follow the argument and learn something.
As an avid, amateur gardener - not a very good one at that, alas - I am fascinated by various horticultural practices throughout the ages. The careful yet convoluted technical language in the research papers is highly interesting as well. I knew a little about resting the soil between various crops, digging vs no digging, the microorganisms inherent in the soil, the numerous additions such as bones and ash - our ancestors were a canny lot for sure.
Thanks again for bringing new and very interesting information to light. I have a cousin who is a "Young Earther" who I'd love to share so many of your insights with, but he doesn't speak to me anymore... ... hahaha. Keep it up!
The area that was ploughed may have been chosen specifically because the stream flooded on an annual basis, bringing new nutrients, as is the case along the Nile delta. This could be a clue for where to look for more sites.
In the highlands of Armenia are also clearly advanced etchings of their civilization. Amazing how these advances were somehow erased when the civilization was decimated in the warfare that followed.
Fascinating presentation, many thanks, neither stuffy or dumbed down. I am wondering what your thoughts are, given the extreme rarity of the site and it's datability, how likely it is that this is the earliest date for cultivation in the area. I mean, it is very unlikely, but could the beginnings be say 500 or 1000 years earlier, given what is known about crop genetics? My other question is, could it be the development of animal drawn ploughs/ards that facilitated such cultivation? Might there have been human sown/cultivated crops grown on far smaller scales prior to that? So that cultivation was no new thing, but animal drawn devices brought it to a revolutionary level?
Peter Parker commented on research in Germany ( cattle bones- signs of wear) that cattle had clearly been used for pulling stuff about 2 years ago.He stated that quite possibly the Sarcen stones were moved in this manner.So this is not new news really.
Some current and past agriculture, growing plants, is by poking small holes in the garden area, dropping in the seed. When and why did the idea of turning or disrupting trenches of soil begin, use of ploughing . Already the notion of French Double Digging is out of favor, disrupting soil micseum and support. ALSO, cattle have been used in America in 1900s, or oxen, not just mules or horses. THANK YOU for reading the Soil Analysis in your source paper. On BBC's Time Team, the soil analysis, as with the recent paper, is enormously informative. Excellent.
These dates are highly suggestive of prior activity brought to a new location. For example how long before this was that part of Switzerland nothing but thick icesheet? How long after it receded before plant and animal life would recolonize and revitalize arid soils? It seems like an extremely short window before these traces were left making it extremely coincidental that these practices arise exactly then yet not everywhere else every time conditions would support the innovation. In similar fashion to how barrows show up in Ireland through central Europe seemingly the instant the local ecosystem could've supported the influx of hunter gatherers or farmers displaced by rising seas. Incidentally it seems likely that such structures were as robust as they were primarily to weather the tremors that must've racked anywhere near the site of a former glacier for thousands of years after they melted, which may also explain why they mysteriously fell out of use at around the time those tremors would've ended; their cultural centers wouldn't need to be built like bunkers to stay standing at that point.
9:34 still here… how’d they figure that out , tho? That seems very specific. I like this channel. I don’t understand too much, but truly, I enjoy the presentation and banter.
Miss the fireworks and confetti Michael. I beleive people were changing their environments to their advantage much earlier than assumed. There is very good evidence that Native peoples in the Americas moved food plants closer to their living areas.
Wow, it would mean they understood that charcoal a bones, perhaps a bit of meat still attached was fertiliser. Calcium and charcoal retains nutrients. I suspect long observation of nature. Lately a Canadian study called the mountain lion the gardeners of British-Colombia. The remains of carcasses brings nutrients to the soil. And impressive that they would have plough 5-4000 BC. Yet, it doesn't mean that they wouldn't still hunter and gatherers. Fishing didn't stopped because we started agriculture. Although they would have cultivated plants that would not have been original to the land such as wheat or barley. And it brings us back to beer, the beverage that created civilisation. Rich, nutritive beverage, bacteria free, could be store for a certain period of time and improved flavour with herbs and berries. Could beer be a first anesthetics, or at least pain relieving elixir?
Could this site not be then, the place where the original Plowman's Lunch was conceived, given the area became famous for it's Cheeses, or do you see too many holes in that theory? Wonderer.
