Agriculture and Farming Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
33 statements marked Debated.
Plant Breeding, DescriptionThe deliberate improvement of crop plants, from a farmer keeping the best seed heads ten thousand years ago to the gene-level tools of today; the twentieth century's high-yield breeding drove the Green Revolution, whose costs to biodiversity and farmer independence are still debated.
This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Plant Breeding, Disciplines
Standing
Concerns Description
Currently States The deliberate improvement of crop plants, from a farmer keeping the best seed heads ten thousand years ago to the gene-level tools of today; the twentieth century's high-yield breeding drove the Green Revolution, whose costs to biodiversity and farmer independence are still debated.
This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Yield gains from Green Revolution breeding are undisputed, but assessments of its net benefit are debated: critics point to reduced crop biodiversity and deeper dependence on purchased seed and inputs.
Source Wikipedia: Plant breeding
Plough, Introduced Year3000 BCE
Plough, Implements and Machines
Standing
Concerns Introduced Year
Currently States 3000 BCE
Ard-plough evidence appears in the Near East as early as the sixth millennium BCE; the earliest known European wooden ard, at Lavagnone in Italy, dates to around 2300 to 2000 BCE, though scratch marks consistent with early ploughing there date to 3500 to 3000 BCE. 3000 BCE is used here as the conventional circa marker, consistent with this entity's own origin-note; the precise origin point and date remain debated among archaeologists.
Source Ard (plough) (Wikipedia)
Repeal of the Corn Laws, DescriptionThe 1846 repeal, under Prime Minister Robert Peel, of the tariffs that had protected British grain since 1815. It ended decades of Anti-Corn Law League agitation and split the Conservative Party; how much credit belongs to that agitation, to Peel's own economic convictions, and to the shock of the Irish potato failure remains argued.
This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Repeal of the Corn Laws, Milestones
Standing
Concerns Description
Currently States The 1846 repeal, under Prime Minister Robert Peel, of the tariffs that had protected British grain since 1815. It ended decades of Anti-Corn Law League agitation and split the Conservative Party; how much credit belongs to that agitation, to Peel's own economic convictions, and to the shock of the Irish potato failure remains argued.
This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Historians divide over whether Peel's own conversion to free-trade economics or the emergency of the Irish potato failure was the decisive force behind repeal; both accounts are argued by serious scholarship.
Source Corn Laws (Wikipedia)
Rye, Domestication RegionDisputed: possibly Euphrates valley, northern Syria; securely established as an independent crop in central Europe
Rye, Crops
Standing
Concerns Domestication Region
Currently States Disputed: possibly Euphrates valley, northern Syria; securely established as an independent crop in central Europe
A disputed early claim places systematic cultivation in the Euphrates valley of northern Syria; the securely dated record instead shows independent cultivation established in central Europe.
Source Rye (Wikipedia)
Scythe, OriginThe scythe's own origin is unresolved and the sources disagree by a wide margin: some trace it to Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements as early as circa 7000 BC, others place the first practical harvesting scythe around 500 BC in the Iron Age; no securely identified Roman-era scythe survives despite roughly 10,000 Roman sickles held in European museum collections. It had replaced the sickle for reaping crops in most of Europe by the 16th century, becoming widespread there only from the Carolingian era (8th century AD) onward, and was itself displaced by horse-drawn and tractor mowing machinery.
Scythe, Implements and Machines
Standing
Concerns Origin
Currently States The scythe's own origin is unresolved and the sources disagree by a wide margin: some trace it to Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements as early as circa 7000 BC, others place the first practical harvesting scythe around 500 BC in the Iron Age; no securely identified Roman-era scythe survives despite roughly 10,000 Roman sickles held in European museum collections. It had replaced the sickle for reaping crops in most of Europe by the 16th century, becoming widespread there only from the Carolingian era (8th century AD) onward, and was itself displaced by horse-drawn and tractor mowing machinery.
