How did the pattern of intensive cultivation in ancient China come into being?

In ancient China, slash-and-burn was the main form of primitive agriculture. At that time, people used simple stone tools such as stone axes, shovels, wooden barriers and bone chisels in farming methods.

After entering civilization, thunder and lightning are still people's main agricultural production tools, because the metal utensils at that time, such as bronzes, were still relatively expensive metals, with little output and could not be popularized.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, people invented iron smelting technology. Since then, iron farm tools have gradually replaced easily damaged stone tools and bone tools, greatly improving people's production efficiency. However, Tieli Niu Geng appeared in the late Spring and Autumn Period and was further improved and widely popularized in the Western Han Dynasty.

During the Tang dynasty, with the integration of farming techniques between the north and the south, more advanced iron farm tools appeared in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River? Quyuan Pear The emergence of Quyuan Pear is another major breakthrough in farming technology since the reform in Han Dynasty, which indicates that the traditional walking plough in China is basically finalized.

The gradual improvement of water conservancy facilities

Agricultural development and water conservancy projects in ancient China were complementary, and both were indispensable. The legend of Dayu's water control can reflect the hardships and sufferings of the ancients in overcoming natural disasters and building water conservancy projects. The completion of Dujiangyan, Zheng Guoqu, Caoqu, Baiqu and other famous water conservancy projects in history has enabled the ancient farming economy to develop well and farmers' income to increase substantially.

No matter how bad the natural conditions were, the ancients always adapted to local conditions. For example, the ancients living in Xinjiang invented Karez well through their intelligence, and successfully used horizontal tunnels to guide underground undercurrent for irrigation in arid areas.

From thousands of couples to individual agriculture

With the continuous progress of farming methods, in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, although the farming tools were simple, people still used large-scale simple cooperation to carry out agricultural production to solve the problem of low productivity.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, with the emergence of land privatization, the yeoman economy came into being, which was combined with the cottage industry to form? Men plow and women weave? The main management mode is also one of the characteristics of ancient agricultural economy in China.

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Men plow and women weave? Although the development model of small-scale peasant economy can make farmers self-sufficient, it also has certain fragility, such as war, natural disasters or excessive exploitation and oppression by rulers, which will all suffer devastating blows.

Except for salt and iron, yeomen's economy can basically be self-sufficient, but it is difficult to expand the production scale due to the small production scale and clear division of labor between men and women, which also hinders the development of division of labor and economic exchange in ancient society.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, this self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy had become an obstacle to the development of production.