Seeder plough with drill tube
Arado de reja con sembradora de tubo
- Date
- c. 3000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Uruk and Nippur, Sumer, Iraq
- Credited to
- Sumerians
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Wooden plough drawn by oxen with a funnel through which an operator drops seed into the furrow at regulated intervals, described in the Sumerian 'Farmer's Instructions'. It has no mouldboard (which does not appear until Han China and medieval Europe), but its in-row sowing saves grain and water.
The true mouldboard plough is not from the Bronze Age: it appears in China (3rd century BCE) and Europe (Middle Ages). The seeder plough is specific to Mesopotamia; Egypt and Europe used the simple ard.
What it led to
- Yields of 30:1 in southern Mesopotamia that sustained the first cities
- Surplus agriculture that fed scribes, priests and soldiers
- Written agronomic manual, the first technical literature
- Rationalisation of the farming calendar into work phases with temple ox teams
Built on
- Yoke and draft harnessc. 3000 BCE
- Simple-share plough (ard)
- Ox domestication
Made possible
- Mechanical seed drill (Han China and Jethro Tull)
- Mouldboard plough (later)
- Written agronomy