Reading the article from Nature, I came across this line describing the site: "alternating human occupation levels and alluvial deposits some ten meters thick," and... oof. It all just clicked, between that and what you said about why we don't find these in other places because the conditions don't preserve or they've been plowed again later. This planting season ended REAL bad. This harvest was never brought in. The record was saved for us, and has advanced our understanding of early livestock in agriculture, but I sure hope there were other fields on higher ground that are absolutely nonexistent as archaeological sites because they were out of the path of mudslides and remained arable land for ages.
In the Aosta Valley (italy) archeologists had found in 1969 the same things. We had dated this in the late V millennium A.C. The site was maded for cerimonials events, we founded rituals ploughings. (Sorry for my bad english!)
Could you possibly get an few extra "like" buttons so I can like you even more? (Rupert, I appreciated your reading of the soil report. It is lovely to have someone doing the work for my lazy self.)
Really nice discussion. Perhaps there are farming areas wherever there are megalithic tombs or dolmens, for instance (as distinguished from isolated megalithic shrines like Stonehenge). The dolmens in France seem to pepper the Loire Valley and its tributaries; perhaps this indicates local intensive agricultural activity in support of such activity at the dates you are talking about. The Swiss lake Dwellers lived by agriculture, perhaps there is more evidence of sophisticated cultivation to be found in that setting, although you are here talking about even older evidence of cultivation. Still I think current discoveries about the Neolithic seem to support the notion of cultivation further back in time then we are led to believe. Any idea of the kind of cattle discovered? Were they wild cattle like aurochs at this early date or were they domesticated to some degree? Very telling that would be. If domesticated then by golly keep pushing back that date marking the initiation of widespread cultivation and husbandry. I do want to say that it seems unjust to not include Egypt in the discussion of firsts in the Neolithic; cultivation there must be very old indeed. Indeed Egypt, Anatolia, and the Middle East were not as affected by the ice as was (and is) Switzerland at the end of the last Ice Age, and so they got a leg up on more efficient and productive ways of farming and indeed other areas of cultural development over other areas burdened by cold weather or sea level rise, etc. On the other hand I also think that there is evidence that western France was part of a massive Neolithic Eastern Atlantic Seaboard trading network which included all areas from southern Spain and the Azores to Scandinavia and the Baltic coast. Also, the inhabitants of southern Anatolia I will point out were right at a critical overland juncture in the then even ancient trade in obsidian south into the Levant and the Fertile Crescent in turn benefiting from the trade back north in agricultural or other products going into Asia, Eastern Europe and ultimately Central Europe. Central Anatolia was the main source of obsidian for the entire Eastern Mediterranean for millennia and probably even extending back into the time of earlier species of the genus Homo. So consider that Gobekli Tepe was maybe a trading city. Scott Zema BA MA Art History and Architecture, UW , Seattle
I think you have to be right about Gobekli Tepe being a trading centre. But trading what for what? It can't be perishables that have to come (or go) long distances. Therefore a good deal of it must be local, and therefore - to be sustainable - it has to be agricultural.
@@kubhlaikhan2015Well, I guess that port or hub trading cities or trading centers don't necessarily need direct agriculture for their support, and it does look like game hunting was probably still a major means of economic activity, along with probably ancillary gardens, or gathering. BTW grain shipments do not require local production to be viable. But as trading centers these settlements in Anatolia like Gobekli Tepe could barter for goods of all types in every direction, selling back agricultural or other goods from Syria, for instance, to the obsidian producers in central Anatolia.Think London or New York City as examples. Still, you highlight a possible piece of an increasingly clear picture of Neolithic and Bronze Age society in Europe as being overall much more sophisticated than has been given credit for. Much more like our own societies than we give them credit for. And I think that the clues are legion.
you can get soils covered by rock falls so protecting the old soils but only when there is matterial to cover it....great show.....i live in bishops tachbrook, my m and d used to live in barn cottage 82 bridge end
2 young lads were told to push on the bar at the front of their father's new invention. He'd taken his wife's tool she used to make furrown to plant the grass seed and attached it to a cross bar. After a few hours of pushing this while dad dug the furrough behind snd mum got on with grinding seeds to make flour to make bread the 2 lads had had enough. Especially once one of them trod in a cow pat..... They looked at each other then looked at the fat bovine placidly chewing the cud..."Daaad " they saix. 'We've had an idea." Thus we got ploughs pulled by oxen.
