92-630: Agame ( Tigrinya : ዓጋመ , lit. 'fruitful') is a province in northern Ethiopia . It includes the northeastern corner of the Ethiopian Empire , borders in Eritrea , Tembien , Kalatta Awlalo and Enderta in the south, and both the Eritrean and Ethiopian Afar lowlands in the east. This relative location of Agame is at the strategic crossroads between the Red Sea and
184-461: A PIE stem * blōkó- , which supposedly gave Old Armenian peɫem "to dig" and Welsh bwlch "crack", though the word may not be of Indo-European origin. The basic parts of the modern plough are: Other parts include the frog (or frame), runner, landside, shin, trashboard, and stilts (handles). On modern ploughs and some older ploughs, the mould board is separate from the share and runner, so these parts can be replaced without replacing
276-573: A broken piece to be replaced. In 1833 John Lane invented a steel plough. Then in 1837 John Deere introduced a steel plough; it was so much stronger than iron designs that it could work soil in US areas previously thought unsuitable for farming. Improvements on this followed developments in metallurgy: steel coulters and shares with softer iron mould boards to prevent breakage, the chilled plough (an early example of surface-hardened steel), and eventually mould boards with faces strong enough to dispense with
368-491: A clumsy construction necessitated large plough-teams, and this meant that large areas of land had to be reserved as pasture. In China, where much less animal power was required, it was not necessary to maintain the mixed arable-pasture economy typical of Europe: fallows could be reduced and the arable area expanded, and a considerably larger population could be supported than on the same amount of land in Europe. The upper parts of
460-443: A field leaves a row of sods partly in the furrows and partly on the ground lifted earlier. Visually, across the rows, there is the land on the left, a furrow (half the width of the removed strip of soil) and the removed strip almost upside-down lying on about half of the previous strip of inverted soil, and so on across the field. Each layer of soil and the gutter it came from forms a classic furrow. The mould-board plough greatly reduced
552-431: A hydraulic cylinder on each bottom. When an obstruction is encountered, the plough bottom hinges back and up in such a way as to pass over the obstruction, without stopping the tractor and plough. The bottom automatically returns to normal ploughing position as soon as the obstruction is passed, without any interruption of forward motion. The automatic reset design permits higher field efficiencies since stopping for stones
644-582: A literary medium until relatively recent times. The earliest written example of Tigrinya is a text of local laws found in the district of Logosarda, Debub Region in Southern Eritrea, which dates from the 13th century. In Eritrea, during British administration , the Ministry of Information put out a weekly newspaper in Tigrinya that cost 5 cents and sold 5,000 copies weekly. At the time, it
736-539: A marked population increase, beginning around AD 1000. Before the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220), Chinese ploughs were made almost wholly of wood except for the iron blade of the ploughshare. These were V-shaped iron pieces mounted on wooden blades and handles. By the Han period the entire ploughshare was made of cast iron . These are the earliest known heavy, mould-board iron ploughs. Several advancements such as
828-692: A millennium. Major changes in design spread widely in the Age of Enlightenment , when there was rapid progress in design. Joseph Foljambe in Rotherham , England, in 1730, used new shapes based on the Rotherham plough, which covered the mould board with iron. Unlike the heavy plough, the Rotherham, or Rotherham swing plough consisted entirely of the coulter, mould board and handles. It was much lighter than earlier designs and became common in England. It may have been
920-404: A mouldboard plough: The share , landside and mould board are bolted to the frog, which is an irregular piece of cast iron at the base of the plough body, to which the soil-wearing parts are bolted. The share is the edge that makes the horizontal cut to separate the furrow slice from the soil below. Conventional shares are shaped to penetrate soil efficiently: the tip is pointed downward to pull
1012-408: A mounted point is somewhere between the last two types. Makers have designed shares of various shapes (trapesium, diamond, etc.) with bolted point and wings, often separately renewable. Sometimes the share-cutting edge is placed well in advance of the mould board to reduce the pulverizing action of the soil. The mould board is the part of the plough that receives the furrow slice from the share. It
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#17327649308761104-499: A national level. There is no general name for the people who speak Tigrinya. In Eritrea, Tigrinya speakers are officially known as the Bəher-Təgrəñña ( ' nation of Tigrinya speakers ' ) or Tigrinya people . In Ethiopia, a Tigrayan , that is a native of Tigray , who also speaks the Tigrinya language, is referred to in Tigrinya as təgraway (male), təgrawäyti (female), tägaru (plural). Bəher roughly means "nation" in
1196-416: A plough body hits an obstruction are a cheaper overload protection device. Trip-beam ploughs are constructed with a hinge point in the beam. This is usually located some distance above the top of the plough bottom. The bottom is held in normal ploughing position by a spring-operated latch. When an obstruction is encountered, the entire bottom is released and hinges back and up to pass over the obstruction. It
