Hacker News Reader

Crop rotation was the standard method of planting throughout Europe in the middle ages, it certainly wasn't lost by the settlers.

View on HN

Most of the first colonists weren't farmers. And I believe some tricks were actually picked up in Europe and end up coming back with former enslave natives.

most of the early european settlers were awful farmers, if they didn't lose it they were too stupid to use it - this carried on for decades

Why the vitriol? You don't need to rotate crops for decades with virgin soil.

what vitriol? they were not smart (especially the english), many of them died because they didn't prepare for winter properly... they had winter where they came from

this is well documented, lots of settlements failed due to very simple mistakes and infighting

at one point an english settlement lead by john smith actually raided natives out of desperation and many starved when they were cut off in response

I guess it seems like an oversimplification and underestimation of the challenges involved.

you would imagine, right? but it's worse! many were ill prepared because they were preoccupied with searching for gold!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com