Look at this article.
http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and-technology/2017/04/prehistoric-alpine-farming-began-thousands-of-year-earlier-than-previously-believed-2882859.html
The article has a couple of good pictures of 19th century swiss pictures of what I call 'junk pole, leaning fences' (not the standard name, I know, but it's the one that sticks in my head). I've seen several modern examples in the permies fences threads.
What the article indicates is that they were building similar fences in the swiss alps circa 5,000 bc. although the examples of
fence parts (braided rings for binding
fence posts together) date only from the bronze age.
One of the things I love about
permaculture is that is mostly "proven technology", and by proven I mean hundreds, and often thousands of years of use to reveal any problems. Every 'newest and best' innovation generally eventually is found to either have flaws or produce unforseen problems. For the most part, these eventually become obvious, but only after the victims (oops, I mean users) become victim to the problems, and eventually solutions are found or the innovation is abandoned). Much of what has been going on for the last several decades (both socialogical and technological) is now being 'field tested' on millions of users (and often victims).
All that being said, it is comforting to me to know that much of what I'm learning on these threads and other places about
permaculture have already been through the 'field testing' phase and are only needing
local fine tuning for my particular situation.
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