Fertile Crescent history of agriculture is bullshit

I've decided - without going back to my books to confirm any of the things I think I know, and of course I am willing to undecide - that Hugelkultur is the story behind the worldwide unexplained "pre-history" (a sillier phrase is hard to find) mounds all over the place. The Fertile Crescent area invention or discovery of agriculture discussed in endless college texts and beloved by all is actually the perversion of healthy, sustainable agriculture as represented by Hugelkultur and the like.

Welcome to Permies, Julie!

You may be on to something. Here is an erudite Australian academic explaining his thinking on the subject, which is more in-depth than the usual story of the "Fertile Crescent":



I know it's over an hour, but I thought it was well worth watching.

Julie Rock : If we wanted to know something about the condition of the soils in the Fertile Crescent at the point where Hunter-Gatherers became Farmers our look backward machine
would take us to sections of virgin prairie that still exist in places on our Great American Plains ! Here the Humus layers of the soil are often a foot or more deep and the rich black
'Top Soil' goes down for several feet ! This is due to Tens if not Hundreds of Millennials of generations of grass plants . Then came the humans - and goats ! today much of the old
Fertile Crescent is bare rock and dead soils.

Our present day work with Hugelculture mounds is merely an attempt to approximate within a short while what natural grasslands took Ages to transform themselves into ! Having
had personal experience with old beaver Dams, I can report that this Hugelculture like structure if left in place long enough 20 +yrs, will producesome of the richest Black top soil I
have ever worked with !

Hunter-Gatherers used local conditions to transform themselves into farmers in many different places on the planet, there were many nearly simultaneous eruptions of Farming
Communities in many places on the planet, nearly all growing locally evolved grasses with 'heads of Grain'.

White Western Europeans often attempted to control the local populations by controlling or destroying locally harvested native grains and animals. Two often mentioned examples
are mostly successful attempts to prevent and or interfere with local harvest and storage of Amaranth in "Old Mexico'' and of course the wholesale killing of the American Bison or
Buffalowithin the borders of our own country ! Of Course this is just my personal opinion, and you are welcome to your opinion too ! For the good of the Crafts ! BIG AL

For an interesting perspective about the history of civilization revolving around the treatment and condition of the soil check out this book Soil and Civilization

The author tells the story of a lot of major civilizations and explains how their rise and falls were directly related to soil fertility. A worthwhile read if you are interested in the topic.

I Think I was probably channeling Guns, Germs and Steel by Prof Jarad Diamond. This book was faithfully documented in a video with the same name By Nat. Geo. and available
with other interesting J.Diamond Videos on U-Tube !

Note that a lot of attention was payed to a famous Climate Shift 13,000 to 12,000 yrs ago, though it is a little lite on MANs effect via Distructive Faming/land use and the concurrent
Animal Husbandry practices of the time !

A good Permaculturist watching these videos will say '' BUT, they should have done This Next ! "

Again while I generally offer a word of warning about all things U-Tube there are several good videos available by searching " Guns, Germs, and Steel on U-Tube ! Big AL