What Happened to Fertile Lands of EB Time?

[Shatov]

Noticed something when playing as Bactria; a lot of my provinces had super-fertile land. While I expected this in Sind, and maybe near the Ox and other rivers, but generally when I think about modern Uzbekistan or Afganistan I don't think about lush, super-productive farms. Same goes for Sicily, Iraq, Egypt and eastern Spain.

Now, what all these areas have in common is that all these areas have supported agricultural populations for 4000+ years, while the two most fertile areas of the world (the Ukraine and the Mid West) supported pastoralists or primitive farmer populations until about 200 years ago.

I'm guessing this isn't a coincidence. Does supporting large agricultural populations over the long run ruin the fertility of a land, possibly the entire ecosystem?

[artavazd]

Noticed something when playing as Bactria; a lot of my provinces had super-fertile land. While I expected this in Sind, and maybe near the Ox and other rivers, but generally when I think about modern Uzbekistan or Afganistan I don't think about lush, super-productive farms. Same goes for Sicily, Iraq, Egypt and eastern Spain.

Now, what all these areas have in common is that all these areas have supported agricultural populations for 4000+ years, while the two most fertile areas of the world (the Ukraine and the Mid West) supported pastoralists or primitive farmer populations until about 200 years ago.

I'm guessing this isn't a coincidence. Does supporting large agricultural populations over the long run ruin the fertility of a land, possibly the entire ecosystem?

No. The paths of rivers have shifted. Thus making a once fertile region into a barren land.

[Shatov]

Rivers changing patterns would account for one area becoming more fertile than another, rather than all of the Middle East going from Caladan to Arrakis. Rivers changing courses wouldn't explain why the grain producing regions of the Roman Empire (Egypt, Iraq) now have to import huge amounts of food. This would seem to indicate comparative decline of the region rather than shifting areas of grain production due to changes in a river's course.

[Barry Soteiro]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

[Shatov]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

That's seemingly the one thing all these areas have in common other than their long history of cultivation. Somehow I doubt that repeating the shahadah by itself turns lands into desert,though.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

You better back that up, or I am afraid all hell is gonna break loose here.

[KozaK13]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

Read up abit on what the islamic world introduced to us eg. proto-capitalism, irrigation, many crops such as citrus fruits to us and inspired the guitar
Not to mention thier expansion of industrialisation in the caliphate like using water mills for factories, tidal power, hydro power and wind power albeit in a more primitibe form. Basically they replaced a stale old christian empire and persian empire with a vibrant, innovative islamic one.


Plus Egypt and iraq import so much as the population is too large for the countries to support themselves agriculturally, in modern times, plus evidence points to the kingdoms of egypt collapsing due to the nile drying up and changing course occaisionally, and i think the same major event lead to the fall of i think the assyrian or akkadian empire around the euphrates and tigris...
An ancient example would be Rome using north africa as its grain basket becuase italy couldn't support its population on its own.

[Shatov]

I'd be surprised if the Rashidun or Ummayad Caliphates introduced irrigation or remarkably innovative agricultural techniques to the Mid-East; if anything the stability after five hundred years of constant Roman-Persian warfare and the end of the Justinian Plague had more of an impact on economic growth and innovation.

[Watchman]

A culprit commonly pointed at is the Mongols, who apparently managed to do something unusual and cause long-term damage to regional demographics by wiping out much of the hydraulic engineer corps that used to maintain the extensive irrigation systems much of the agriculture in the Asian regions concerned relied heavily on. One Tamerlane a century or two later did a fine job wrecking what was left...

[KozaK13]

When i say us in my last post i mean western world sorry. Irrigation ahd existed in the east since ancient egyptians.

[Shatov]

Egypt? Sicily? North Africa?

Are these areas somehow less worse off than I imagined?

[Codyos Vladimiros]

Muslim Conquest. Screwed pretty much everything it touched.