Great find! Did they also find human footprints? I'm sure the cows and goats weren't plowing alone. Although it would be a great trick if the neolithic farmer just said, "Bessie, I need you to get that field plowed in the morning. I'll bring you some hay after your finished!" 🤣
Finding additional sites where the stratigraphy was preserved by silt is something that AI might be able to shine at. I wonder if you could ask Chet GPT to identify other locations with similar soil silting over the centuries occurred near historic farmland. Because if it's farmland now it might have been farmland back then. And then maybe you could have rogue nerds asking Farmers to do test pits.
You gentlemen have certainly cultivated this subject, but my question is, what happened to the first farmer who strapped an ard to an ouroc ? Nothing good, I am sure!
If they were using cattle to pull early plows at this time they also had access to using animals for transport purposes. Which probably started before the wheel was invented. Either via pack animals or by the use of travois to drag loads behind the animal. The first specialized transport vehicle IMO could well have been some type of sled. How old is the dog sled used in the Arctic? A sled might not move easily over bare ground over grass with a low enough ground pressure it might slide fairly easily. And as important as the wheel may have been later the more important elements of the system are the axles and bearings (1). A wheel that is unable to turn due to friction is for all intents and purposes useless. 1) Decent axles and bearings even if made of wood imply some sort of crude lathe.
The mention of Stonehenge raises the thought that the Amesbury Archer came from the Alpine areas so he would have known about using animals for traction. Is there evidence of animals being used in the construction of Stonehenge?
Greetings from Mindanao Philippines, where our field was ploughed by a carabao (Philippine Water Buffalo) earlier this year. Many people here still use animals for traction on their farms. Carabao and Brahman cattle are commonly used. Our field was fertilised with chicken dung. Essentially very similar to what the Neolithic farmers did. An excellent video!
Lads. You didn't lose any of us ( any worth keeping 😘) and you may have gained NEW members who loved your "durty talk "Michael.
Keep being informed, good craic and extra !
I love the realness and candor of their conversation. So refreshing in 2024 when half of the 'educational' content is either AI or someone just reading wikipedia articles.
I love seeing the host(s).....and these guys have such a warm inviting nature to them.
Thanks for continuing to put forth the effort that goes into these TH-cam snippets, interviews and whatnot.
Thanks guys. I'm 67 and have been interested in ancient history since I was a child. My family knows to buy me a history book for any occasion. It always amazes me just how smart our ancestors were. They used what they had and didn't quite understand why things worked but they persevered. I've learned the ancient technique of Nalbinding or needle binding that was used as far back as during the Egyptian period and found in the caves in the regions of Iraq and Iran. All they used was bone or antler needles and wool. I just found your channel today and have subscribed. I have been binge watching your videos. I'm looking forward towards your next one. Love the interchange between you two that you have.
Wow, so could the blue stones of Stonehenge have been hauled by oxen teams? Reevaluation might show evidence that has been overlooked. I enjoy your humor and sense of awe. Thank you!
But only over short distances. South of Isle of Wight a Middle Stone Age boat yard has been found I saw recently on yt.
With kelp lubrication.
They did a thousand years earlier in Malta. Carts with solid wheels at least 48" in diameter. Used also in Anatolia and other areas of the Mediterranean. And yet this was a thousand years before Khufu and STILL the Egyptians were supposed to be ignorant of the wheel even THEN.
I don’t see why not. If they had cows pulling plows, which they certainly did by the time of Stonehenge obviously they would have used them to pull the stones.
@@PeachysMom while they could have used oxen, water transport was used extensively right up to the modern era.
Maps of navigable rivers were the highways of the ancient world., particularly in Britain
I'm very sceptical about all dates for the start of farming - whether pastoral or agricultural. The species is at least 250 thousand years old and our most distant ancestors were no less intelligent (and far more in touch with their natural environment), why would they not know how to use both plants and animals to their advantage? Rather than assigning its "invention" to particular times and places what we are really seeing is adaptation to changing environmental conditions. If our methods were better we would detect evidence of farming older by orders of magnitude than what is currently claimed.
