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This chapter attempts to visualize how Tenochtitlan may have looked and functioned before the Spanish invasion. This usually assumed barbaric society with a culture of sacrificing thousand of captives for the blood-thirsty Aztecs was truly a civilized city by any criteria used to define civilizations such as the existence of bureaucracy, sophisticated agricultural technology, ceremonials and monumental architecture. Aztec Tenochtitlan was built and has been civilized more than 2,000 years ago. This ancient Mexican city started in the year Two Reed, it proliferated into stone-built city larger than Europe and had functions and bureaucracy similar to that of the sixteenth century Madrid. In terms of agriculture, the Aztec city has sophisticated agricultural technology—the chinampas which provided for the Aztecs and which provided insight into the chinampa ownership history of this ancient civilization. Complex architectural buildings also graced the Aztec civilization before the invasion of the Spaniards. Palaces, temples and avenues were dominant in this old Mexican civilization. These buildings were characterized by their complex decorations of serpents, murals and sculpture celebrating the state, its rulers, its gods and their conquests.

This chapter discusses the medieval Western technology that drew from classical antiquity, Islamic and Asian societies, and its own original creativity. It observes that diffusion of new technology was usually slow, and that the old techniques often stubbornly survived and coexisted with the new for decades and even centuries. The chapter notes that in terms of direct contribution to aggregate output, changes in agricultural technology were particularly important, as the bulk of the population was engaged in farming. It also discusses energy utilization as the second area in which early medieval Europe was successful. The chapter notes that wind power had been used in sailing ships, but had not been harnessed in the West in other ways until the first windmills were built there in the twelfth century. In waterpower, radical improvements came early, and during the Merovingian and Carolingan eras, better and bigger waterwheels spread through Europe.

This chapter explores the common basis for rapid growth in agricultural output and productivity that lies in the adaptation of agricultural technology to the contrasting factor proportions in Japan and the United States. It explains the important aspect of adaptation as the ability to generate a continuous sequence of induced innovations in agricultural technology that are subjective toward saving limiting factors. In Japan the innovations were biological and chemical, while in the United States the innovations were mechanical.

This chapter identifies the nature of a new agricultural problem emerging in high-performing economies in Asia, as they advance from the low-income to a middle-income stage. The “agricultural problem” is defined as a problem in designing and implementing agricultural policies to promote national economic development. The chapter concludes with an analysis of needed investments in appropriate agricultural technology to prevent the loss of comparative advantage in agriculture and investments in human capital to facilitate the transfer of labor from farm to non-farm sectors.

This chapter examines the effect of agricultural technology on society. The agricultural period marks a fundamental change in the technological means of producing food, having shelter, and moving around. Although the agricultural period is only a fraction of the hunting-gathering era, it was significant enough to affect human society, family formation, and intimate relationships in a critical way. It is not only that Relationships 2.0 were mainly based on economic and property considerations, but also that they tended to be part of a certain family structure: the multigenerational household. With technological developments that brought people to focus on lands and farms, the multigenerational family was ideal. Blood ties signified property ownership, inheritance rules, and labor division. This notion of the family as a multigenerational household rather than the nuclear family lasted until industrialization.

Thailand is located between 5°30' and 20°30'N latitudes and between 97°30' and 105°30'E longitudes. Geographically, the country can be divided into northern, northeastern, central, and southern regions. Most of the country experiences distinct wet and dry climates, except some parts of the southern region, which experience a wet and humid climate. Of the country’s total area (514,000 km2), 41% is under agricultural use (Office of Agricultural Economics, 1999) with 92% of it being rainfed. Drought normally occurs during the hot season (March–April) and sometimes during dry season (November–April) due to inadequate rains. In recent times, the occurrence of drought has increased in Thailand, threatening sustainability of agricultural production. According to Department of Local Administration (1998), droughts of varying intensity occur in 67 out of 76 provinces of Thailand almost every year. During the period from 1987 to 1997, drought impacted a total of 5.44 million ha of agricultural land, causing $1.4 billion in losses. Droughts of varying intensity or severity occur in different regions of Thailand. A drought is categorized as severe, moderate, slight, or none drought using a radiative index (RI) determined during the rainy season (May– October). The RI for a region is determined using the number of rainy days, percentage of irrigated area, groundwater availability, topography, land use, soil, drainage density, and watershed size. If RI ranges from 1.0 to 1.2 for 15 consecutive days for a region or area, the region is said to be affected by slight drought. If RI exceeds 1.2 for 30 consecutive days, the region is considered to be affected by moderate drought, and if RI exceeds 1.0 for more than 30 consecutive days, severe drought is said to have occurred in the region. Using these criteria, the percentage of area affected by different drought categories has been determined in Thailand. It can be observed from table 25.1 that the northeastern region is the most droughtprone in Thailand. A drought index, D, is also used to monitor drought conditions in Thailand.