1288-438: A ploughman could easily lift. This limited the construction to a small amount of wood (although metal edges were possible). These ploughs were fairly fragile and unsuitable for the heavier soils of northern Europe. The introduction of wheels to replace the runner allowed the weight of the plough to increase, and in turn the use of a larger mould-board faced in metal. These heavy ploughs led to greater food production and eventually
1380-512: A word, the cluster is broken up with the introduction of an epenthetic vowel -ə- , and when two consonants (or one geminated consonant) would otherwise end a word, the vowel -i appears after them, or (when this happens because of the presence of a suffix) -ə- is introduced before the suffix. For example, Stress is neither contrastive nor particularly salient in Tigrinya. It seems to depend on gemination, but it has apparently not been systematically investigated. Grammatically, Tigrinya
1472-405: Is ä, the first column in the table. However, since the pharyngeal and glottal consonants of Tigrinya (and other Ethiopian Semitic languages) cannot be followed by this vowel, the symbols in the first column for those consonants are pronounced with the vowel a, exactly as in the fourth column. These redundant symbols are falling into disuse in Tigrinya and are shown with a dark gray background in
1564-533: Is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame with a blade attached to cut and loosen the soil. It has been fundamental to farming for most of history. The earliest ploughs had no wheels; such a plough was known to the Romans as an aratrum . Celtic peoples first came to use wheeled ploughs in
1656-518: Is a typical Ethiopian Semitic (ES) language in most ways: Tigrinya grammar is unique within the Ethiopian Semitic language family in several ways: Tigrinya is written in the Geʽez script , originally developed for Geʽez. The Ethiopic script is an abugida : each symbol represents a consonant+vowel syllable, and the symbols are organized in groups of similar symbols on the basis of both
1748-515: Is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. Although it differs markedly from the Geʽez (Classical Ethiopic) language, for instance in having phrasal verbs, and in using a word order that places the main verb last instead of first in the sentence, there is a strong influence of Geʽez on Tigrinya literature, especially with terms relating to Christian life, Biblical names, and so on. Ge'ez, because of its status in Eritrean and Ethiopian culture, and possibly also its simple structure, acted as
1840-525: Is especially clear from verb roots in which one consonant is realized as one or the other allophone depending on what precedes it. For example, for the verb meaning ' cry ' , which has the triconsonantal root √b-k-y, there are forms such as ምብካይ /məbkaj/ ( ' to cry ' ) and በኸየ /bɐxɐjɐ/ ( ' he cried ' ), and for the verb meaning ' steal ' , which has the triconsonantal root √s-r-kʼ, there are forms such as ይሰርቁ /jəsɐrkʼu/ ( ' they steal ' ) and ይሰርቕ /jəsɐrrəxʼ/ ( ' he steals ' ). What
1932-453: Is especially interesting about these pairs of phones is that they are distinguished in Tigrinya orthography. Because allophones are completely predictable, it is quite unusual for them to be represented with distinct symbols in the written form of a language. A Tigrinya syllable may consist of a consonant-vowel or a consonant-vowel-consonant sequence. When three consonants (or one geminated consonant and one simple consonant) come together within
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#17327649308762024-464: Is indicated in brackets. Gemination , the doubling of a consonantal sound, is meaningful in Tigrinya, i.e. it affects the meaning of words. While gemination plays an important role in the morphology of the Tigrinya verb, it is normally accompanied by other marks. But there is a small number of pairs of words which are only differentiable from each other by gemination, e.g. /kʼɐrrɐbɐ/ , ( ' he brought forth ' ); /kʼɐrɐbɐ/ , ( ' he came closer ' ). All
2116-408: Is necessary to back up the tractor and plough to reset the bottom. This construction is used to protect the individual bottoms. The automatic reset design has only recently been introduced on US ploughs, but has been used extensively on European and Australian ploughs. Here the beam is hinged at a point almost above the point of the share. The bottom is held in the normal position by a set of springs or
2208-577: Is not practical on larger ploughs. When an obstruction is encountered, the spring release mechanism in the hitch permits the plough to uncouple from the tractor. When a hydraulic lift is used on the plough, the hydraulic hoses will also usually uncouple automatically when the plough uncouples. Most plough makers offer an automatic reset system for tough conditions or rocky soils. The re-set mechanism allows each body to move rearward and upward to pass without damage over obstacles such as rocks hidden below soil surface. A heavy leaf or coil-spring mechanism that holds
2300-425: Is now considered old-fashioned. These less-used series are shown with a dark gray background in the chart. The orthography does not mark gemination, so the pair of words qärräbä 'he approached', qäräbä 'he was near' are both written ቀረበ . Since such minimal pairs are very rare, this presents no problem to readers of the language. Plough A plough or ( US ) plow (both pronounced / p l aʊ / )
2392-457: Is practically eliminated. It also reduces costs for broken shares, beams and other parts. The fast resetting action helps produce a better job of ploughing, as large areas of unploughed land are not left, as they are when lifting a plough over a stone. Manual loy ploughing was a form used on small farms in Ireland where farmers could not afford more, or on hilly ground that precluded horses. It