Certainly agree that while hard to prove it’s highly likely that use of early domesticated animals occurred some thousands of years earlier.
Always keep in mind that what archaeologists find is very little, in fact not enough to be 'evidence' of anything, only just enough to build theories on. I am happy with all they find, but I have my doubt about their conclusions...
Because the environments and the population mass wasnt sufficient enough. Only with the onset of farming did women evolve to be able to conceive another child while they already had another child on the teat and hunter gatherer societies feed their children from the teat until they are much older. Also imagine trying to plant crops with mammoths and woolly rhinos roaming the lands and trying to keep livestock with dire wolves, lions, cave bears and the like the world was a bloody tough place...
They domesticated dogs much earlier because they were useful for their lifestyle. To chose to settle down is a big change when there is plenty of food to hunt over the next hill. Early farmers did not have it easy. It is hard back breaking work, with no options to slack, you have to keep to that schedule or your crops fail and you starve. Most hunter gatherers have a 35 hour work week and if you don't like where you are you move on. Farmers were less healthy then hunter gatherers, smaller in build.
We know when certain crops were farmed based on the changes in genetics that humans caused. Before farming, the landscape was managed but not specifically cultivated. So we’re pretty sure when we started cultivating crops to plus or minus a thousand years. This is not to say they weren’t doing things other than cultivating much earlier, but that isn’t farming.
I’m not surprised, but I’m glad they found evidence. I believe there was farming several thousand years before this find. Yes the best ground has been tilled over thousands of times since virgin ground was broken. I think the best place to look for this evidence, is currently underwater in the Dogger land area. That had to be some of the most fertile, flat and easy to work farm land in all of Europe.
One point that cannot be ignored is, animals take thousands of years to domesticate. You don’t take giant, wild Orox and train him play nice right away. Keep his descendants pinned up for a few hundred years. When they depend upon you for their livelihood, they will work for food.
U can train any animal
@@jednmorf sure maybe, but his offspring will be just as wild as before. Domestication is a completely different process, taking many generations.
Much depends on the animal...we domestic infant skunks,racoons,squirrels marmot...wolves,foxes.....etc..why not the bovine types?
@highendservicesbarrieont8347 imprinting is the most important part of animal domestication. If an animal a dog, cow, bied whatever. If an animal thinks you are it's mother you own it,
I was initially sceptical about this idea because it seemed like no one knew what they were talking about, but later on. It was obvious that you were just paraphrasing for the sake of the audience and when I saw that picture of the soil profile at 12 minutes it was astonishing, it was most certainly A. Ploughed profile in depth. It was amazing to watch. I'm a PhD in soil science. So I know what I see and that was just clear as a nose on your face, it most certainly depicted a buried ploughed layer. It was so dark that obtaining organic matter for a date shouldn't have been a problem. I have no doubt that whatever date you have is within the ballpark. So extremely strong evidence for stone age tillage. Well done, and no- not boring.
Thanks @drfill9210, it's always a good thing to have confirmation from someone who understands what they are looking at:). R
@ThePrehistoryGuys there was no doubt in my mind by 12 minutes in... amusingly, the first 5 minutes made it look like no one with the correct expertise had done anything! It was in reality, no one's fault, just some unfortunate cobbling together of quotes... next time if you have a similar thing to present, perhaps lead with that labelled soil profile. Anyone who knows their stuff can infer the thrust of your argument from that... then you can say whatever you like and the soil guys will be happy as a pig in mud... anyway that's only a minor thing, well done!
Even today most of the calories and profit from wheat/winter grains is the extra late fall and early spring grazing plus the feed value of straw and chaff producing meat. To do this on a scale that is worth while would need animal traction.
I have a number of times grazed a field hard late summer 2 or 3 times each time leaving it shorter or even discing it while leaving the team in the field with some hay to keep nibbling the sod. Then just before a rain at the right time for fall planting sowed wheat or rye then put a herd of cattle and sheep in there during the rain and fed a little hay. This gives excellent germination of the grain.
In Australia this method of planting very large wheat fields is common as the winter dormancy of the native grass makes it easier.
