Plows and Populations - from James Burke's Connections

The video above is the first eight minutes of the first programme in the the first series. The full video is here.

"It stopped raining, and got very hot. The result of that change in the weather was to lead to an invention that would trigger the development of a civilisation that ends up in the modern world. Let me explain that. The high grasslands started to dry out, they became like this place, and the plants and animals that had sustained the wandering tribes started to disappear. People began to die. There was only one thing the survivors could do - head for water. And so down they came into the great river valley. Here in Egypt that river was the Nile. And the Nile was an extraordinary river. It rose from two places. From one it brought rotting vegetation and from the other potash, and any gardener will tell you what that means. When it flooded every year, it dumped compost and fertiliser onto the land, and the land bloomed. Too well. With easy food the population grew to where not even the Nile could support it without help. Faced with starvation, the river dwellers tried planting grain by hand. Not enough. What solved their problem was an invention that triggered off a series of events which ends with us in our modern technology trap."

Burra Maluca : Thanks for posting this, there are three separate series totaling 30 episodes , after you reminded me again of this wonderful series I tried to find a link
to his later site, which was supposed to be much the same, but with more of a learning experience I regret to report that I could not find a thing, his latest not for profit
seems to have gone down a similar Rabbit hole to the one that Aprovecho fell into !

BUT, Make magazine has reported that the good people at adafruit industries who what to sell you parts and kit for your Robot have the whole series on file, as well as
hunting up bits and bobs in the great waste land of You-tube ! adafruit also has some good tutorials I THINK hope full y I will post this to sites and someone will
see it ? There - adafruit.com ! Blogs Forums support tutorials chat videos and contacts

Here is a link to all 30 episodes: James Burke: Connections

It's amazing to think that 12,000 years ago humans discovered plowing in four seperate areas of the globe . It then took 12,000 years for no-plow methods to be discovered seperately in at least three areas of the globe . Humans sure like to do things the hard way .