"[Odysseus] fumigated the hall, house and court with burning sulfur to control pests."
Homer, The Odyssey
Civilization was founded on agriculture. The earliest cities grew up around 9,000 years ago when nomadic hunter-gatherers settled in Mesopotamia, herding animals and growing crops for the first time. But relying on the success of an annual crop was risky. poor weather, an infestation of insects, or crop diseases could ruin the harvest and starve a population. Humans are still unable to control the climate, but solutions to the other problems were proposed in the most ancient of times.
Early attempts to limit damage by pests were mostly physical interventions, such as crop rotation and the manual removal of grubs. The first evidence for a chemical agent comes from Sumeria in 2500 B.C.E., where elemental sulfur was used to ward off insects. The Sumerians had developed a sophisticated agriculture, employing irrigation and mass labor to farm barley, wheat, chickpeas, and vegetables. Sprinkling sulfur on these plantations could ward off fungi, rodents, and insects such as locusts.
Natural methods of eliminating pests dominated until World War II, when the chemical DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroythane) was first used to kill mosquitoes in a bid to reduce the diseases they spread, such as malaria' and typhus. DDT was succeeded five years later by organophosphates when insects first showed immunity to DDT. Today, around 2.5 million tons of chemical pesticides are used around the world annually. However, alternative technologies, fears about toxic effects on humans, and a renewed interest in organic farming and natural pesticides are reducing our reliance on chemical pesticides.