These winter dormant grasses are very similar to the Asian grasses in the area where wheat is native as a wild plant.
Outstanding as always! Thanks for highlighting these findings.
Everything just keeps getting older and older. I love it!
Thanks!
Amazing. You are very kind - thank you 😊 M&R
My pleasure lads. Keep ploughing away at it so! You never know what will turn up when you keep digging into history. Un "till" next time, slán
...I'll just see myself out there. 🧚♂️@@ThePrehistoryGuys
Great story, well presented. My mind is full of images of a stone age ploughman yelling at his auroch to get a move on 😂
Love your updates! I feel that too often any evidence is considered the earliest possible use. Anything we can identify is likely an established practice and is reasonably widespread for us to even find evidence.
Yes, it’s a safe assumption, but scientifically you can’t prove that that the practice was in use any earlier than the age of the evidence you have found.
Hello Gentlemen, great to see you all.
Traction almost asks for the use of the oxen brothers. They indeed can get these big logs out of the clearance, and a sledge, if you want to do something with these big stones. Just my association/speculation.
Love the evidence of how scientists came to their conclusions. I may not be representative of the rest of your audience but it is this data that we don’t get elsewhere that endears me to your excellent and extremely informative program. Many thanks and please continue to bring us the details of the relevant research!
Love the video. It’s very common in archaeology for things like those petroglyphs to be overlooked. While trying to learn more on elephants in Mesopotamia, I could rarely find many artifacts throughout my research until I stumbled upon something in a museum! Keep up the great work!
Maybe this discovery has set a precedent and evidence of ancient ploughing will turn up in many places?
Hi guys! What have I been saying for YEARS! Cattle traction is the only reasonable explanation for megalithic monuments getting where they they are and easily explains the feats of strength displayed by the movement of such massive stones in prehistory!
What manner of cattle do you suppose to have lifted stones into place in Parque Arqueológico de San Agustín?
@@benjaminnickerson3961that was aliens, duh
Very interesting!!!
The soil analysis bit was fascinating (despite your apologies!). This level of analysis is essential for meaningfully understanding archaic agriculture and its development.
How exciting!
Good evening from the beautiful SF Bay Area. I came in late having had a busy day but am happy to have caught it now. Very interesting, I doubt if you lost anyone, Rupert! Keep on educating us with these videos and your very British humor. Love Y'all!
It's astonishing that the team was able to detect the *stages* of farming a particular tract through stratigraphy; from hoeing, to ploughing, to planting, to reaping.
Oh my, oh my, I love this new information !! Thank you !
Another show so quickly! Excellent news. Thanks chaps.
You guys are on the time team. Congrats!
Exciting discovery.
NEAT! 🤠🤠🤠🤠 Ancient Cowboys!!!
Thanks, Prehistory Guys that was fascinating..................... and to celebrate I will be having a Ploughman's Lunch👍👍
You guys are very interesting to listen to, very funny as well, and very chill.
I'm grateful for your work
Up in the mountains the soil get less disturbed somehow. Like up at my cabin there are trackmarks from tractors still visible on the ground more than 50 years after they where there.
hello gentlemen...great show
I love that level of detailed analytical discussion! I learned reading astrophysics that you don't need to understand all the words to follow the argument and learn something.
Very interesting and thought provoking - thanks 😄
👍 Thanks again guys loved the new evidence for the use of animals and ploughing 💪
As an avid, amateur gardener - not a very good one at that, alas - I am fascinated by various horticultural practices throughout the ages. The careful yet convoluted technical language in the research papers is highly interesting as well.
I knew a little about resting the soil between various crops, digging vs no digging, the microorganisms inherent in the soil, the numerous additions such as bones and ash - our ancestors were a canny lot for sure.
Thanks again for bringing new and very interesting information to light. I have a cousin who is a "Young Earther" who I'd love to share so many of your insights with, but he doesn't speak to me anymore... ... hahaha. Keep it up!
Don’t worry about the yoke of the algorithm, keep giving us your insights on these fascinating discoveries!
No need to thank me/us. Love the show. Love the topic and the your presentation.
Amazing research. Thanks very much for doing these videos. Astounded this evidence was preserved--and then discovered!
