Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Steensberg, Axel: The practice of tilling spades in Asia and Europe

human force side by side of the use of oxen, as we know from China since the last centuries before Christ. Presumably the spade is the oldest tilling implement in Asia, even if also the hoe is very old and could possibly have been used alongside with the spade from the earliest time of agriculture. But let us now concentrate our attention to the function and types of the spade proper. The most primitive type^of spade is shaped very much like a paddle, and in fact it is mostly handled like a primitive oar with the forehand in overgrip and the rear hand in under-grip. This way of handling the tilling tool can still be observed when the Papuans of New Guinea dig ditches with a modern steel spade because of old tradition and although it is a very awkward way of handling a modern spade. And also this handgrip could be observed in the middle of Italy in the 1880-es when a gang of workmen tilled the soil conducted by an overseer. But they used a foot-rest for pressure. People were acquainted with the movements of digging as well as hoeing from operations older than agriculture. In East Asia roots of taro. yams and other plants were dug up, and drainage ditches made between cultivated beds in the New Guinea highlands earlier than 300 B.C. Probably this form of cultivation started about 2000 B.C. and bones of pigs are found in New Guinea already c. 3000 B.C., what is to say that some form of husbandry had started at that time. Of course the paddle used as an oar for canoes had been known for many thousand years already. Consequently the movement or handling of the paddle spade was familiar to most people. The paddle spade spread as far eastwards as to New Zealand. But it was known also in Java in recent time, in irrigated rice fields, as Professor COLLINGWOOD related. He called this tool a digging stick, which is confusing, since the women in the Indonesian Islands use a real round and pointed digging stick like the one which the Papuan women are accustomed to use for digging up sweet potatoes and other roots. COLLINGWOOD observed that the implement was used like a spade, and that people could turn a furrow with it that looked like a ploughed furrow. "In that tribe's country, I thought at first, to judge by the fields, that they must have ploughs. As for lynchets, I never dreamed of the like. Sawah-agriculture, for growing rice, is all done in plots of land each one of which is levelled and surrounded with an earth rim, so that it can be flooded."' The paddle spade was also used on potato fields in Finland in the 19th century. However, Professor B. SRAMKO of Charkov has drawn my attention to the fact that paddle spades and digging sticks were in use in the Ural region since the 3rd to 2nd millennium B.C.; in Ukraine and Altaj they were known in the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. — and at the same time they were used in Norway. A spaded field would normally produce a better yield than a ploughed one, especially in times when ploughs were rather simple and could not be adjusted very well. In Osterbotten, Finland, it was said about 1750 that spaded fields were more level and convenient for cropping than those cultivated by the plough. Therefore smallholders as well as farmers preferred to spade their fields, especially for spring crops, but they also spaded stubbles and old grassland. However, the plough had to be used when ridges for winterrye were made. The type of spade which they used here was not the paddlespade but a spade furnished with a rather broad blade mounted with steel in a wooden