Acorns

May 13, 2009 10:06

I love it when people who know nothing about growing plants try to discuss growing plants.

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polyfrog May 13 2009, 17:03:03 UTC
Maybe we haven't farmed acorns because they grow on very slow-growing plants that take many years to bear fruit, they are moderately nutrition-dense, but not so much better than things that a re easier to grow, and they are also not very tasty compared to those easier to grow things.

And because we are not technologically advanced enough yet to grow and harvest something that grows and fruits just like a pecan...er...wait...

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atlanticat May 13 2009, 19:02:14 UTC
The 20-to-50-year-fruiting-potential of an oak should certainly not be discounted, particularly when the oak may die at any point within that time period.

Pecans, on the other paw....

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grahamwest May 13 2009, 17:54:52 UTC
Farming with draft animals allows greater food production per person, given the same climate and availability of seeds. People grew food long before domestication but populations got bigger afterward.

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atlanticat May 13 2009, 18:25:17 UTC
It allows for the potential of greater food production per person. It makes the necessary work easier and of shorter duration, allowing more work to be done on more land in less time.

Similarly, a crane makes the work of moving heavy blocks easier and of shorter duration, allowing more work to be done with more blocks in less time.

Oddly, the Aztecs managed to both have a significantly large civilization and also to build large pyramids without keeping either draft animals or cranes.

Of course you can argue that they don't exist as a great power any more, but then neither do the Egyptians, who most certainly had the former if not the latter.

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grahamwest May 14 2009, 01:00:43 UTC
They certainly did develop a great civilisation without draft animals and with pretty lousy crops available to them in terms of nutritional density.

However it took them about five thousand years longer to do it and it was rather more precarious than the civilisations that came out of the fertile crescent, for example.

You should read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's a very cool book that looks into the relative dynamism of civilisations and how they become winners or losers.

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