ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
AP World History 4.4 Technological and Environmental Transformations, to c. 600 B.C.E. 55 Views
Share It!
Description:
AP World History 4.4 Technological and Environmental Transformations, to c. 600 B.C.E. Which of the following is an advantage that Bronze-age plow agriculture had over slash-and-burn?
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak And here's your shmoop douceur brought
- 00:05
to you by the bronze age farmers association They won't
- 00:10
let anything tarnish their name All right let's check out
- 00:15
our question Which of the following is an advantage that
- 00:17
bronze age plow agriculture had over slash and burn And
Full Transcript
- 00:22
here a potential answers Well let's start with answer a
- 00:27
Have you ever done a ton of squats in gym
- 00:29
class or even moved a bunch of heavy boxes Now
- 00:33
imagine doing both of those at once outside in the
- 00:35
blistering sun all day long If anything human powered plow
- 00:40
agriculture was far more labor intensive than slash and burn
- 00:43
agriculture The more labor intensive the work the more time
- 00:47
it takes because efficiency was not an advantage The flower
- 00:50
head over the slash and burn we can root out
- 00:53
eh How about being all right Well before the bronze
- 00:56
age the tools of a farmer's trade were simple Digging
- 00:58
sticks and host these tools were lightweight easy to transport
- 01:02
and very useful when you had to move on after
- 01:05
a few years of burning your fields around Wow agriculture
- 01:09
required some pretty fancy Not mentioned heavy equipment Even the
- 01:13
plows in good shape would have required physical resource is
- 01:16
like metal Well making sure people learned a plow correctly
- 01:19
was required on the job training the actual plowing would
- 01:22
have required manpower Well all in all that's a lot
- 01:25
of resource is more than is required for the age
- 01:28
old slash and burn So we can act be well
- 01:31
let's take a swing it deep The biggest problem with
- 01:33
the slash and burn agricultural approach was that land became
- 01:36
unusable after about five or so years as the soil
- 01:39
gradually lost more and more nutrients So it's true that
- 01:42
plow agriculture allowed for greater yields in the long run
- 01:46
But did it actually make agricultural expansion easier Well we've
- 01:50
talked about how clough agriculture was a heck of a
- 01:52
lot of work and how the fancy equipment tended away
- 01:55
like a ton and a half Both these factors suggest
- 01:58
that agricultural expansion was made of harder because of plow
- 02:01
agriculture anyway Concave d the old heave ho How about
- 02:05
see wow agriculture was kind of a commitment Sure it
- 02:09
took a lot of time Hardwork and variety of resource
- 02:11
is but it made staying in one place and options
- 02:14
not having to move every time you finish eating everything
- 02:17
in your fridge means you can probably get a bit
- 02:19
more done Uh things like building a large permanent settlement
- 02:24
And one of the main advantage is was the soil
- 02:26
remained nutrient rich so fields could be reused indefinitely So
- 02:31
it looks like answer She is correct and looks like
- 02:33
we've plowed right through that question All right we'll see 00:02:37.683 --> [endTime] ourselves out
Up Next
Related Videos
Home to the biggest river, the biggest desert, and some of the biggest land animals in the world, Africa is so much more than what most media would...
Didn't get enough of the French Revolution the first time around? We've gotcha covered. Check out our second French Revolution video, preferably wi...
Famine is one of the biggest problems in Africa. Find out why it's such a complex problem, and what's being done to combat it.