Right idea, wrong religion. It was the MONGOLS who screwed pretty much everything--in fact they destroyed a lot of irrigation structures, on top the damage done in a few Abbassid Civil wars, IIRC.

[Watchman]

Egypt? Sicily? North Africa?

Are these areas somehow less worse off than I imagined?

Pretty sure Egyptian agriculture these days doesn't work on the Nile floods anymore, which used to be the main cause of its fertility (the Assuan Dam was partly built to control those IIRC, as they were kind of annoying for the rest of the infrastructure). Sicily and North Africa probably actually haven't changed too much since the ancient times, save of course for the changes in agricultural technology - it's just that the extensive cultivation of the much more fertile lands north of the Mediterranean Alps has totally overshadowed them.

[NeoSpartan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVh_eZkiTAI

---Now... for some reason I get the feel that too much blame is being put on the Mongols. Just a feeling I am getting..

True that the major irrigation systems fell into disrepair in Iraq (the general area between Baghdad and Basra) after 1258 (?). But then again, after that Iraq was constantly fought over 'till the Ottomans consolidated it to their own. And it wasn't until the late 19th Century that irrigation was being tended to again.

As for Egypt, a whole lot of people are living on top of fertile ground. Funny thing, after the Dam was constructed a lot of the land expected to be used for agriculture was taken up by people to live in.

[desert]

Well, the problem with North Africa is desertification. In a few dozen millenia, Central Africa will be screwed if the rate stays constant.

[desert]

Whoa, and according to Wikipedia Afghanistan and Kazakhastan are getting massacred be desertification. Half of all cropland abandoned in the latter country since 1980, apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification

Edit: Woops, double post. Meant to edit the first.

[Yyrkoon]

Siltification + desertification.

Siltification = making salty. Basically when you irrigate for a long time trace amounts of salt build up as water evaporates and the soil becomes more salty. Plants don't like salt. This advances desertification. Most of the middle east was heavily irrigated for thousands of years. Lots of salt built up. Ta da.

[KozaK13]

Desertification is probably the biggest threat to humans now considering the size of populations it will effect, inless another ice age sorts it out somehow...amazing to think desertification had begun even before eb's timeline..apparently grass land covered parts northern africa in 5000bc

[Watchman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVh_eZkiTAI

Uh, it's nice, but how's it relate to much anything.

---Now... for some reason I get the feel that too much blame is being put on the Mongols. Just a feeling I am getting..

Why ? They pretty much nuked the Khwaramzian kingdom (which covered much of Central Asia) and did more or less the same to Mesopotamia, and probably much of the region inbetween while they were at it. Did a fine job killing the know-how to build and maintain the irrigation systems on the side AFAIK, as insofar as the Mongols were concerned the hydraulic engineers didn't rank among those useful people that were spared when a city was razed...

Previous conquerors in the area hadn't been quite so thorough and systematical about making object lessons, far as I'm aware of.

True that the major irrigation systems fell into disrepair in Iraq (the general area between Baghdad and Basra) after 1258 (?).

Yeah, wot a coincidence there.

[Cambyses]

And of course there are an awful lot more people, living longer and eating bigger meals, in those areas now...

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

The apparent fertility seen in EB also seems to be somewhat exagerated and shouldn't be taken as 100% historical fact based on appearance.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It's not any one conquest, though the Muslim Caliphate did damage because it had a politcy of cultural destruction and Mongols because they were big on destroying resistance and actual... stuff. Then you have the Christians, who stated killing philosophers around 300AD or so, burning books and generall being a nuissence.

Overall that region has been fought over and screwed over since around 200 AD at best. Each invasion takes a bit away and more is taken away the harder it is to recover. I though it was salinification, but either, way it's a process I believe the Mesopotamians were aware of. Spreading ash and ground bone onto land to increase pH is as old as the hills. I imagine you pick those tricks up when people keep deliberately salting you cropland.

[NeoSpartan]

Uh, it's nice, but how's it relate to much anything.

.....

Yeah, wot a coincidence there.

