Why is there no ancient agricultural civilization in North America?

On February 25th, a report was published on Forbes biweekly website. In the past 2020, China once again became the largest trading partner of the United States, and American exports to China increased by 16.9%, reaching124.65 billion US dollars.

This is the highest level of American exports to China since 20 13. The commodity with the greatest single value is not Boeing aircraft or other mechanical and electrical products, but American soybeans.

Last year, China imported US$ 654.38+042 billion of soybeans from the United States, equivalent to more than RMB 60 per China resident.

The main soybean producing area in the United States is located in the Mississippi River Plain, with an annual output of 654.38 billion tons. China's annual soybean output is 20 million tons, and its import volume is nearly 654.38 billion tons.

Many people know American military and financial hegemony, or that American science and technology are the first, but many people don't know that American agriculture is also their long-term advantageous industry. Here are three sets of data.

The world's top three arable land areas, the first is India, 1.89 1.7 million square kilometers, the second is the United States, 1.68 1.8 million square kilometers, and the third is Russia, 1.2652 million square kilometers.

The world's grain output ranks first in China with 625 million tons, second in the United States with 500 million tons, and third in India with 280 million tons.

The world's top three grain exporters, the first is the United States, with US$ 654.38+049 billion, accounting for 654.38+00% of the world's total exports, the second is Brazil, with US$ 79 billion, accounting for 5.3% of the total, and the third is China, with US$ 63 billion, accounting for 4.3% of the total. At the same time, China is also the largest grain importer in the world.

There are three data in the United States, which shows the strength of American agriculture. The most important agricultural production area in the United States is the Mississippi River Basin, which is also called the Central Plain because it is located in the middle of North America. It is a major producer of wheat, soybeans, corn, cotton and tobacco in the United States. The land is vast and sparsely populated, with abundant hydrothermal conditions.

The United States not only relies on it to feed 300 million extravagant Americans, but also exports a lot, and the real production potential has not been fully exerted. It is said that in order to push up food prices or protect cultivated land, a large number of American land has been left fallow.

According to the distribution map of American agriculture, we can see that American agriculture is mainly distributed in the central and eastern regions, especially in the fertile Mississippi River Plain.

This is a very fertile land, but it is the most fertile land in America. There was no great farming civilization in ancient times before the arrival of white Europeans.

The entire American continent, including North America and South America, its main civilized areas are concentrated in Mexico and the Andes in South America, which is what we now call it.

In the United States and Canada to the north of Mexico, in this range, especially in the Mississippi River basin, the native Indians of America did not create a large-scale farming civilization.

Some people may cite the Kahokia site in the Mississippi valley to refute it. This can only be regarded as an attempt by North American Indians, but compared with other civilizations, it is not successful. It only existed for hundreds of years and was abandoned in the14th century with a population of only 40,000.

The Mississippi River covers an area of 3.22 million square kilometers, covering almost half of the United States.

So why is the Mississippi River Plain so fertile today, but it was not used for large-scale agricultural production in ancient times? There are two reasons for this. The first reason is geographical and climatic factors.

The topography of the North American continent is like a vertically cracked ventilation duct, with the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Appalachian Mountains in the east, all of which run north and south, with the vast Mississippi River plain in the middle.

The sides are high and the middle is low, which really looks like half a ventilation pipe. The north of the pipeline leads directly to the North Pole and the south leads directly to the Gulf of Mexico. This allows cold air from the Arctic and warm and humid air from the Gulf of Mexico to shuttle through this ventilation duct without obstacles.

North America has a special terrain, and the mountains run north-south

This kind of terrain is very special compared with the great plains where people gather in the old continent (Eurasia). In the old continent, there are four lands that are the centers of ancient civilization, one is the North China Plain in China and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the other is the Indus and Ganges basins in South Asia, the other is the fertile crescent moon in the Middle East, and the last is Europe, especially Western Europe. These four lands are the population centers of Eurasia.

