The Early Development of Agriculture in Britain

The discovery of agriculture marks the greatest advance in the history of mankind— comparable only to that which has followed the discovery of electricity and the invention of steam and internal combustion engines. It is now well recognised that without agriculture man was a food-gatherer, dependent on nature's supplies in hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants, whereas with agriculture he has become a food -producer, able to augment nature's fitful supply in both animal and vegetable kingdoms.In modern speech the term ‘agriculture’ is often used to cover stock-raising as well as corn-growing; in the present paper, however, it will be used in its literal sense of the tilling of fields, and more particularly the cultivation of corn. This art appears to have been developed before that of stock-raising, and though both the cultivation of corn and the domestication of certain animals are among the elements that led to the first rise of civilization in the Near East, yet there may have existed at first a certain antipathy between the nomad herdsman and the settled farmer. This line of cleavage is well exemplified in the story of Cain and Abel, and the continuation of the story shows very well how it was the settled farmers, represented by Cain's descendants, who built the first cities and developed the working of metal and the arts of music, while the herdsman remained nomadic.