Forms of Cultivation and the Properties of Earth

Forms of Cultivation and the Properties of Earth

In those times (around the 200 a.C) the agricultural work was simple and they used the twig of the sowing machine or coa, among other instruments not so important. After a time, the population raised in the mesoamerican towns and they also had to raise the production and it resorts to new forms of culture. So in Teotihuacan and Oaxaca the first systems of irrigation are used (very primitive) and they discover the system of terraces.
At that time coa continued being the fundamental instrument of the farmer.

The mexicas created a peculiar form of culture by means of chinampas; floating earth parcels that paid attention to the bottom of the lake by means of seedtime of trees by deep roots. These, which still exist in Xochimilco, offered many advantages by their humidity and the type of earth that gave to the sowings; to this one names abundant harvests him. The government, priests, took care of distributing the earth between the population, that were worked by farmers, which distributed the production to satisfy the goverment's necessities and the excesses were administered communitarianly.

The government also distributed to lands to families or groups to be benefitted with the product that removed from it, and was no private properties. Different types from land existed; in first term, those of tecpantlalli, worked by the farmers and whose product was destined to the support of the palace; those of milchimalli or yaotlalli, that benefitted the high heads from the army, those of teotlalli, whose culture was in charge to the members of the advice (Tlalocan). These lands were worked by macehuales, having paid their tribute to the State.

For the population of farmers only there were two types of land:

1) tlalmilli, chinancalli or milpa, small familiar parcel located in calpullis or districts and that only belonged in usufructo to the macehual, and it had to fulfill a severe regulation that forced it to cultivate it constantly, because if it let cultivate it by two years consecutive, she was distant to give it to him to another family of farmers.

2) altepetlalli, located outside the small barren island and generally snatched to the ribereños towns; they were created to increase with its culture the resources of each calpulli; for that reason they were worked in common by macehuales and the obtained fruits were stored in petlacalco, with the purpose of contributing to the expenses of calpulli or to help to the population in the cases of bad harvest, misery or hunger