writes
>> If someone in Glorantha were to discover a way to grow a tricky
>crop, I'd
>> grant long odds that they'd think of "kill a criminal and pour his
>blood
>> over the altar of the Great Corn Mother" long before they'd think
>of "grow
>> beans every second year".
>>
>Since it might be digest material, I'll try to keep my answer brief.
>I'm not an expert, but I believe that crop rotation of some degree was
>practiced by many ancient agriculturists. It doesn't take a genius to
>notice that when you clear a new field you get a great crop the first
>year, but that it tails off after that. Without knowing the details,
>you may conclude that you should not grow that crop in the same place
>each year. Later on you may notice that when you bring it back, it
>does better in the places where you grow this rather than that.
>
>While Glorantha is very mystical, for most people magic isn't a big
>enough influence in every day life to rely on it to fix normal
>problems, so I think many gloranthans probably still have a practical
>bent.
Though the likely reaction to anything weird is to sacrifice to the
ancestors, wyter or favourite deity and ask how this problem might be
averted.
Somehow, blood sacrifice seems a more likely answer than the pursuit of
science.
--
Kevin Blackburn Kevin_at_...