Take North China Plain and Middle and Lower Yangtze Plain as examples. This huge East Asian plain is basically surrounded by plateau mountains and oceans. There are Daxing 'anling, Xiaoxing 'anling, Yinshan and Yanshan in the north, Taihang Mountain and Qinling Mountain in the west. To its south are the mountains of Nanling, Wuyishan and Taiwan Province Province.

Only the east faces the Pacific Ocean. If it doesn't face the Pacific Ocean to the east, you can even regard it as a basin. This terrain can limit and slow down cold air or warm air.

The main plains of the East Asian continent are surrounded by plateaus, mountains, hills and oceans.

Looking back at the North American continent, this whole continent can be said to be a unique terrain open to the North Pole. There is neither warm current nor mountain barrier, which is equivalent to letting China's North China Plain go straight to Siberia Plain. The cold wave from high latitudes can quickly go south and cover the whole central plain because there is no barrier.

This year's North American cold wave is an example. In February, due to the south of the Arctic vortex, the cold wave went straight to southern Texas along the Great Plains. The temperature drops rapidly. The lowest temperature in Wichita Falls, an industrial city in northern Texas, is -22,-18 near Dallas, and-1 1 in Houston, the capital of southern Texas.

You should know that the winter temperature in Houston is similar to that in Guangzhou, with an average of above 10 and rarely below 0. This is also the southernmost state, with the lowest temperature of -42 in Yuma, Colorado, -4 1 in Minnesota and -25 in Norton, Kansas.

Compared with previous years, the average temperature in February is lower in blue and higher in red.

The climate of the American Great Plains is unique, not only in its temperature, but also in its rapid temperature change. Once the cold wave starts, the temperature drop in the central plains of the United States can reach 30-40 degrees within 48 hours. The reason is that there is no terrain barrier in the whole central plain, so that the cold wave brought by the Arctic vortex can be directly poured on the whole low-lying plain.

At the same time, the snowstorm is another feature of the climate in the Great Plains. The central plain of North America has a series of bays, lakes and rivers from north to south. From north to south, there are Hudson Bay, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, so when the cold wave moves south rapidly, it is easy to form a heavy snowstorm. This snowstorm in Texas is an example. Due to improper preparation, there was a large-scale power outage and water stoppage.

In Texas, USA, water and electricity were cut off due to a severe snowstorm.

Imagine what such climatic conditions mean to early agriculture.

Early human agriculture, especially the bronze age before the Iron Age, was in a very fragile state. Due to the poor resilience of early agriculture, the local environment needs to be mild and stable enough to ensure a stable yield of land to support the agricultural society.

The problem with the climate in the central plains of the United States is that it is very unstable. Rainfall and annual average temperature are abundant in most parts of the United States, but the temperature changes sharply between seasons, and the sudden drop of temperature often causes all kinds of freezing damage to crops. Coupled with the weather prone to heavy snowstorms, it is difficult for early agriculture to gain a foothold here.

Our modern society has all kinds of technologies, machinery and fertilizer industry, which can raise seedlings in greenhouses, improve varieties, topdressing and smoke, but you can't expect the early agricultural society to have any countermeasures against this climate, they can only resign themselves to fate.

Besides the cold wave, there are hurricanes in America. Hurricanes are called typhoons here. In fact, they are all tropical cyclones with a wind speed of 33 meters per second.

The impact of hurricanes or typhoons on ancient China and ancient North American society is very different. We all know that typhoons mainly affect the southeast coastal areas of China. Most of these provinces are mountainous and hilly areas, which were developed later in China's history, while the North China Plain and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which were developed earlier in China, were less affected by typhoons.

But the states along the Gulf Coast affected by hurricanes in the United States are all great plains. Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the hardest hit areas, are the areas with the lowest latitude and the best light and heat conditions in the United States, and they are the most suitable places for early agricultural development in ancient times.

Even after the great geographical discovery, the southern region was the earliest region where Europeans carried out large-scale agricultural development in the United States. But unfortunately, hurricanes often hit here.

During the hurricane, Texas became a Zeguo.

