I thought about submitting this to Cecil. But, I bet the GQ Dopers know the answer.
The modern suburban lawn couldn’t exist without lawn mowers.
On the farm, we used a sling to cut clumps of weeds. It’s a miserable tool to use and it’s impossible to get an even cut over a large area. We only used slings in ditches and other areas that mowers couldn’t reach. This was before the weed eater was invented.
So, when did the first real lawns emerge? How did they cut it? I don’t think the manual reel mowers existed before the 1930’s.
On a related note. Who developed the grasses we see in lawns? I don’t think St Augustine, Zoysia, and Centipede grow in the wild.
“History of the Lawn” from wiki claims from the middle ages onward. And yeah, they were either grazed areas, or maintained in a very labour intensive fashion by the wealthy:
You will also note that you are 100 years off for the invention of the mowing machine, though probably not its popularization.
My back hurts even thinking about using a scythe. As a teenager I dreaded cleaning out the ditches with a sling. It’s tough work.
I guess we didn’t have enough cattle to keep our pasture short. We bush hogged it several times each summer. Maybe sheep would have done better than cattle.
Whoever invented modern grasses (St Augustine, Zoysia, and Centipede) should be shot. That type of grass is easily choked out by weeds. I gave up the battle and hired Chem-Lawn.
BTW, I recall reading an article somewhere which speculated that we have lawns because we evolved on the African savannahs, and are biologically wired to feel comfortable with such a landscape. Hence, we plant lawns and dot them with a few trees to turn our surroundings into artificial savannahs. Make what you will of it.
Well, we have good distance vision, what with our eyes being so far off the ground, and we’re superbendurance runners, so it makes sense we’d enjoy being able to see things coming a long way off and have plenty of room to move.
Combine that with the fact humans have been nomadic for most of our existence, and you have something that leads you to the inevitable conclusion: Honey, tramps like us, baby we were born to run.
Except that modern theories say that we evolved in areas with higher amounts of forests. The savannah theory is so 20th century.
Of course, that’s the beauty of using weasel words like humans evolved. What are we talking about? The first upright apes? Genus Homo? Our own species?
In any case, all these Just-So Stories that take geographically-local, historically timebound aspects of cultural adaptation and try to explain them by some vague genetic evocation are sheer nonsense.
Which goes back to something I read (sorry, no cite) that said that lawns came about because people cut back the growth around their huts so vermin would have less opportunity to hide there.
