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Actually RUNNING a farm has never been considered "prestigious." But OWNING one often has been. "Farming" is connected with manual labor, sweat, etc. As such, it is not what social economists like Thorstein Veblen would consider "honorific." On the other hand, to be an owner is to be member of the landed gentry, and a member of the establishment. Farming ...

These did not have indigenous alcoholic beverages, aiming to be as exhaustive as possible: Inuit (called "Eskimos" in Hornsey "Alcohol and Its Role in the Evolution of Human Society", p. 1) peoples of Tierra del Fuego (South America) (ibid) Australia (ibid) most of the natives of the North America (ibid) including Navajo (Hornsey, p. 554) including Hopi ...

It may be different in different locations but it usually comes down to what Tom mentioned as the manual labor, those who work with their hands or outside do tend to lose some level of prestige in many cultures. In Europe in the Middle Ages if you worked outside you were of the lower classes, giving rise to the idea that tanned skin was a mark of those who ...

According to Cacao domestication I: the origin of the cacao cultivated by the Mayas, genetic evidence indicates that the cacao tree was cultivated from wild ancestors and improved over time. Mayans were pretty good at agriculture, beyond the slash and burn methods that were used by many other tribes in the Americas during the same time period. From Maya ...

The big difference is geographic diversity. Wheat doesn't do very well in the tropics. Rice requires tropical and semi-tropical areas where lots and lots of water are available. However, corn can be grown nearly anywhere. Corn kind of had a tough row to hoe (pardon the pun) in the Americas. It was first domesticated from the grass Tseosine in tropical areas ...

Depends where you live. If you are near the equator then it's warm and sunny all year round and any crops you can grow will grow whenever you plant them and you harvest them when they are ready. As you go slightly further north you have distinct periods when it will be too cold to too wet to plant and you need to know when these arrive. This doesn't need a ...

in the current historical view has the onset of agriculture stimulate permanent settlements, and food surplus and storage allow the onset of specialized "careers" (including priests) This is incorrect. Permanent settlements and specialized societies require large food surpluses. This is generally produced by agriculture, but can also (in rare cases) be ...

What is known: Buckwheat's yield strongly depends on pollination by insects. Although it is not universally applicable, in eastern North America, honey bee seems to be the main and the most effective pollinator of buckwheat. honey bee was not native to Americas, being first bought there from Europe in early 1600s Sadly, I have no direct historical ...

Corn is the most versatile of crops. Rice needs a nearly tropical climate in which to grow, and also lots of water for paddies. These conditions are present mostly in Southeast Asia. Wheat is a northern crop that does better in dry land. It grows best in Kansas, and areas to the north, and areas to the west of that state. Corn can be grown in ...

Farming lost it's prestige in prehistory with the growth of organized warfare. Organized farming began many thousand years before Christ in the fertile soils at the estuaries of mountain run offs and in the flood plain of rivers. Most such communities were initially organized into small scale villages with communal farming and later developed into city ...

One of the theories of how agriculture was invented (the most popular today, at least among archaeologists) say that the people of natufian culture grew to too big numbers during a period of good climate (younger dryas; Anubhav already explained that it's possible to get such food surplus by hunting with plenty of game) and they needed to survive while the ...

The tools used were primarily the standard scythe and plow which had been around for centuries. There were some improvements, such as the mouldboard plough. These tools were made by local craftsmen. The tools were generally either purchased by the landowner or they were crafted by someone in the employ (or servitude) of the landowner. Smaller landowners ...

I've heard before that the reason that many Native Americans are alcoholics is because they didn't have alcoholic beverages, and thus they didn't build up a resistance to it. I don't know how true that is. As for people not knowing anything about alcohol, there was this one instance in New Guinea during WWII where a C-47 crashed into an unkown valley, ...

Wheat and rice are food that humans eat but humans also eat chicken, pork, beef, turkey, eggs, cheese, milk and many other animal products. So what do you think animals in cages and feedlots eat? Corn and more corn. Animals like cattle eat the whole corn plant. Also, the yield of corn plants is much higher and has more nutrients than wheat and rice.

"The grass family is one of the most widely distributed and abundant groups of plants on Earth. Grasses are found on every continent, and are absent only from central Greenland and much of Antarctica" Wikipedia page It seems unlikely that grass seed would ever have been really all the prized given it's natural abundance basically everywhere. Grass also ...

The chief impact on the ratio of agricultural workers to workers in all other industries has been the dramatic growth of workers in other sectors. Agricultural workers have increased in number at times, particularly with the proletarianisation of peasants, petits-bourgeois, and lumpen-proletarians in the development of modernity. The "total workforce" has ...

Generally there is a large decrease in the number of people working in agriculture in the last couple of centuries as mechanisation increased. You can't really increase the number of farmers, there is a limited amount of land and it's difficult (without an invading army) to remove farmers from the land. Generally in times of economic downturn farms have ...

In the 19th-20th centuries an industrial worker in a city (not to say a person of intellectual labor) could earn much greater money than an agricultural worker. This was a major driver behind rapid urbanization. It should be noted also that technological innovations spread to the rural areas much slower than inside cities, thus making the farmers to look ...