Anglo-Saxon farmers in England

By 750, the Anglo-Saxons occupied most of present-day England. The famed seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England – Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, East Anglia and Northumbria - struggled for predominance throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and from time to time a ruler of one of these kingdoms managed to establish hegemony over the other six.

Just as they had settled England in tribes, the Anglo-Saxon peasants tended to live in small villages.

Most of the people living in Anglo-Saxon England were farmers. They lived in individual farms or hamlets (small village) of between two and 10 farm units.

Each farm had a principal house made of thatch and wood in which the family loved and slept.

Their fields were quite different from the rectangular ones of the Celtic Iron Age, being laid out in long curving strips. In some kingdoms some land was farmed in common, in strips scattered over open fields. In others, such as Kent, land was organized in a more self-contained way.

The influence of Anglo-Saxon farming extended even beyond the Middle Ages: the ‘suite’ of crops and livestock that taken for granted toady was established at this time, even though the people no longer raise them in the same ways.

The association between the plough and cereal crops in England also goes back to the later Anglo-Saxon period.

The city such as York and London never contained more than a few thousand people, as most Anglo-Saxons preferred to live in the country as farmers. However, the farmers would build a king’s hall, a royal manor or tun, which survives in the place name Wilton, Walton and Kingston.

The farmers of later Anglo-Saxon England were members of a complex society, and were affected not only by demographic change but also by changes, in social organization. In particular, the burdens imposed on them by church, state, and local lords were increasing in the later Anglo-Saxon periods.

Norman conquests of England led by William the Conqueror in 1066 ended Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England, as the new Norman elite replaced virtually all of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders.
Anglo-Saxon farmers in England

Ancient Greek agriculture

Around 6000 BC people from eastern Mediterranean regions settled in eastern Greece. In the earliest times, Greek people probably hunted for meat and gathered wild plants for food.

As time passed, they began to raise their own animals and to plant seeds for crops. Ancient Greeks learned how to irrigate crops. Even with these advances, farming was hard in Greece. The economy of ancient Greek depended heavily on its agriculture. In fact, 90 percent of the men in Greece were farmers.

Landholdings in Attica were relatively modest in size, and worked for the most part by small, independent farmers.

Some smaller farmers could not afford slaves and just managed to scrape a living for their families. If there was a crop failure, poor families could not usually survive and would have to work for their landowners on larger estates or seek work in the city.
Because there was little water barley became the main cereal of ancient Greece. Olives and grapes also grew well in the land. Some lives were eaten but most were pressed to obtain oil for cooking and lighting, or for export to sell or barter for other goods. They used grapes to make wine.

During the years of the tyrants in Greece (650-500 BC) one Athenian ruler, Pisistratus, helped smaller farmers by creating a state loan fund and injecting more money into the scheme in later years by placing a tax of about 5 percent on agricultural products, the first known direct taxation of citizens.
Ancient Greek agriculture

Dani people in Indonesia

The word Dani actually refers to about 30 sociocultural groups, or clans, each of which has its own recognized territory and distinct individual identities. They live in small thatched-roof huts and burn wood for heat.

The Dani people traditionally love in self-contained fenced compounds, with its own cooking house, men’s house, women’s house and pigsties.

A traditional house is circular, topped by a thatched dome-shaped roof.

The very first contact between Dani people and outsiders occurred in early 1910. In that year a mountain climbing expedition led by the Dutch explorer H. A Lorenz, tried to climb to the snow –covered to of Peak Trikora.

Peak Trikora lies just within the southern boundary of the Dani Speaking area, and several Dani visited the base camp of the explorers.

The Dani people live in the central Highlands of Irian Jaya, which is the eastern-most province of Indonesia. They are found in the valleys of the upper reaches of two major river systems, the Mamberamo, which flows north-west to the Pacific Ocean.

They are one of the most populous tribes in the highland, and are found spread out through the highlands.

They live simply off the land. Their staple diet consists of sweet potatoes and some meats such as birds, pigs and other small animals.

The Dani remain subsistence farmers who cultivate mostly sweet potatoes in gardens in the Baliem valley in West Papua, Indonesia.

Women continue to raise pigs, which men strategically exchange to promote their status and to strengthens their politically alliance.
Dani people in Indonesia