iron

[Allen W Thrasher]

Rajesh Kochhar said:

<<1.Iron was required to clear the rain forests of the north Indian
plains. The method was to burn down the trees and axe out the rumps.
Since the Harappan tradition and the following  pre-PGW tradition  had
the same technological capabilities, they occupied the same territory,
avoiding mighty rivers and keeping to semi-arid areas.Thus the
beginning of large-scale inhabitation of the ganga plain is
circumstantially related to iron metallurgy.>>

Without reviewing the evidence and research on this I would like to
add a caveat.  It is not totally necessary to remove the stumps before
cultivation of land newly taken from forest to agriculture.  Native
Americans routinely would produce farmland by girdling the trees
(removing the bark in a complete circle around the trunk) thus killing
them and letting the sun in as the leaves dropped off.  British
American settlers, particularly the so-called Scotch-Irish, often did
exactly the same deep into the 19th c., though admittedly with iron
tools, not stone ones.  In either case the trunks might or might not
be removed, let alone the stumps which are more work.

Allen Thrasher



Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D.

Senior Reference Librarian       101 Independence Ave., SE
Southern Asia Section               LJ-150
Asian Division                            Washington, DC 20540-4810
Library of Congress                     U.S.A.
tel. 202-707-3732                       fax 202-707-1724
Email: athr at loc.gov

The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the
Library of Congress.