Food & agriculture · c. 600 CE

Heavy mouldboard plough

An iron share and mouldboard turned over heavy, wet soils that ards could only scratch.

Wheeled heavy ploughs with mouldboards spread in northern Europe from around the 7th century. They opened the fertile clay plains of northern Europe to farming and underpinned the region's medieval population growth.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Iron smelting (bloomery) 2000 BCE
Ard plough 4000 BCE

What it led to 3

Three-field rotation 800
Seed drill 1701
Steel plough 1837

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Cereal yields in England/UK since 1275 Latest: Wheat: 7.28 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)