Paragraph 1：One of the most important factors driving Europe’s slow emergence from the economic stagnation of the Early Middle Ages (circa 500-1000 B.C.E.) was the improvement of agricultural technology. One innovation was a new plow, with a curved attachment (moldboard) to turn over wet, heavy soils, and a knife (or coulter) in front of the blade to allow a deeper and easier cut. This more complex plow replaced the simpler “scratch” plow that merely made a shallow, straight furrow in the ground. In the lands around the Mediterranean, with light rains and mild winters, this had been fine, but in the wetter terrain north and west of the Danube and the Alps, such a plow left much to be desired, and it is to be wondered if it was used at all. Cleared lands would more likely have been worked by hand tilling, with little direct help from animals, and the vast forests natural to Northern Europe remained either untouched, or perhaps cleared in small sections by fire, and the land probably used only so long as the ash-enriched soil yielded good crops and then abandoned for some others similarly cleared field. Such a pattern of agriculture and settlement was no basis for sustained cultural or economic life.
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