Fascinating

[jerry mcmasters]

The plow allows more efficient agriculture, therefore they could reasonably allocate resources that would have been spent on agriculture to military purpose to gain advantage over plow-less neighbors, sure.  But would not any innovation or improvement in societal organization not have that effect?  Nothing purposeful to it.  Military advantage would be an unintended side-effect, the main effect being "more food for more of us, less chance of famine and starvation."

I think some advances would have military advantages obvious even then, such as a better way to bind a spearhead to a shaft, for instance. Maybe useful in civilian life, but its military application would be probably the first noticed. Others would be peaceful applications which would find quick military use -- say snares for trapping prey could be made larger to trap your enemy.

You're right, most military advances are by-products of civil development. But there's not much civil use for things like a club or sling. The plough gave a strategic advantage in that one could support a larger population  and therefore more fighters, but that was an ancillary effect and not its direct purpose. No one sat down to invent the plough thinking that they could thereby expand the number of fighters available.

Exactly, that puts you and I on the same page.  I am speaking contra to Ryhmics' "Frankly, I think that almost every culture that has ever turned to the plow did so, initially, because it was necessary industry for organized conflict."  I don't think that's correct.  I think agriculture laid the groundwork for military aggression and efficiency (for reasons already discussed), and any agricultural improvement (or most any other societal improvement or innovation) would just make them better at military efficiency either directly (weapon development) or indirectly (the plow, fertilizer, leaving fields fallow).  I also think Rythmics is a pretty sharp fellow so I may just not be understanding his nuance.

[pattylt]

I’ve always assumed that the sexual division of labor typically had men doing the grunt work and women assisting with all the ancillary tasks. However, many societies held women at different levels of worth. Some were purely patriarchal but some were not and valued women as more that just a domestic having women leaders and advisors. The Native Americans had varying levels of the women’s importance…some being matriarchal and deciding when and to whom to go to war.

I don’t see how a plow would make that much difference if men were already doing the majority of the harder labor…it just made it a bit easier on them. Not much different than women’s inventions that made their jobs easier. I tend to think various societies already had different importances for women and men. Perhaps some inventions solidified it more?

[mordant]

I’ve always assumed that the sexual division of labor typically had men doing the grunt work and women assisting with all the ancillary tasks.  However, many societies held women at different levels of worth.  Some were purely patriarchal but some were not and valued women as more that just a domestic having women leaders and advisors.  The Native Americans had varying levels of the women’s importance…some being matriarchal and deciding when and to whom to go to war.

I don’t see how a plow would make that much difference if men were already doing the majority of the harder labor…it just made it a bit easier on them.  Not much different than women’s inventions that made their jobs easier.  I tend to think various societies already had different importances for women and men.  Perhaps some inventions solidified it more?

Yeah association is not cause. I am not sold on plows causing gender inequality. It's bound to be more complicated and nuanced than that.

There was an interesting blurb on the Internet, with links to a documentary, about a family of siblings in some remote Turkish village that are all quadrupedal. They never walk upright. The skin on their hands is as thick as the skin on their feet.

Some scientist thinks he's found a single gene for bipedalism based on all these quadrupedal siblings having the same oddball gene. Conveniently ignoring at least one sibling who has the gene and still walks upright. Ignoring that the gene makes an area of the cerebellum smaller than normal, yet there is at least one known case, in Italy, where a guy with NO cerebellum still walks upright. Basically the asshole is trying to make a name for himself by calling these handicapped young adults a "missing link" and a "throwback" to millions of years ago. A number of scientists, rightly, take issue with this. Also, they provided a walking frame for these kids and they are excitedly learning to walk upright, genetics or no.

Any time I see a simplistic association / connection like this I take it with a huge grain of salt.

[Rhythmcs]

There's not much room for nuance in the case of china - the earliest plows are found in hunan and date to the warring states period. Qin adopted the chu plow, designed to open rground for rice..to furrow the millet and wheat in qin, in order to fuel it's war of expansion - then ongoing. The romans got theirs from north africa (read carthage), and the gauls got theirs from the mediterranian cost (read rome). Just a touch later a chinese plow would make it's way to europe through holland - circa 1kad.

All of these cultures had their own traditional methods of land use. Their own crops. Their own implements or variations of implements that are common cross-culturally separated by distance and in time. So, for example, while the hunan plows were designed to rip land for rice, the qin adopters had traditionally used machetes and hoes to grow foxtail millet and wheat in their own region. The thing about the hunan plow that interested qin producers was that it had two of the three abilities modern plows are still used for today. The first of which they already had with implements available to them. It cut deep furrows. The second they had nothing like, and would struggle in conflict against their neighbors until it had been adopted. It turned the earth while it dug those furrows. As opposed to simply pushing or pulling or otherwise piling the surface. That unlocked alot of fertility in land they had - but it also allowed them to use land they could acquire in a way that traditional qin methods could not have made possible. They could not expand without the plow.

The story of the adoption of the plow in chinese agriculture is the story of qin unification. Or so the story goes.

[brewerb]

Evolution, that's it, nothing else. Genetic or societal, doesn't matter.