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AP World History 4.4 Technological and Environmental Transformations, to c. 600 B.C.E. 55 Views


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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?

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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

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

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