A History of Agriculture in India v1.c20.4

v1.c20.4

There is a close link of vegetation, animals, and man. Domesticated animals provide man with food in the shape of meat and milk and power. Their power value was probably more important than their food value, and the degree of development of an ancient civilization is closely related to the relative efficiency of the domesticated animals available in the country concerned. The Red Indians of North America and the aborigines of Australia had no other animal available to them than the dog, and hence they remained in a primitive hunting stage for centuries when others had gone far ahead. The Indians of Mexico, Central America, Peru and Bolivia domesticated the llama and alpaca for transport and developed a much higher type of civilization, the Maya culture, as compared with their kinsmen in North America. However, there were no draught animals in the Americas, and their agriculture was ploughless. They depended upon the use of spades and digging sticks for the cultivation of crops. Bullocks, asses, elephants, horses and camels are more efficient than llamas and alpacas and hence the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indian civilizations were far ahead of the Meso-American civilization. Bullocks, buffaloes, asses, elephants, horses, goats, sheep, and camels have played a great role in the development of civilization in early stages. They provided animal power which supplemented the human muscle power, thus relieving man of drudgery, and providing him with surplus food, on account of which a leisure class arose which could think of higher things.