Antique world and tillage

The modern pedology as a science was formed in Europe at the end of 19th ? the beginning of 20th century at the intersection of biological, geological and agricultural science. However, the basics of European pedology could be observed not less than two thousand years ago in the antique world, when the first scientific understanding of the problem with certain hypotheses arose along with descriptive character of soil treatment. It is worth mentioning that in Ancient Greece of the classic era, physical work, including crop farming and cattle breeding belonged to non-prestigious professions. Therefore, the scholars deal only with rare works on agricultural problem. Greek poets of the archaic era Homer and Hesiod cursorily mention double and triple fallows in their works "Iliad" and "Labour and Days". The peak of Greek pedology can be considered the works of Theophrast (370 ? 285 BC), who was the first to pay attention to dependence of soil treatment on natural and climate conditions (on the examples of Syria and Sicilia). Much more substantial is the Roman tradition of soil studying. In his treatise "On Agriculture", "the father" of Roman agronomy Marcus Porcius Cato (234 ? 149 BC) pays a lot of attention not only to ploughing, but also to the importance of fertilization of the field with "green fertilizers" (beens, lupine etc.). Roman soil science (pedology) which was in the first century B.C. is associated with the works of Mark Terence Varro and Virgil Publius Maron, who studied the problems of physical and chemical properties of the soil, the correlation of agriculture and stockbreeding. The peak of the Roman soil science is considered the creative heritage of contemporary Seneca Junius Moderato Columella. He was the first to substantiate the thesis on the necessity of creating a science dealing with agriculture, since on his oppinion the development of agricultural area was impossible without theoretical grounding of the problems of pedology. Columella performed a comparative analysis of agicultural engineering of the world and came to a conclusion on reasonability of annual observation of natural and climate conditions of a certain region as an important factor, affecting the amount of crop yield. The contemporary of Columella was Pliny the Elder (24 ? 79 AD), who in his encyclopedia also mentioned dependence of soil fertility on the quality of soil treatment, used tools etc. Thus, it is possible to state that the foundations of pedology were laid in the antiquity. In their works, Greek and Roman writers provided grounds for importance of ploughing and organic fertilization of the field as an important integral part of the fertility of soil.