Cattle, horses, dogs, goats, and sheep were tamed in Europe and Asia at a period too distant for calculation. In what is known as the Age of Solutre in France, remote in the Quaternary epoch, the remains of horses are exceedingly numerous, the bones of at least twenty thousand having been discovered at the station of that name, all of whom had been arti ficially dismembered and evidently slain for food. This has led archeolo gists to the belief that they were tamed at that time. The kitchen-mid dens of Denmark disclose the remains of no domestic animals but dogs. The old coast-dwellers probably raised them for the purpose of eating rather than hunting, as did the American Indians. But the relics of the pile dwellings on the Swiss lakes and on the plains of the river Po contain abundant bones of all the other species of the above-named animals.
Swine are not mentioned in the Avesta or the Vedas ; therefore it is not likely that they were familiar to the Aryans of the earliest times ; but in the Homeric poems they are frequently referred to; in Egypt they were tamed in the first dynasties ; and the Mosaic prohibition in reference to their flesh indicates that they had at that date long been an article of food in common use. They constituted the main flesh-diet of ancient Italy, and in different varieties have been and are extensively bred by the Mon golian and Malayan nations.
Bees and fowls are of much later introduction. The honey with which the old Gelinans fermented their mead was collected from wild swarms ; but the natives of Yucatan had learned to gather the swarms at the proper time and place them in hives. The honey and the wax from these domesti cated bees were among the leading articles of commerce of these nations.
Influence of influence which the cultivation of products for food exerted on the national life was most profound. Except among the nomads of the Steppes, it promoted a settled disposition, the permanence of houses, the habits of regulated labor and of foresight, and the preference of peace to war, government to anarchy. By removing man from the necessities of the constant conflict of the chase and its pre carious results, he was led to rely on the fixed order of nature, to take advantage of it, and to note seasons and their changes. It allowed the congregation of large communities, and ensured the leisure which was necessary to higher intellectual cultivation.
The tenure of arable land led to methods for its mensuration and regulations for its ownership and transmission. Undoubtedly, the first problems of geometry were solved for the purpose of guarding the rights of cultivators. The period when each adult, or perhaps only each woman, was obliged to labor in the fields soon passed, and captives were employed as field-hands or persons for hire. In Mexico and Central America many who reaped the benefit of their agriculture operated entirely through gangs of slaves and hired laborers. The patriarchal habits recorded in the Pentateuch and the pictures on Egyptian tombs prove that four or five thousand years ago the gradation of classes was firmly established in agricultural communities.
No doubt at first only the most fertile spots were selected for cultiva tion, and others chosen when these showed signs of exhaustion, as is still the case with the improvident farmers of new countries. But the advan tages of fertilizing and dampening the soil from time to time were not long in receiving recognition. The enormous works constructed for irri
gation in very ancient times in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates and by the Incas of Peru have no equals in modern times. They testify an appreciation of agricultural interests, and an intelligence in fostering them, which we are unaccustomed to witness in governments now-a days.
The third method of obtaining the food-supply we have stated to be, By EXCHANGE AND COMMERCE.
Long before the time when Jacob sent his sons into Egypt to buy corn the purchase and sale of food had been a recognized branch of human industry. It required no protracted observation to discover that the hun gry man or community will part with his or their choicest treasures to satisfy the demands of the appetite.
Arts Necessary to carry out this industry many arts must be developed. Not only a surplus of food must be raised, but it must be preserved from decay, means of storing it must be devised, and its transportation to a considerable distance must be provided for. On the other hand, the purchasers must be prepared with desirable objects to offer in exchange for food. Residents in infertile districts are forced to develop what resources they have, to delve valued metals or stones from the mountains, to collect shells and amber from the seashore, or to create manufactures which will enable them to obtain by exchange the suste nance which their own acreage refuses them.
Influence on Social Life.—A developed and permanent system of pro curing food by exchange permits men to gather together by millions in great cities, where all are dependent on the distant agriculturist, thou sands of miles away perhaps, for their daily bread. Vast masses of men are born and die in such centres who would not know a field of wheat were they to see it. But their time is employed not less usefully than that of the farmer, following as they do one or another of those multifarious vocations demanded by the complicated existence of modern society. The great standing armies of modern times have only been possible by the increased facilities of transporting food—a relation well understood by the military sagacity of the ancient Romans, who extended their admirable system of road-making to the farthest limits of the empire. The impetus given to the growth of cities in the present century is directly attributable to the successful application of steam to the trans portation of food. When in New York fresh beef is sold which was slaughtered a thousand miles away, the food-supply seems to have reached a maximum of perfection.
The ordinary dinner-table offers articles of food from every zone and all continents, the cultivation, preparation, and transportation of which have required the development of an extraordinary number of arts, sciences, and mechanical inventions, the underlying stimulus of all being to satisfy the appetite.
This system of obtaining food has worked a most desirable improve ment in human history in one direction ; and that is, in checking the appearance of those destructive famines which in former ages periodically scourged the world. At present no such widespread misery could occur, as in all years the average crop of the world will support its population, and the present facilities for its distribution would permit no permanent want to continue.