What a Little Plow Can Tell Us.

www.unc.edu/~nielsen/ soci011/hs7/hs7003.jpg

This blog is going to be rather short. I bring up the plow because when I read this little statement by Charles Hamilton Smith in his book “Ancient Costumes of Great Britain and Ireland,” it made me sit up and take note.

British mode of tilling the ground was the over treading plough and the mattock. This mode was practiced by the Egyptians. – page 30.

This is a handwritten note in a notebook, so I’m likely paraphrasing rather than quoting.

But I was intrigued. Britain is a long way from Egypt. Of course, the Egyptian style plow had been around for a long time, and there are many underdeveloped countries that still use this kind of plow today. But there are other ancient cultures that had no plow whatsoever, like the Mayan. To top it off, the Bretons made theirs of iron. They were great metal workers.

We know good technology travels. Look how fast printing traveled and the computer. So who brought this plow to the British Isles? Was it developed in isolation? Probably not. It was likely transported from the Middle East. But who brought it?

Ah, there’s the question! Could it be those Israelites just show up everywhere?

Next: The Pen-dragon.