The farming package adopted in northern Europe in Neolithic
times had
been the product of a Mediterranean climate. In the rather different
conditions of the north, it is perhaps remarkable that it worked as
well as it did (contrast the need to domesticate new crops locally in
sub-Saharan Africa). The primary limitation of this agricultural
heritage was in fact more technological than biological: the simple
scratch plough that was adequate for the dry, light soils of
Mediterranean Europe was ineffective when pitted against the heavier
soils of the northern plains and valleys. Early agriculture in the
north had thus tended to be concentrated on land that today would be
regarded as marginal, and to leave the richest soils uncultivated. The
development of a heavier plough suitable for northern conditions seems
to have taken place around the sixth century A.D. As the new plough
became widespread in the centuries that followed, and peasant society
reshaped itself around it, the productivity of agriculture in the north
greatly increased. The effects of this were not, of course, confined to
the peasantry. The new capacity of northwestern Europe to support urban
populations and elites made possible a society that was in several ways
very different from its predecessor.
