The Romans may have known the ridge plough which turns over
the soil to one side, but under the natural conditions in which they lived they did not require it and thus did not themselves possess it. Thus the Germans could not have passed on a Roman-Germanic
plough to the Western Slavs. In this sense the results of the latest
research correct the conclusions of L. Niederle on this matter. All
the more remarkable, however, is his final supposition that
the origin of the plough. i.e. a tilling implement provided with a
asymmetrical mouldboard, must be sought in the East. This is
supported by the number of asymmetrical ploughshares (pre-supposing a mouldboard), and the even more frequent horizontally attached symmetrical ploughshare with small coulter,
assigned to the period from the 5lh to the beginning of the13th
century, found on sites indicating the road from Southern Russia
across Southern Poland to Czechoslovakia. This is a territory whose natural conditions demand cultivation by ridge plough. The
existence of this ancient cultural highway is confirmed too by several typological similarities in the construction of the tilling
implements. Thus practically in the same territory we find in
recent tilling implemenls the type of plough with double stilt sole, further with the forward leaning sheat both in ards and ploughs of
quadrangular construction and finally even wilh the beam parallelly attached lo the heel of the sole by its bent hindmost part.
The discovery in the peat-bog at Sergeyev of the wooden plough, preserved in the museum at Chernigov, provides very strong support for Niederle’s idea. It consists of naturally grown piece of oak, is of the sole-type with arched beam. The massive construction where the conic sole passes into the beam is somewhal broader on the right side. Its right edge is hollowed inlo a paraboloid shape widening towards the back. This plane, finished above by a sharp ridge, represents the beginnings of the mouldboard. B. A. Shramko assigned the Sergeyev plough to the middle of the first millenary B. C. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát