Heavy mouldboard plough
Arado pesado de vertedera
- Date
- c. 650 · confidence low
- Place
- North European plain (Frisia / Rhine valley)
- Credited to
- Slavic and Germanic peasants
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A plough with a share, coulter and mouldboard mounted on wheels that cuts and turns the heavy clay soils of northern Europe. It made previously unworkable land cultivable, unlike the light Roman ard.
Origin and date are much disputed: there are earlier Slavic, Germanic and even Chinese indications; mass diffusion is Carolingian.
What it led to
- agrarian colonisation of northern Europe and demographic growth in the 10th-13th centuries
- open fields in long strips and village cooperation to share ox teams
- a shift of Europe's economic centre from the Mediterranean to the north
Built on
- Ard (scratch plough)c. 3800 BCE
- Early ironworking (bloomery iron)c. 1400 BCE
- light Roman plough
- iron metallurgy
Made possible
- Three-field crop rotationc. 800
- Rigid horse collarc. 920
- Three-field crop rotation
- Rigid horse collar