The Fourth Ingredient M.S. Brook Translated from the Russian by V.A. Epshtein Mir Publishers Moscow First published 1990 Revised from the 1987 Russian edition From the blurb: A fascinating and easily understandable narrative is devoted to soil-exploring sciences and describes the history of soil science from ancient time up to present days. It discusses science problems occurring in the 19th century among chemists, agronomists, geologists and biologists. The author expounds the soil's evolution version between “primitive” volcanic formations and present-day chernozen and podzol soils. Emphasis is on the role of flora and fauna and on the activities of microorganisms which converted lifeless lands into fertile ploughed fields. Also discussed are issues dealing with melioration, chemization and cultivation of various land types. 1 Look Under Your Feet (in lieu of a preface) Today we often speak of saving the rivers and forests, pollution of air, lakes, seas and disappearance of the wild animals, every day we recall the word "ecology" and at the same time we hear rarely a word in defence of soil. Such an attitude to the fertile layer does not give rise to surprise: what is really the reason to be delighted with? What can happen with this layer? The author tried to give an answer to these two questions in this book. Moreover, the author wanted to tell and show people, having no resemblance to their tribes, who saw not only simple amorphous lumps of dirt on the shoulder of the road but a wonderful creation nature - one of its kingdoms. Then, the author had in mind another aim. It is not a secret that today a great number of people value the soil from the point of view of its fertility. If there is a good crop then the soil is rich. If there is lean soil it gives bad crop and therefore it is needless to protect it. Thus the main goal of the book, as the author wanted to show there are not bad and good soils in nature. Each type of the soil is a complex ecological system with major various laws. These systems connect plant kingdom with the animal one, land with ocean and minerals with life. At last, soil is habitat of a great number of living beings, the medium of complex chemical and biochemical reactions, and so on. People must not live by means of their own interests, since they are only piece of nature. It is impossible to study the objects and things that surround us every day without travelling into the history of our life, without changing people's attitude to fertile layer. It was not favourable at different times. Always the level of culture, the level of knowing the nature was principally important in handling with soil. Every cataclysm, degradation of morals and principles in a people society haven't bypassed our motherland. However, every person who will read this book, will see it. 2 Contents Look under your feet (in lieu of a preface) 2 Pre-scientific "science" 4 The Fourth Ingredient 5 Masters of Wisdom 11 Fertility Formula 15 Heirs to the "Eternal City" 20 Rus on the Advance 24 The Hour has Struck 26 "On the Earth's Strata" 30 Salt Instead of Oil 32 "Geo" Versus "Bio" 36 These Ubiquitous Worms 39 The conservative of geognosy 42 Prelude 42 10 000 Versts of Discoveries 43 "Miracles" of Nature 46 Five Basic Zones 48 Who will help the volcano? 49 Born of Ashes 50 A Zone of Chemical Surprises 54 What does the Earth Stand on? 58 Assets and Liabilities 62 Number and Measure 67 Linnaeus Paradox 71 About the Tiniest 76 Form and content 81 A Wall of Puzzles 81 In Search of the Simplest 87 The Most Complex Polymer 93 The Fourth Dimension 99 An unfinished conversation (in lieu of an afterword) 103 3 Pre-Scientific “Science” Whoever has read the book The Golden Bough, by James George Frazer, must remember his description of the wood-land lake Nemi surrounded by the green chain of the Alban Hills. "In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake ... stood the sacred grove .... In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary." Whence this dismal figure and what does it have to do with the subject in hand? Alas, it has a great deal to do with it. "Why did the priest have to kill his predecessor?" the author asks himself in one of the closing chapters of his work. Here is his answer. "Now primitive peoples sometimes believe that their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men ... the fertility of men, of cattle, and of vegetation is believed to depend ... if the course of nature is dependent on the man-god's life, what catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in death? ... The god-man must be killed ... and his soul, his divine spirit must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay". Thus here is the answer to the question. Back in Roman times the priest of Nemi symbolized inexhaustible fertility. Fertility of the earth? No. Fertility of nature. Hundreds of centuries ago a savage by his entire intuition, by his flair of a prehistoric hunter and gatherer - felt that there was some force which gave him his daily bread. Mentally, he endowed with this force in equal measure wild deer, bears, boars, trees and cereals. In those days man did not yet make a difference between the reproductive abilities of animals and plants. The soil simply did not fall into the scope of his primitive world perception. It represented a far too complex mechanism. Even when he ploughed up the land, threw seeds into it, and waited for the early sprouts and then the crops, man took some time to realize what force enabled the grains to produce hundreds of their likes. He must have thought that it all had been done by the seeds and ears as well as by water. And he proceeded to invoke rain, exorcise or protect the "grain spirit", worship the "mother of grain", etc. That was how our distant ancestors formed the concept of fertility, which, millennia later, occupied the central place in soil science. Another equally vital discovery was the calendar. As many as fifteen millennia ago and perhaps even earlier primitive hunters and gatherers noticed the cyclicity of natural phenomena. Plants wilted and revived and animals and man himself obeyed some "highest" rhythm. Man experiences everything - day and night, rain and dry seasons, cold and heat, good and hungry years. However, there was no need for exact chronology before the birth of agriculture. But already for the ancient ploughman the sequence of natural phenomena and correct time reckoning were of colossal importance. “The calendar” wrote the Soviet ethnographer Y. Knorozov, "became a powerful tool of the economy". Possibly, the ancient agriculturists did not know even this state of the fertile layer. But they had the calendar painfully developed by the previous generations, which measured the course of time and contained a host of signs and beliefs. With their aid man corrected the timing of his agricultural 4 operations - sowing, harvesting, etc. After all, weather is changeful, and rivers flood at different times. However, man did not stay ignorant for long. A simple comparison of the size of crops on his own plot and on those of his neighbours and of the sowing times prompted to him that the seed fertility was related not only to the moisture, that there was also some other factor behind it. The Fourth Ingredient Thus, sunlight, water and plants .... What was the fourth component of fertility? Naturally it was the soil. By solving this problem, the agriculturist made another step along the path of the "Neolithic revolution". Regrettably, history does not - and cannot - make a reference to this quiet revolution in the world outlook of a "savage". After all, writing made its appearance much later. True, there is indirect relevant evidence - data obtained by archaeologists. The early agriculturist settlements date back to the 9th and 8th millennia B.C. Finds made in the Cave of Ghosts in Thailand and in the Jordan Valley show that already in those times man knew many species of plants which are cultivated now. Furthermore, he had their cultivated varieties. What stood in the way of man's rapid enrichment, of the integration of scattered tribes into alliances and states and of the birth of great civilizations? Like those formed on the Nile, Euphrates and Indus three and four millennia later. Apparently, agriculture had not yet gained ground. The accumulation of the surplus product was a slow process. Knowledge was lacking. What knowledge? Wheat, barley, pumpkin, beans and other agricultural crops remained invariable for millennia, just as the basic labour tool - the hoe. Hence, the soil was the answer to the question.