Chapter 7 Section 6 Diversified Confluence of Rivers and Seas

Above we have outlined the main situation of each stage of ancient Chinese agriculture.From this we can see that Chinese agriculture did not originate from a single center and radiate to surrounding areas.Chinese agriculture has been distributed over a vast area during the period of its development. The Yellow River Basin is a center, and the Yangtze River Basin is also a center. They have different appearances and each has its own advantages. Both are the cradle of Chinese agricultural culture.Facts have proved that agriculture in our country occurred simultaneously or successively in several regions, and gradually formed different types of agricultural culture due to differences in natural conditions (this different type of agricultural culture is the basis for the formation of different ethnic groups), and through mutual exchanges and mutual Promote and converge into the torrent of Chinese agricultural culture.This phenomenon runs through the entire process of the origin and development of agriculture in our country, and we call it the intersection of multiples.

The different types of agricultural culture in the history of our country can be divided into two major systems: farming culture and nomadic culture.They are roughly bounded by the Great Wall, separated from each other regionally, but interdependent economically.The mutual exchange and collision of the two major agricultural cultures is one of the main clues in the agricultural and even political history of ancient China.During this process, farming culture has always been in a dominant position, while pastoral areas have a greater economic dependence on agricultural areas.Although the nomads have invaded the Central Plains many times, they ended up being integrated into the farming culture without exception.With the reclamation of land, the general trend is that the agricultural area continues to expand and the pastoral area continues to shrink.

Within the agricultural culture, there are two main types of dry land agriculture in the north and paddy field agriculture in the south.Its formation is based on the differences in natural conditions between the north and the north of the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River, and its development depends on mutual exchanges and integration.Before the mid-Tang Dynasty, dryland agriculture in North China was in a leading position for a long time. This was not only because the soil, topography, vegetation and other conditions in the Yellow River Basin were conducive to early development, but also because it was located in the Central Plains, so it was easy to absorb and integrate the advanced agricultural cultural factors of various ethnic groups in various regions. .In fact, the agriculture in the Yellow River Basin was enriched and developed on the basis of the millet farming created by the Chinese ancestors, absorbing some elements of the rice culture in the south, the wheat culture in the west, and the nomadic culture in the north.Paddy agriculture in the south originated very early, but it stayed at the stage of burning and water farming for a long time. After the middle Tang Dynasty, it formed its own characteristic paddy field intensive farming technology system, and finally caught up from behind, surpassing the northern dry land agriculture.This is not only due to the fact that the natural conditions here require the accumulation of social and economic conditions to a certain extent to give full play to its potential advantages, but also the result of the integration of agricultural culture between the north and the south.The formation and development of these two agricultural cultures, their mutual exchanges and the ebb and flow of status are another main clue of my country's agricultural history.

In addition to the exchanges of different types of agricultural cultures in different regions of the country, there are also exchanges with foreign agricultural cultures.This is evident in the domestication, introduction and utilization of animals and plants in my country. There are many kinds of cultivated plants and domesticated animals in the history of our country.Much of it is indigenous. At the beginning of the 20th century, Vavilov, a famous Soviet geneticist, pioneered the theory of the origin diversity center of cultivated plants, and listed China as the first center among the eight origin centers of cultivated plants in the world.There are as many as 136 species of cultivated plants originating in China, accounting for 20.4% of the world's 666 major food crops, economic crops, vegetables and fruit trees.Later, the theory of crop origin has been supplemented and developed, and China's status as one of the world's crop origin centers has always been recognized by researchers.my country is also an important origin of domesticated animals.Many of these cultivated plants and domesticated animals of indigenous origin were not domesticated by the Han people alone, but were jointly created by various ethnic groups in China.Each ethnic group has domesticated different animals and plants in their respective natural environments, and through exchanges with each other, they have integrated into the overall Chinese agricultural culture.Among the cultivated plants and domesticated animals in our country, there are quite a few, including some very important species, such as wheat, corn, sorghum, sweet potato, potato in grain, cotton in fiber, peanut and sesame in oil crops, etc. imported from abroad.The Chinese people are not only good at creating their own culture, but also good at absorbing foreign culture.Take wheat as an example. It is a perennial crop native to the winter rainy regions of West Asia. It is not suitable for the natural conditions of scarce winter and spring rain and snow in the Yellow River Basin, nor is it suitable for the waterlogged environment of rice fields in the south.In order to develop this kind of crop that has the merit of "continuing to continue to lack" and is in a pivotal position in multiple cropping, people have taken many special measures in cultivation, cultivation, breeding, harvesting, preservation, processing, etc., and created a series of related crops. tools and techniques.It took more than 3,000 years from its introduction to its development into my country's second largest food crop and its inseparable part of my country's agricultural system, overcoming many difficulties.It shows that the Chinese people have the mind and ability to absorb foreign cultures.There is another kind of cultural exchange here that is different from the exchange between domestic regions and nationalities: on the one hand, the cultivated plants and domesticated animals that originated in my country have gradually spread to all parts of the world; New species and breeds of domesticated animals, and using traditional techniques to transform them to suit China's climatic conditions.It is in these two kinds of exchanges that the types of cultivated plants and domesticated animals in our country are becoming more and more abundant, and the agricultural culture is constantly improving, making contributions to the development of world agriculture.According to scholars' research, most of the food, fiber and decorative crops that entered the West in the past 150 years came from Japan, and almost all the plants in Japan came from China.An American anthropologist Anderson (EN Anderson) even said: "If it were not for the deep-rooted conservative ideas of Western farmers and food buyers, we might have imported hundreds more. In contrast, the Chinese (It has always been regarded as blindly sticking to tradition) but borrowed almost all Western plants that can be planted in its own land." This reminds us of a couplet written by Lin Zexu, in which there is a saying "the sea is inclusive of all rivers, and it is big if it has tolerance". It is quite appropriate to use it here.

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