The area that was ploughed may have been chosen specifically because the stream flooded on an annual basis, bringing new nutrients, as is the case along the Nile delta. This could be a clue for where to look for more sites.
In the highlands of Armenia are also clearly advanced etchings of their civilization. Amazing how these advances were somehow erased when the civilization was decimated in the warfare that followed.
Fascinating presentation, many thanks, neither stuffy or dumbed down. I am wondering what your thoughts are, given the extreme rarity of the site and it's datability, how likely it is that this is the earliest date for cultivation in the area. I mean, it is very unlikely, but could the beginnings be say 500 or 1000 years earlier, given what is known about crop genetics? My other question is, could it be the development of animal drawn ploughs/ards that facilitated such cultivation? Might there have been human sown/cultivated crops grown on far smaller scales prior to that? So that cultivation was no new thing, but animal drawn devices brought it to a revolutionary level?
Peter Parker commented on research in Germany ( cattle bones- signs of wear) that cattle had clearly been used for pulling stuff about 2 years ago.He stated that quite possibly the Sarcen stones were moved in this manner.So this is not new news really.
You guys are funny 😂!! Enjoyable to watch 2 people who love their work. Any very smart!
I love the soil analysis. I started in school as an agriculture major though I ended up with a degree in graphic design.
Some current and past agriculture, growing plants, is by poking small holes in the garden area, dropping in the seed. When and why did the idea of turning or disrupting trenches of soil begin, use of ploughing . Already the notion of French Double Digging is out of favor, disrupting soil micseum and support. ALSO, cattle have been used in America in 1900s, or oxen, not just mules or horses.
THANK YOU for reading the Soil Analysis in your source paper. On BBC's Time Team, the soil analysis, as with the recent paper, is enormously informative. Excellent.
I like you funny charming guys. Lots of great analysis too, and I like analysis, too.
i love the nerdy analytical commentary. keep reading quotes from the research articles!!
These dates are highly suggestive of prior activity brought to a new location. For example how long before this was that part of Switzerland nothing but thick icesheet? How long after it receded before plant and animal life would recolonize and revitalize arid soils? It seems like an extremely short window before these traces were left making it extremely coincidental that these practices arise exactly then yet not everywhere else every time conditions would support the innovation.
In similar fashion to how barrows show up in Ireland through central Europe seemingly the instant the local ecosystem could've supported the influx of hunter gatherers or farmers displaced by rising seas. Incidentally it seems likely that such structures were as robust as they were primarily to weather the tremors that must've racked anywhere near the site of a former glacier for thousands of years after they melted, which may also explain why they mysteriously fell out of use at around the time those tremors would've ended; their cultural centers wouldn't need to be built like bunkers to stay standing at that point.
9:34 still here… how’d they figure that out , tho? That seems very specific. I like this channel. I don’t understand too much, but truly, I enjoy the presentation and banter.
Could they not date the charcoal?
Miss the fireworks and confetti Michael.
I beleive people were changing their environments to their advantage much earlier than assumed.
There is very good evidence that Native peoples in the Americas moved food plants closer to their living areas.
Aw crrrrap, *believe*, sorry!
Keep ploughing through prehistory guys...❤
So interesting!
Wow, it would mean they understood that charcoal a bones, perhaps a bit of meat still attached was fertiliser. Calcium and charcoal retains nutrients. I suspect long observation of nature. Lately a Canadian study called the mountain lion the gardeners of British-Colombia. The remains of carcasses brings nutrients to the soil. And impressive that they would have plough 5-4000 BC. Yet, it doesn't mean that they wouldn't still hunter and gatherers. Fishing didn't stopped because we started agriculture. Although they would have cultivated plants that would not have been original to the land such as wheat or barley. And it brings us back to beer, the beverage that created civilisation. Rich, nutritive beverage, bacteria free, could be store for a certain period of time and improved flavour with herbs and berries. Could beer be a first anesthetics, or at least pain relieving elixir?
I love your channel ❤️
Could this site not be then, the place where the original Plowman's Lunch was conceived, given the area became famous for it's Cheeses, or do you see too many holes in that theory? Wonderer.
Do they have a priory in Sion?
So are these aurox doing the plowing hauling, or are these domesticated cattle genetically different from aurox?
