KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SOILS IN THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Authors: POZNYAK Stepan , Ivaniuk Halyna 
Published: June 2022

The article examines the development of knowledge about soils in the era of ancient civilizations, including Sumerian, Egyptian, Harappan, ancient Chinese and Ancient Greek and Roman empires, as well as Trypillia culture, which spread in VI-III millennium BC in the forest-steppe zone, between the Carpathians and the Dnieper and belonged to the civilization of Old Europe.

Soil science as a science was formed in the late nineteenth century, but its history began several millennia before. It is closely connected with the development of agriculture and the whole civilization. According to the English historian G.T. Bokl, the soil (its fertility) had the greatest influence on the origin and development of civilizations of the Ancient world.

In the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus in VI-VII millennium BC there was already a controlled irrigation of land, which was the main function of the first state formations that emerged there. The Egyptians learned to build a complex irrigation system of pools and canals. Of the cereals, barley was grown the most, and of the industrial crops, flax; kept the land cadastre, paid taxes according to the area and quality of land.

The valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates suffered much more from flooding and salinization, which affected on all agriculture in the region. In the states of the Mesopotamia (Sumer, Assyria, Babylon) irrigation systems were actively developed, two crops were harvested per year. In the countries of the Mesopotamia there was also a cadastre and they knew the difference in the quality of the soils.

Widespread introduction of farming in ancient Ukraine began with the spread of Trypillia culture. The people of Trypillia cultivated the soil with a hoes and used a wooden plow. The main cereals were covered wheat and naked barley. Trypillia had plenty of land with fertile soils, a set of cultivated plants suitable for growing locally and thousands of years of experience in farming. Soils were fertilized with manure; crop rotation was applied.

The ancient Greeks were the first to speak about the profile structure of the soil and saw in the soil a body that changes over time. They called fertility an important property of the soil, often linking it to weather and cultivation conditions.

Unlike the Greeks, who developed a philosophical direction, thinking about the origin, change and organization of soil cover, the Romans were interested in more practical issues (methods of cultivation, fertilization of soils). The statesmen of that time considered agriculture to be the source of power, thanks to which the state achieved world domination and the highest power, and even wealthy people cultivated the soil.

The main achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the doctrine of soils were: development of their classification; identification of the best soils for field crops, grapes, olives; development of agricultural measures that allow to preserve and increase soil productivity; formulation of the law of declining soil fertility; creation of the first classification of fertilizers, recipes for composting, evidence of the effectiveness of green manures; collection and systematization of data on soil properties; maintaining a strict cadastre, the assessment of land by their area, fertility and yield; legal issues of soil use.

Key words: soil, agriculture, irrigation, cadastre, civilization, Ancient world.