ORIGIN OF TRACTION PLOW— BISHOP 541 



era — during the period, that is to say, when the influence of the Terre- 

 maricoli was making itself felt in northern Italy. It seems unlikely 

 that these petroglyphs can have been the handiwork of the native 

 Ligures, whom Posidonius describes in the first century B. C. as "wild 

 huntsmen, almost ignorant of agriculture," 



The plow shown here was composed of two pieces, a combined 

 handle and point and a beam. So far as our evidence goes, this was 

 the only form in use in Italy for several centuries, ^'•^ It was apparently 

 not until the earlier half of the first millennium B. C. that there was 

 introduced an improved form, having a slade, and comparable in other 

 respects also to the more developed type mentioned by Hesiod,*" Its 

 arrival in the peninsula was pretty surely connected with the move- 

 ments which led to the settlement of the Etruscans northwest of the 

 Tiber and of the Greeks in Magna Graecia, 



During the Roman period agricultural implements of all kinds 

 underwent a marked development. Among the new devices then 

 adopted seem to have been mould-boards, a wheeled forecarriage, and 

 definitely the coulter.*^ These improvements were perhaps the work 

 not alone of the peoples of Italy but also of some of those dwelling 

 beyond the Alps, In any case, they were diffused over a large part of 

 western and central Europe, where their evidences are visible through- 

 out the Middle Ages and even down to our own times (c/. pi. 1). 



That the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula had the traction plow 

 before the Roman occupation is certain ; but as to the date of its first 

 appearance there we are quite in the dark. It may have been intro- 

 duced there during the Celtic invasions,*^ or, even earUer, from northern 

 Italy, between which and Spain we know that there were contacts. 

 The Celtiberians had a two-piece plow without a slade and in general 

 resembhng that shown in the Ligurian petroglyphs ;*^ while some of the 

 more archaic Spanish and Portuguese plows used down to recent 

 times recall forms found in central and even eastern Europe. The 

 Greeks and Carthaginians can of course scarcely have failed to bring 

 with them improved eastern Mediterranean types. 



Regarding the presence of the plow in North Africa (west of Egypt) 

 before the former half of the first millennium B. C, our knowledge 

 is slight. In early historical times the Libyans seem on the whole 

 to have been pastoral ;** yet they grew cereals in the time of Merneptah, 

 late in the thirteenth century B. C.*^ Among the modern Berbers 



39 This form seems to have been the forerunner of the Roman aratrum simplex, comparable to Hesiod's 



airdyvoi' aporpov. 



^0 The 'wqKTbi' apOTpoi), 



*> See Huntingford, G. W. B., Ancient agriculture, Antiquity, vol. 6, p. 328, 1932. 



« For a brief discussion of these as they relate to Spain, see Kraft, Qeorg, The origin of the Kelts, Anti- 

 quity, vol. 3, p. 33 passim, 1929. 



" For a representation of a Celtiberian plow on a coin, see Daremberg-Saglio, Diet, des Antiq., vol. 1, 

 p. 354, fig. 434. 



" Cambr. Anc. Hist., vol. 1, p. 36, 



" Bates, Oric. Eastern Libyans, p. 98, 1914, 