Yay, a random thumbs up in the video!
Reading the article from Nature, I came across this line describing the site: "alternating human occupation levels and alluvial deposits some ten meters thick," and... oof. It all just clicked, between that and what you said about why we don't find these in other places because the conditions don't preserve or they've been plowed again later. This planting season ended REAL bad. This harvest was never brought in. The record was saved for us, and has advanced our understanding of early livestock in agriculture, but I sure hope there were other fields on higher ground that are absolutely nonexistent as archaeological sites because they were out of the path of mudslides and remained arable land for ages.
In the Aosta Valley (italy) archeologists had found in 1969 the same things. We had dated this in the late V millennium A.C.
The site was maded for cerimonials events, we founded rituals ploughings.
(Sorry for my bad english!)
Thank you lads!
Re the comments on Stone Hedge: I think that the stone were transported by ice and packed snow & also damming up rivers and creeks
Could you possibly get an few extra "like" buttons so I can like you even more? (Rupert, I appreciated your reading of the soil report. It is lovely to have someone doing the work for my lazy self.)
No,no,no talking about the soil levels and what they contain, that level of archaeological research is WHY we tune in. No loss of audience here sir.
I come for the history, I stay for the camaraderie.
How was agriculture and farming separated ?
Goats have been used in with a tiller to weed a field. Being smaller than cattle they would not trample the crops while doing this.
It looks like a Banksy to me. But Where's the supermarket trolley?
Mr Bott are you related to the Midland Botts as one of my English relatives is a Pamela Bott
Really nice discussion. Perhaps there are farming areas wherever there are megalithic tombs or dolmens, for instance (as distinguished from isolated megalithic shrines like Stonehenge). The dolmens in France seem to pepper the Loire Valley and its tributaries; perhaps this indicates local intensive agricultural activity in support of such activity at the dates you are talking about. The Swiss lake Dwellers lived by agriculture, perhaps there is more evidence of sophisticated cultivation to be found in that setting, although you are here talking about even older evidence of cultivation. Still I think current discoveries about the Neolithic seem to support the notion of cultivation further back in time then we are led to believe.
Any idea of the kind of cattle discovered? Were they wild cattle like aurochs at this early date or were they domesticated to some degree? Very telling that would be. If domesticated then by golly keep pushing back that date marking the initiation of widespread cultivation and husbandry. I do want to say that it seems unjust to not include Egypt in the discussion of firsts in the Neolithic; cultivation there must be very old indeed. Indeed Egypt, Anatolia, and the Middle East were not as affected by the ice as was (and is) Switzerland at the end of the last Ice Age, and so they got a leg up on more efficient and productive ways of farming and indeed other areas of cultural development over other areas burdened by cold weather or sea level rise, etc.
On the other hand I also think that there is evidence that western France was part of a massive Neolithic Eastern Atlantic Seaboard trading network which included all areas from southern Spain and the Azores to Scandinavia and the Baltic coast. Also, the inhabitants of southern Anatolia I will point out were right at a critical overland juncture in the then even ancient trade in obsidian south into the Levant and the Fertile Crescent in turn benefiting from the trade back north in agricultural or other products going into Asia, Eastern Europe and ultimately Central Europe. Central Anatolia was the main source of obsidian for the entire Eastern Mediterranean for millennia and probably even extending back into the time of earlier species of the genus Homo. So consider that Gobekli Tepe was maybe a trading city. Scott Zema BA MA Art History and Architecture, UW , Seattle
I think you have to be right about Gobekli Tepe being a trading centre. But trading what for what? It can't be perishables that have to come (or go) long distances. Therefore a good deal of it must be local, and therefore - to be sustainable - it has to be agricultural.
@@kubhlaikhan2015Well, I guess that port or hub trading cities or trading centers don't necessarily need direct agriculture for their support, and it does look like game hunting was probably still a major means of economic activity, along with probably ancillary gardens, or gathering. BTW grain shipments do not require local production to be viable.
But as trading centers these settlements in Anatolia like Gobekli Tepe could barter for goods of all types in every direction, selling back agricultural or other goods from Syria, for instance, to the obsidian producers in central Anatolia.Think London or New York City as examples.