Source Scythe (Wikipedia)
Scythe, Introduced Year7000
Scythe, Implements and Machines
Standing
Concerns Introduced Year
Currently States 7000
Scythes may date back as far as circa 7000 BC, appearing to have been in use since Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements and becoming widespread with later agricultural developments; the scythe gradually displaced the sickle for reaping grain by the sixteenth century AD. 7000 is stored here as the BC circa marker for the earliest attested date, consistent with this entity own origin-note.
Source Scythe (Wikipedia)
Sericulture, Central QuestionChinese tradition credits the legendary Empress Leizu with discovering silk cultivation around 2700 BCE by finding a cocoon in her tea, but the practice's true origin is unresolved.
Sericulture, Disciplines
Standing
Concerns Central Question
Currently States Chinese tradition credits the legendary Empress Leizu with discovering silk cultivation around 2700 BCE by finding a cocoon in her tea, but the practice's true origin is unresolved.
The 2700 BCE Leizu account is a much later literary tradition; the oldest hard evidence, a carved ivory silkworm figure from Nancun in Hebei and silk residues at other Neolithic sites, is dated to roughly 5,400 to 5,500 years ago, centuries before any written record, so archaeologists and textual historians disagree on how much weight the legendary account deserves. See the paired open question on this entity for what would resolve it.
Source Sericulture (Wikipedia)
Sickle, Introduced Year10000 BCE
Sickle, Implements and Machines
Standing
Concerns Introduced Year
Currently States 10000 BCE
Flint sickle blades with cereal-harvesting gloss are widely attested in the Natufian culture by circa 10000 BCE, matching this entity's own origin-note; composite harvesting tools existed earlier without attestation as a farming implement proper (use-wear evidence at Ohalo II is dated far earlier, on wild rather than domesticated cereals), and the precise point at which the sickle became an agricultural rather than a foraging tool remains debated among archaeologists.
Source Wikipedia: Sickle
Sunflower, Domestication Regionsoutheastern United States
Sunflower, Crops
Standing
Concerns Domestication Region
Currently States southeastern United States
Some evidence suggests domestication in Mexico around 2600 BCE instead
Source Common sunflower
Sustainable Agriculture, Origin Year1980
Sustainable Agriculture, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1980
No single coiner is attested. Wes Jackson's New Roots for Agriculture (1980) is among the earliest prominent uses of the phrase in print; the term spread through US policy and research circles across the 1980s.
Source Sustainable Agriculture (Wikipedia)
Swing Riots, DescriptionA wave of uprisings by agricultural laborers across southern and eastern England in 1830, driven by the spread of the threshing machine and collapsing rural wages, and marked by machine-breaking, arson and threatening letters signed by the fictitious Captain Swing. Whether land enclosure or mechanized threshing was the true trigger is argued among historians.
This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Swing Riots, Milestones
Standing
Concerns Description
Currently States A wave of uprisings by agricultural laborers across southern and eastern England in 1830, driven by the spread of the threshing machine and collapsing rural wages, and marked by machine-breaking, arson and threatening letters signed by the fictitious Captain Swing. Whether land enclosure or mechanized threshing was the true trigger is argued among historians.
This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Historians differ on the primary driver: Hobsbawm and Rude's tally found land enclosure directly implicated in only three of 1,475 recorded incidents, pointing instead to collapsing wages and the spread of threshing machines; a 2020 quantitative study confirmed a direct link between local threshing-machine presence and rioting.
Source Swing Riots (Wikipedia)
Turkey, Domesticated When (Circa)circa 800 BC to 100 AD, debated
Turkey, Livestock
Standing
Concerns Domesticated When (Circa)
Currently States circa 800 BC to 100 AD, debated
Estimates for pre-Columbian domestication in Mesoamerica range from roughly 800 BC to 100 AD depending on the site and method.
Source Turkey, bird (Wikipedia)
Turkey, Era (category)Iron Age
Turkey, Livestock
Standing
Concerns Era (category)
Currently States Iron Age
Category derived from this entry's own free-text era/class property; the source property's own status (debated) carries whatever is unresolved about the underlying date or classification, this derived category fact makes no further claim beyond bucketing that same text.
Source Turkey, bird (Wikipedia)