Download or read book Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years written by Walter Clay Lowdermilk and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Lowdermilk, the assistant director of the newly created United States Soil Erosion Service, wrote this classic report on agriculture and soil erosion in 1939. He studied the record of agriculture in countries that have been under cultivation since the earliest recorded times to see what the US could learn to avoid another Dust Bowl. He discovered that soil erosion, deforestation, overgrazing, neglect, and conflicts between cultivators and herdsmen have helped topple empires and wipe out entire civilizations. At the same time, he learned that careful stewardship of the earth's resources, through terracing, crop rotation, and other soil conservation measures, has enabled other societies to flourish for centuries.