Still, you highlight a possible piece of an increasingly clear picture of Neolithic and Bronze Age society in Europe as being overall much more sophisticated than has been given credit for. Much more like our own societies than we give them credit for. And I think that the clues are legion.
18 minutes!?! Just getting started in my mind! I’d do an hour of talk on this, come on! I’m waiting! 😆👊😎 very interesting thank you 🙏
you can get soils covered by rock falls so protecting the old soils but only when there is matterial to cover it....great show.....i live in bishops tachbrook, my m and d used to live in barn cottage 82 bridge end
2 young lads were told to push on the bar at the front of their father's new invention. He'd taken his wife's tool she used to make furrown to plant the grass seed and attached it to a cross bar.
After a few hours of pushing this while dad dug the furrough behind snd mum got on with grinding seeds to make flour to make bread the 2 lads had had enough. Especially once one of them trod in a cow pat.....
They looked at each other then looked at the fat bovine placidly chewing the cud..."Daaad " they saix. 'We've had an idea."
Thus we got ploughs pulled by oxen.
Great find! Did they also find human footprints? I'm sure the cows and goats weren't plowing alone. Although it would be a great trick if the neolithic farmer just said, "Bessie, I need you to get that field plowed in the morning. I'll bring you some hay after your finished!" 🤣
Finding additional sites where the stratigraphy was preserved by silt is something that AI might be able to shine at. I wonder if you could ask Chet GPT to identify other locations with similar soil silting over the centuries occurred near historic farmland. Because if it's farmland now it might have been farmland back then. And then maybe you could have rogue nerds asking Farmers to do test pits.
Love that "... quickly Rupert before they all go away" 😅. C'mon we're waiting for news back thousands of years, no panic 😂
There is pictographs in America of Wooly mammoth harnessed up pulling a huge stone. Nobody has deciphered it but me. Once you see it you know.
You gentlemen have certainly cultivated this subject, but my question is, what happened to the first farmer who strapped an ard to an ouroc ? Nothing good, I am sure!
Love that we're all needs here.
I feel like our ancestors are always getting underestimated in their abilities.
The two west country sites identified with ancient ploughing are both listed as Avebury South Street Long Barrow (Ashbee et al 1979)
The Smashey and Nicey of archaeology! 🤣🤣
Not going to be able to concentrate on the rest of the show. lol
Is it bad that I can tell exactly which one of you is Smashy and which one's Nicey?
Nah-we’re here ❤
Question for you guys. Do you two have formal training in this or do you just do it for fun? Whichever, you two are fun, informative, and factual.
"Prehistoric Ploughing" sounds dirty. Literally.
As well as figuratively!
Sowing the sacred seeds of love
Anais Nin meets the Prehistory Guys!
If they were using cattle to pull early plows at this time they also had access to using animals for transport purposes. Which probably started before the wheel was invented. Either via pack animals or by the use of travois to drag loads behind the animal. The first specialized transport vehicle IMO could well have been some type of sled. How old is the dog sled used in the Arctic? A sled might not move easily over bare ground over grass with a low enough ground pressure it might slide fairly easily. And as important as the wheel may have been later the more important elements of the system are the axles and bearings (1). A wheel that is unable to turn due to friction is for all intents and purposes useless.
1) Decent axles and bearings even if made of wood imply some sort of crude lathe.
Neo-Michelangelo in Brescia?? A new destinazione on my travel list!!
Did you figure out how to turn off the gestures ? Settings/Preferences… ❤😂🎉
The mention of Stonehenge raises the thought that the Amesbury Archer came from the Alpine areas so he would have known about using animals for traction. Is there evidence of animals being used in the construction of Stonehenge?
Rather: is there evidence that animal traction was unknown to the local farmers.
*does happy dance* new vid from wonderful men.
I imagine early crop farming was stop, plow and plant. Move on to summer pastures. Return, harvest and feast.
In fact that looks like 2 horses in a team, one on either side of the pole they pull the plough by.
Maybe you are looking at the work hi of an engineer of the time. Perhaps he was designing it on the cave wall.
Love your work.
We humans are quite smart. How do I do this faster so I can plant sooner? Very short growing season. Mmm maybe the animal can help?