ORIGIN OF TRACTION PLOW— BISHOP 535 



magical symbols of great potency; both yoke and plow-beam appear 

 to have been later developments. No doubt human and animal 

 traction were employed in conjunction for a time. This continued 

 to be the case in ceremonial traction in Egypt down to late dynastic 

 times, and it is still the practice in certain backward regions.^ Only 

 through experience could men have discovered that, under proper 

 guidance, oxen may be trained to draw the plow unaided. 



We are as yet scarcely in a position to determine just when and 

 where the traction plow first appeared. That its evolution should 

 have occurred independently in more than one area is improbable in 

 the extreme; for it involves the coordination of far too many culture 

 elements. Moreover all the available historical evidence is opposed to 

 such a view. Once the idea of using animals for drawing the plow 

 had been grasped, however, its secular advantages assumed increas- 

 ingly greater preponderance over its religious aspects, and its wide 

 diffusion became inevitable. In many lands, in place of being asso- 

 ciated with the introduction of any given form of plow, animal traction 

 seems often to have been adapted to already existing agricultural 

 implements of either the foot plow or the man-drawn type. 



Recently it has been claimed that northern Europe — more specif- 

 ically, the Nordic province — was the birthplace of the traction plow. 

 This claim we shall discuss later. Credit for its invention has also been 

 proposed for the valleys both of the Nile and of the Euphrates. 

 Possibly its evolution actually began in Upper Mesopotamia or North 

 Syria during late prehistoric times, when those regions enjoyed a 

 greater rainfall than they do today .^° The abundance of remains of 

 human habitation in many parts of the Near East which are now arid 

 proves that at no veiy distant date, geologically speaking, that region 

 possessed a far higher degree of humidity than now. 



The first irrefragable proof of the use of the traction plow anywhere 

 is probably that found in an archaic Sumerian seal of about 3500 

 B. C, from the Royal Cemetery at Ur.^' As the plow here shown 

 is already as well developed in certain respects as its descendant 

 of a thousand years later, we must postulate for it a long previous 

 period of evolution. The actual begiruiings of this process must go 

 back at least as far as the fifth millennium B. C. or even before. The 

 Uruk phase of prehistoric Babylonian civiUzation, commencing around 

 4000 B. C, perhaps as an intrusion from the northwest,'^ already 

 employed animal traction for wheeled vehicles, and possibly in agricul- 

 ture also, although this by no means necessarily follows. In ancient 



• For a recent instance, see Biddulph, Major J., Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 128, 1880. 



'o See Pealie, Harold J., and Fleure, H. J., The steppe and the sown, p. 7, 1928. 



" For this citation I am indebted to Dr. Leon Legrain, who tells me that the dating is still not quite certain. 

 See Ur Excavations, vol. 2, The royal cemetery, p. 336, No. 12, and plate 192, No. 12, Joint Exped. British 

 Mus. and Univ. Pennsylvania. 



» Speiser, Dr. E. A., The ethnic background of the early civilizations of the Near East, Amer. Journ. 

 Archaeol., 1933, p. 465. 



