plough

Ploughing with Asiatic water buffalo, Guilin, China. Much agricultural work in China is carried out using traditional methods. The normal wetland habitat of the buffalo suits it to use in flooded rice paddies.

Over four thousand years ago, the invention of the plough marked a huge advance in human civilization. Though the principle of ploughing has remained unchanged, the history of the plough has been one of increasing technological sophistication. Even in the past thirty years, the advent of reversible ploughing and far more powerful four-wheel-drive tractors have greatly improved efficiency.

Agricultural implement used for tilling the soil. The plough dates from about 3500 BC, when oxen were used to pull a simple wooden blade, or ard. In about 500 BC the iron ploughshare came into use. By about AD 1000 horses as well as oxen were being used to pull wheeled ploughs, equipped with a ploughshare for cutting a furrow, a blade for forming the walls of the furrow (called a coulter), and a mouldboard to turn the furrow.

Steam ploughs came into use in some areas in the 1860s, superseded half a century later by tractor-drawn ploughs. The modern plough consists of many ‘bottoms’, each comprising a curved ploughshare and angled mouldboard. The bottom is designed so that it slices into the ground and turns the soil over.