Abstract
This study describes the plowless agriculture characteristic to the tuber and rice culture of the trans-equatorial zone. Although various types of plow and harrow are in use today, their introduction is rather late. In Java the plow came into general use in the Dutch time, even though it is mentioned in epigraphs and illustrated in the caryings of the eighth to ninth century. Common cultivation technology before the Dutch period presumably consisted of tillage by digging stick and paddle-shaped hoe, weed cutting by use of a long knife. and soil preparation by buffalo or cattle-trampling. This surmise is based on the fact that these technologies and tools are still in popular use in Malaisia, the trans-equatorial zone from Madagascar, through Indonesia, to Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Together with these ancient traditions, ancestor souls and earth spirits are still often invoked for permission to open the land and for successful cultivation. Various rites, offerings and omens are observed, some of which are very similar in notion and form to those surrounding the worship of Osiris, the Egyptian god of crops, who returned after death. The concept of revival in funeral rites, megalithic altars and graveyards, some of which are similar to the terrace pyramids of ancient Egypt and Ziggurat of West Asia, are broadly distributed in Malaisia. The coexistence of plowless agriculture on one hand and traditions that originated in West Asia on the other suggest the possibility that a plowless zone and plow-cultivation zone have been in contact for several millenia. The author surmises that the trans-equatorial cultural zone was formed through this wide-ranging contact.
The oldest form of agriculture in the plowless zone is probably tuber-cropping. Its distribution in the Neolithic era would have been much broader than it is at present ...
