What if medieval agricultural advancments are made earlier?

during much of the middle ages, the agricultural situation in europe changed a lot - the heavy plow allowed large population in eastern europe, and the three-field system produced generally larger yields.
but what if these things were made earlier, during middle or late antiquity? the ancient greeks and pheonicians may not really need a heavy plow, but what if this invention spread to roman gaul/britannia and to the germanic/slavic tribes during the beginning of the first century AD, for example? could this cause the many semi-nomads in northern europe to settle down and form fully-sedentary societies earlier?
 
Heavy plough tends to be the old chestnut of technological alternate history, but is far from living up to their alleged reputation.

First, heavy plough was adopted quite late in Mediterranean Europe because it's not really adapted to the kind of soils or agriculture practiced there, which never prevented these regions to be highly productive. Northern Europe beneficied from this because the soils were hard to work with before, but it doesn't mean at the latest it's an universal benefit objectively.

Then, ploughs of Roman antiquity were far from being unefficient, and you had several variants of mouldboard ploughs, shares and coulters that were close enough of early medieval heavy plough in use in Britain and northern Gaul during the imperial period, comparable to what Barbarians used. In fact, most of XIXth and early XXth reconstructions of Roman agricultural tools seems to have taken as a principle to do so in the least efficient and workable way, when we know that either plough or collars of Antiquity were more workable.

Now, you could indeed have more agricultural development in an ATL, which would have important consequences in Britain and northern Gaul as large. But it would be regional consequences, not a game-changer for Roman empire economy.

could this cause the many semi-nomads in northern europe to settle down and form fully-sedentary societies earlier?
I'm skeptical : it never was the case for most Pontic or Eastern nomadic people, even when they neighbored or dominated peoples that used heavy ploughs.
We could argue that heavy plough, in the case of Roman military victory against federates early on, could have helped the latter to settle more stably in Illyricum and Moesia : but I'm not sure it was something that couldn't have been done along historically used tools eventually. Maybe more quickly than IOTL...
 
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RousseauX

Donor
Heavy plough tends to be the old chestnut of technological alternate history, but is far from living up to their alleged reputation.

First, heavy plough was adopted quite late in Mediterranean Europe because it's not really adapted to the kind of soils or agriculture practiced there, which never prevented these regions to be highly productive. Northern Europe beneficied from this because the soils were hard to work with before, but it doesn't mean at the latest it's an universal benefit objectively.

Then, ploughs of Roman antiquity were far from being unefficient, and you had several variants of mouldboard ploughs, shares and coulters that were close enough of early medieval heavy plough in use in Britain and northern Gaul during the imperial period, comparable to what Barbarians used. In fact, most of XIXth and early XXth reconstructions of Roman agricultural tools seems to have taken as a principle to do so in the least efficient and workable way, when we know that either plough or collars of Antiquity were more workable.

Now, you could indeed have more agricultural development in an ATL, which would have important consequences in Britain and northern Gaul as large. But it would be regional consequences, not a game-changer for Roman empire economy.


I'm skeptical : it never was the case for most Pontic or Eastern nomadic people, even when they neighbored or dominated peoples that used heavy ploughs.
We could argue that heavy plough, in the case of Roman military victory against federates early on, could have helped the latter to settle more stably in Illyricum and Moesia : but I'm not sure it was something that couldn't have been done along historically used tools eventually. Maybe more quickly than IOTL...
what about stuff like the two/three fields system or the horse collar?
 
The Romans had 2 crop rotations as per the saying of "Food, feed, fallow". I think the overall population levels need to be considered, take for example the Po-Valley; when the Romans first expelled the Celts around the 2nd century BC it was still woodlands. It was only after centuries of development that the Valley became a populous land of farms and cities, it took another 2 centuries from the 11th-13th to drain, irrigate, and canalize the region to be fully productive with technology that existed since Roman times. When it came down to it a good deal of developments took time, people, stability, and willingness.

One thing to keep in mind was that agriculture came hand in hand with transportation technology & networks; a food surplus is of no use if it couldn't be transported to markets/a granary/famine regions. One can't exist without the other and at the same time transport was dependent on political authority and jurisdictions, the Balkans for example was often fragmented as a borderline between rival kingdoms.
 
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what about stuff like the two/three fields system or the horse collar?

The multiple-field system really needs the medieval warm period, I'd argue, to really take off. Without the increased yields and lower risks of a longer growing system, the guranteed higher (put lower potential) output of the land was far more desirable for the average farmer in order to insure there was enough produce to avoid a "black swan" harvest from creating regional food shortages.
 
what about stuff like the two/three fields syste
IRRC, two field system was known in Late Antiquity, and the three-fields system by Merovingian or Carolingian period.It might be an actual workable important change change, compared to the two others in northern and central Europe occupied by Rome:but even in the XIXth, southern European farming was based on a two fields rotating system (here in France). Of course, there's the matter of habits which aren't always following strict productive necessities or possibilities. Still, the productive advantage of the three-field system isn't that obvious and is essentially reaching the same capacities than the two-field system usually : you have to wait chemical use to really see a difference. The main difference is that it allows to cultivate spring crops which is harder to do more you go South.

or the horse collar?
Roman horse collar was not nearly as limited and ill-concieved that it was made by Levebre des Noettes (which somehow remains a reference for some), as in shocking the horse. It was clearly perfectible, as the change allowed to use horses for ploughing soils like in northern Europe. And then we're back to the constatation that Mediterranean-based farming and Northern European-based farming are different, hence why use of horse to plough was limited at best, and generally exceptionnal, in medieval southern Europe for farming work.

Don't get me wrong : Roman agriculture was perfectible, and a slow mix and adaptation to new techniques certainly marked medieval Mediterranean agricultural production. But most of what managed to transform northern Europe agriculture wasn't directly appliable to Late Antiquity (or in fact, even XIXth century) practices in southern Europe (which I admittedly make much more unified geographically than it really was, for simplicity's sake)
 
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The multiple-field system really needs the medieval warm period, I'd argue, to really take off. Without the increased yields and lower risks of a longer growing system, the guranteed higher (put lower potential) output of the land was far more desirable for the average farmer in order to insure there was enough produce to avoid a "black swan" harvest from creating regional food shortages.
The bigger output of the land isn't that obvious : even by the XIXth, we're talking about an harvest every two year for the biennal rotation, an harvest and half every three years for the triennal rotation, which is sensibly the same.
A greater productivity comes from other devices, which can really work well arguably with a fitting crop rotation : even there, you had a factual mix of biennal and triennal is some regions. Note that it allowed (or, rather maybe implied) a greater crop diversity.
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahess_0395-2649_1976_num_31_3_293741
 
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