iron

[Rajarshi Banerjee]

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.>>

AT> 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.

RB>
Havent we all heard of slash and BURN agriculture. What does the burning of
khAndava in mahabharata remind us of. HAcking trees even with chain saws is
slower than man made forst fires. Also dont we have the imagery of arjuna at
odds with indra associated with rain and thunder.

Didnt the native americans also practice selective burning. I agree that
removing stumps may have been unnecessary. After all even iron offers only
marginal advantage. People use explosives nowadays.

regards RB