10: The Plow
Compared to some of the gleaming, electronic inventions that fill our lives today, the plow doesn't seem very exciting. It's a simple cutting tool used to carve a furrow into the soil, churning it up to expose nutrients and prepare it for planting. Yet the plow is probably the one invention that made all others possible.
No one knows who invented the plow, or exactly when it came to be. It probably developed independently in a number of regions, and there is evidence of its use in prehistoric eras. Prior to the plow, humans were subsistence farmers or hunter/gatherers. Their lives were devoted solely to finding enough food to survive from one season to the next. Growing food added some stability to life, but doing it by hand was labor intensive and took a long time. The plow changed all that.
Plows made the work easier and faster. Improvements in the plow's design made farming so efficient that people could harvest far more food than they needed to survive. They could trade the surplus for goods or services. And if you could get food by trading, then you could devote your day-to-day existence to something other than growing food, such as producing the goods and services that were suddenly in demand.
The ability to trade and store materials drove the invention of written language, number systems, fortifications and militaries. As populations gathered to engage in these activities, cities grew. It's not a stretch to say that the plow is responsible for the creation of human civilization.
The Cas Chrom, or Foot Plough, was a simple but labour intensive tool for the preparation and cultivation of the soil. Highland land was farmed and divided on the basis of runrig, or lazy-beds. This method of land distribution was often communal, and the layout of the lazy-beds had to accommodate the contours and features of the rugged land. Use of the Cas Chrom and the runrig system extended well into the 20th century.
The Cas Chrom was often fabricated by the crofters themselves from available material such as driftwood found on the beaches. This implement has a long handle attached by an iron binding to a carved and formed knee of driftwood. This example has an iron sock bent around the tip, which is pushed into the ground using the foot peg. The handle is used to turn over the soil in a twisting motion. Though the Cas Chrom was suited to the rough land of the highlands, the crofter would have taken several days of hard work to plough his small lazy-bed.
9. Wheel
Baerbel Schmidt/Getty Images
The invention of the wheel enabled a variety of elaborate mechanisms like this water pump.
The wheel is another invention so ancient that we have no way of knowing who first developed it. The oldest wheel and axle mechanism we've found was near Ljubljana, Slovenia, and dates to roughly 3100 B.C.
The wheel made the transportation of goods much faster and more efficient, especially when affixed to horse-drawn chariots and carts. However, if it had been used only for transportation, the wheel wouldn't have been as much of a world-changer as it was. In fact, a lack of quality roads limited its usefulness in this regard for thousands of years.
A wheel can be used for a lot of things other than sticking them on a cart to carry grain, though. Tens of thousands of other inventions require wheels to function, from water wheels that power mills to gears and cogs that allowed even ancient cultures to create complex machines. Cranks and pulleys need wheels to work. A huge amount of modern technology still depends on the wheel, like centrifuges used in chemistry and medical research, electric motors and combustion engines, jet engines, power plants and countless others.
