A blade dragged through soil to break and turn it for planting — the plow expanded large-scale grain agriculture — making more soils farmable and more land workable with animal traction — and in doing so helped shape property, labor, gender roles, and the landscapes of the farming world, from the scratch-plow of the ancient Near East to the steel moldboard that stripped the American prairie and helped feed the Dust Bowl.
A blade pulled through dirt sounds like the simplest thing in the world. But for most of human history, that blade — and the animal or body dragging it — decided which soils could be farmed, how much food a region could grow, and, some researchers argue, which societies organized their households around female farm labor and which did not. The plow looks like a tool. It turned out to be a sorting mechanism for civilization.