The Plough is a Modern Invention

Tillage of the ground began about 12,000 years ago. The first farmers lived in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. The earliest crops were peas and chickpeas, lentils, bitter vetch, flax, barley and early forms of wheat.

Crops require preparation of the land – tillage. Yet the plough is a modern invention. Its precursors included the caschrom (Gaelic “cas-dhìreach”) or “foot-plough” (see image) used in the north west of the Scottish Highlands until quite recently.  The Peruvians use(d) a similar device called the chaki taklla and the aboriginal Māori’s the kō.  When man discovered how to pull such a device through the ground and then have a horse or a bullock do so the first ploughs as we know them had arrived.
These prints illustrate the progress in agricultural equipment developed from that point – particularly in the late 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century and the early motor tractors. We may soon be approaching a time when farming can be conducted from a room with a keyboard and a screen.
Yet, despite the industrial revolution in the UK, it was the density of farm labour in England in the 19th century that slowed the development of equipment here and the dearth of labour in North America that accelerated it there.