> "BEThexton" <bethexton_at_...> writes:
>
> >I'm not an expert, but I believe that crop rotation of some degree
> >was practiced by many ancient agriculturists.
>
> My understanding is that early crop rotation involved leaving the
> fields fallow for a year or two. That was certainly the classic
> mediaeval English pattern - three fields: wheat or barley in one, peas
> or beans in another, nothing in the third, and rotate the crops around
> by one each year.
>
> The modern innovation was learning *why* rotation worked, and that you
> didn't need to leave a field fallow if you grew a nitrogen-fixing
> legume crop there every so often.
Just to interject a note...
While the use of legumes in a 3-field rotation system is (in the West- I do not know about Asia) a medieval invention (usually seen as one of the markers of the transition to the High Middle Ages), simply leaving some land fallow has been a common agricultural practice as far back as ancient Mesopotamia.
In my game, nitrogen-fixing doesn't work- its mythology and not chemistry. Hence, maize only grows if you perform the blood rituals- and barley only grows if you perform the proper rituals. Without the ritual context, planting a seed is a meaningless act and won't do anything unless some local fertility spirit takes pity on your ignorant head.
Gerald
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