Its just a cool video I felt like posting since we were on the subject of Mongols.

As far as the last point is conserned I think I should have been a little more clear:
Yes the mongols did f*** the Caliphate and as a result there was no major gov't to maintain the irrigation systems. Even though the Ottomans held Iraq it was mainly a backwater provincial area when compared to, say, Bulgaria or Egypt. The lack of attention due to both, fighting to win over the area, and then weakening of the Sultan's power/control during the 17th & 18th Century.

[machinor]

Regarding Mesopotamia... AFAIK the Shat-el-Arab (spelling?), the delta of Euphrat and Tigris flowing into the Persian Gulf is still one of the most fertile regions on our merry green planet.
Regarding North Africa... some ancient historians wrote that the desertification in North Africa is caused by massive uprooting of once abundant North African forests.
Regarding fertility in general... one must take into account that today's irrigation systems are an absolute miracle compared to the possibilities of antiquity. By their standards, those regions might still be superfertile but compared to modern day standards they're below average. Take into account that for mediterranian standards, having a quite large water reservoir like a river of the size of the Euphrat means superexcellent fertility compared to the otherwise dusty and arid mediterranian flora.

[antisocialmunky]

The biggest cause is human mismanagement. The second biggest cause is natural process. When the natural processes are exacerbated by human mismanagement you get the loss of these great agricultural sites(deforestation -> erosion, over farming -> salinization and infertility). Its not a quincidence that the great historically fertile areas that gave birth to great civilizations have been reduced over the years and some are/have been turned into deserts.

Heck look at the situation in the American Midwest. I live in Kansas, here there's the problem of wet agriculture in the dry western half of the state. Instead of the traditional dry farming, people drain the fossil water supplies at an unreplenishable rate. This has/will turn western Kansas into a dryer area due to the lowering of hte water table. Look at the dust bowl because people left the fields fallow without any plants to bind the top soil together. The American Midwest has only been the subject of intense western farming techniques for about 200 years and despite still being the most productive land on the planet, its fertility has been greatly impacted.

[HunGeneral]

Yes Human interference has a great role in decreasing cropland. The heavy desertification in North Africa was seriously increased by the romans who destroyed many forest so they could use the ground as crop fields (N. Africa being there "bred-basket").

Another case would be the greeks and the oil trees - I'm not sure about this but I read that many once fertile areas of greece were "ruined" by the increase of oil tree plantings. Oil trees have a special root (can't say it's english name) which goes very deep into the ground but it doesn't hold the upper layers of soil (most fertile) which can be washed away by rain. The greeks knew this so they built teraces (or something like that) around olive trees to keep the rain from washing it away. However due to constant and long wars (like the Peloponesian Wars) farmers were away from there fields over a long time and the teraces couldn't be maintained (plus the destruction of war didn't spare it either). After that the soil there was only able to keep oil trees but no other plants.
I'm not sure about this one but I think it is possible.

[The Fuzz]

The Soviets didn't do the region any favors, either . . .

Everything else I'd have said was covered earlier. I have this love of Central Asia and everytime someone disparages it I launch into this grand speech about the constant warfare and Mongol/Turkic/etc invasions and the Great Game and all that good stuff.

[palmtree]

I recall reading that the fertile lands of Spain were ruined when Spanish nobles from the 16th century and onwards converted them from grain production to grazing land for sheep. Selling Merino wool was much more profitable than growing food, but the sheep herds eroded most of the topsoil in the process.

[desert]

Today's supercrops in an acre of those fertile lands would make a nice yield.

[Mediolanicus]

I've read that the desertification of the North African bread basket was caused by three reasons.

1. Natural desertification, as mentioned somewhere above. The Sahara was nice and green until 6000-5000 BC.
2. Tree cutting Romans, also mentioned above.
3. And indirectly, the Muslim conquest of North Africa and in particular the goat herding they brought along.

And add to this general human mismanagement and you have a nice recipe for barren wastelands...