In addition, due to the influence of topography and ocean currents, the damage caused by hurricanes in the United States is greater than that in China. In the western Pacific, typhoons usually pass through the Philippines and Taiwan Province Province of China before hitting Chinese mainland.

Islands have weakened the power of typhoons to some extent, especially in the mountainous areas of Taiwan Province Province, where the highest peak is 4000m above sea level, which has weakened the structure of typhoons to some extent. When the typhoon approaches the mainland, coastal hills and mountains are another obstacle to destroy the typhoon.

When typhoons reach the coast of Zhejiang, they are often guided by the subtropical high center and return to the Pacific Ocean, which is why we say that Shanghai is a typhoon barrier. Relatively speaking, North China and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are not affected by typhoons.

Looking back at the hurricanes in the United States, because several states along the Gulf Coast affected by hurricanes are all great plains, hurricanes can easily go inland, and the scope of influence is larger than that of our country.

At the same time, the Gulf of Mexico has the largest warm current in the world, so when the hurricane approaches the coast, the power of the hurricane is not weakened by the warming and humidification of the warm current to store energy for the hurricane, and it often maintains high-intensity destructive power for a long time. However, because there is no big warm current along the coast of China, the typhoon cannot maintain its momentum for a long time after landing.

Satellite images show the damage caused by floods in the coastal areas of Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.

The above is the difference between geography and climate and the North American continent. The East Asian continent can benefit from two climatic factors. On the one hand, the cold wave in winter preserves water for agriculture, on the other hand, it plays a bactericidal role. At the same time, due to the barrier of terrain, it is not as extreme as the North American cold wave.

The summer monsoon brings rain and heat to China, and at the same time, due to the influence of some factors such as topography, it also eliminates the harm caused by typhoons. This moderate and stable environment has brought many benefits to the development of early agriculture.

North America is just the opposite. While benefiting from the cold and warm climate, its destructiveness also hindered the development of early farming civilization. As a native of North India, if you try to develop in the northern part of the Mississippi River Plain, you will find that the cold wave there is too extreme and changes rapidly.

If it develops in the southern plain near the warm Gulf of Mexico, it will face the impact of a devastating hurricane. At the same time, the United States is also the country with the most frequent tornadoes in the world, and 90% of the tornadoes in the world occur in the midwest of the United States. The reason is also the result of active confrontation between cold air in the north and warm and humid air in the south. So the Mississippi plain looks fertile, but it is actually a difficult model of early agriculture.

In addition to the influence of geography and climate on the agricultural civilization in the Mississippi Plain of the United States, the backwardness of tools or instruments is also an important reason for the early death of agricultural civilization in North America.

Before the popularization of ironware, all large-scale early civilizations existed in semi-arid areas of Eurasia. For example, the Loess Plateau in China, the Indus River Basin in the South Asian subcontinent (the Ganges River Basin is humid, similar to the Yangtze River Basin in China), the two river basins in the Middle East, and Egypt in Africa.

The distribution map of loess in China shows that the loess is soft and rich in elements such as calcium and potassium, which is very suitable for the development of early farming civilization.

Because of drought, the soil in these areas is loose, and there are few tall trees, mainly some low trees, shrubs and grasslands.

Just like the North China Plain in China, especially the Loess Plateau, it is actually a savanna landscape, not a dense arbor forest.

For the ancient society that used stone tools as farming tools, it was extremely difficult to cut down those tall and thick trees with stone axes, clean up deep and thick roots, dig canals with stone shovels and turn over the soil.

That's why the large-scale development of southern China had to wait until the Sui and Tang Dynasties, because at that time, iron, a metal far poorer than bronze, had been popularized, and with Niu Geng, the muddy and hard land in the south was developed.

However, the Mississippi River basin is rich in water resources and dense forests. For North American Indians who have not yet created cheap iron, the difficulty of large-scale development can be imagined.

In fact, Native Americans have begun to smelt bronzes, but bronze is not hard enough compared with iron, and it is expensive and scarce. If Indians are given hundreds of years to develop, the North American continent may be developed on a large scale when their ironware is popular. Unfortunately, it was too late and was picked up by white Europeans.