What would you use if you wanted to clear a sPace in the grass for a garden? A garden fork or good sharp spade would help you cut through the sod and loosen it enough to clear it out. A hoe would help you break up the dirt clods. A gas powered rotary tiller would make the task faster and easier. But what if you lived in an age when you had to make your own tools with whatever was at hand—wood, sTones and the bones of animals you had killed for food? In grassy places like those that cover Oklahoma, farming with bones and stones would be very difficult. Primitive tools would have a hard time cutting through densely thatched grass roots.

The first farming probably started in flood plains and swampy areas around the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in what is now Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. In these areas the ground was soft and loose, and the farmer could work the soil and plant seeds gathered from the wild. In the land we know as Oklahoma, early farmers also took advantage of the soft, loose ground along the rivers and streams. Farmsteads and small villages of the MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE (SPIRO MOUNDS CULTURE) were scattered along the streams in the northern Ouachita Mountains and the southern Ozarks of Oklahoma and Arkansas 1100 years ago. Archaeologists have found some of the stone hoes and axes these farmers used to grew corn, beans and squash or pumpkin.

People of the ANTELOPE CREEK CULTURE, who lived nearly 700 years ago in the Southern High Plains of the Oklahoma Panhandle, used leg bones and shoulder blades of bison to make digging stick tips and hoes. Garden plots were prepared where fertile soils could be watered from springs and streams. Between 900 and 600 years ago, Plains Villagers of the WASHITA RIVER CULTURE farmed the fertile terraces along the Rivers and creeks in central and western Oklahoma, using hoes and digging sticks made from select bison bones and wood. They used handstones to grind corn, nuts and other edible seeds in stone basins.

1500 years ago the FOURCHE MALINE people were making stemmed hoes and grinding stones. Although archeologists have not recovered direct evidence that they were cultivating corn, beans or squash, the increasing presence of axes (which could be used for clearing land), hoes and grinding stones may be indirect evidence of part-time farming. By 400 years ago, CADDO people were farming the Red River Basin of southeast Oklahoma. They were expert farmers, raising two crops of corn and other vegetables a year.

Prehistoric farmers made tools of the materials that were available—mostly wood, bones and stone. Early toolmakers would chip stones by hitting one against another to form an edge that could be used for cutting. The first agricultural tool was probably a digging stick, a straight, sharp stick or bone used for digging roots out of the ground to eat. Axes were also useful for clearing wooded areas. Later someone got the idea to weight the digging stick with a stone or use a forked stick with one side cut short. That way the farmer could use his or her foot to push the stick deeper into the ground. This design would be used later to develop what we know as a shovel or spade.

Another way to use the forked stick was for the farmer to hold onto the largest limb and Pull it along behind so the short, pointed fork would cut into the ground. This was the design used later to develop the plow. Another early tool was the scythe. The Stone Age farmer used this tool to cut tall grass. The grass could be used to cover the walls of a hut and to make mats to cover the floor for sleeping. The sickle could also be used to cut the grains the farmer had planted. Once the grains were harvested, they were probably roasted and stored for later use or ground into flour on a grinding stone. The grinding stone was a saddle-shaped stone. The grains would be spread out on the grinding stone and crushed with a hand-held stone, called a quern. Sometimes the grains would be crushed in a mortar and pestle. A mortar is a hollowed out stone vessel. The grains or seeds would be crushed with a club-shaped pestle.