Economics focus The plough and the now

摘要

Fernand Braudel, a renowned French historian, once described a remarkable transformation in the society of ancient Mesopotamia. Sometime before the end of the fifth millennium bc, he wrote, the fertile region between the Tigris and the Euphrates went from being one that worshipped "all-powerful mother goddesses" to one where it was "the male gods and priests who were predominant in Sumer and Babylon." The cause of this move from matriarchy, Mr Braudel argued, was neither a change in law nor a wholesale reorganisation of politics. Rather, it was a fundamental change in the technology the Meso-potamians used to produce food: the adoption of the plough.