2484-523: Is presumably why the standard Han plough team consisted of two animals only, and later teams usually of a single animal, rather than the four, six or eight draught animals common in Europe before the introduction of the curved mould-board and other new principles of design in the 18th century. Though the mould-board plough first appeared in Europe in early medieval, if not in late Roman, times, pre-eighteenth century mould-boards were usually wooden and straight (Fig. 59). The enormous labour involved in pulling such
2576-427: Is responsible for lifting and turning the furrow slice and sometimes for shattering it, depending on the type of mould board, ploughing depth and soil conditions. The intensity of this depends on the type of mould board. To suit different soil conditions and crop requirements, mould boards have been designed in different shapes, each producing its own furrow profile and surface finish, but essentially they still conform to
2668-430: Is the origin of the acre . The one-sided action gradually moved soil from the sides to the centre line of the strip. If the strip was in the same place each year, the soil built up into a ridge, creating the ridge and furrow topography still seen in some ancient fields. The turn-wrest plough allows ploughing to be done to either side. The mould board is removable, turning to the right for one furrow, then being moved to
2760-402: Is very short, except at the rear bottom of the plough. The heel or rear end of the rear land side may be subject to excessive wear if the rear wheel is out of adjustment, and so a chilled iron heel piece is frequently used. This is inexpensive and can be easily replaced. The land side is fastened to the frog by plough bolts. The frog (standard) is the central part of the plough bottom to which
2852-637: Is why they are called hand-ards . However, domestication of oxen in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilisation , perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BC, provided mankind with the draft power needed to develop the larger, animal-drawn true ard (or scratch plough). The earliest surviving evidence of ploughing has been dated to 3500–3800 BCE, on a site in Bubeneč , Czech Republic. A ploughed field, from c. 2800 BCE,
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2944-478: The Debate between the hoe and the plough . In older English, as in other Germanic languages , the plough was traditionally known by other names, e.g. Old English sulh (modern dialectal sullow ), Old High German medela , geiza , huohilī(n) , Old Norse arðr ( Swedish årder ), and Gothic hōha , all presumably referring to the ard (scratch plough). The modern word comes from
3036-598: The Italian conquest in 1936, that the Italian Viceroy Pietro Badoglio proposed in a telegram to Benito Mussolini that some of the old Ethiopian ruling class be co-opted into Italian East Africa : "In the region between Shoa and Eritrea, there were local noble families which it was not convenient to slight because they had exercised command for generations and have authority and prestige which can be valuable for us." Ethiopian records traces
3128-1000: The Old Norse plógr , and is therefore Germanic, but it appears relatively late (it is not attested in Gothic ) and is thought to be a loan from one of the north Italic languages . The German cognate is "pflug", the Dutch "ploeg" and the Swedish "plog". In many Slavic languages and in Romanian the word is "plug". Words with the same root appeared with related meanings: in Raetic plaumorati "wheeled heavy plough" ( Pliny , Nat. Hist. 18, 172), and in Latin plaustrum "farm cart", plōstrum, plōstellum "cart", and plōxenum, plōximum "cart box". The word must have originally referred to
3220-409: The carruca heavy plough in Europe seems to have accompanied adoption of the three-field system in the later 8th and early 9th centuries, leading to improved agricultural productivity per unit of land in northern Europe. This was accompanied by larger fields, known variously as carucates , ploughlands, and plough gates. The basic plough with coulter, ploughshare and mould board remained in use for
3312-462: The pharyngeal consonants . The charts below show the phonemes of Tigrinya. The sounds are shown using the same system for representing the sounds as in the rest of the article. When the IPA symbol is different, the orthography is indicated in brackets. The sounds are shown using the same system for representing the sounds as in the rest of the article. When the IPA symbol is different, the orthography
3404-425: The uvular place of articulation (although it is represented in this article as [xʼ] ). All of these possible realizations – velar ejective fricative , uvular ejective fricative , velar ejective affricate and uvular ejective affricate – are cross-linguistically very rare sounds. Since these two sounds are completely conditioned by their environments, they can be considered allophones of /k/ and /kʼ/ . This
3496-432: The 1930s. Use of the traditional plough has decreased in some areas threatened by soil damage and erosion . Used instead is shallower ploughing or other less-invasive conservation tillage . The plough appears in one of the oldest surviving pieces of written literature, from the 3rd millennium BC, where it is personified and debating with another tool, the hoe , over which is better: a Sumerian disputation poem known as
3588-693: The 19th century, Agame has been an enduring base for Lazarist Catholic evangelization in northern Ethiopia. The legacies of this process are the Catholic Cathedral and the Seminary of Adigrat and the considerable Catholic congregation of Irob-land in the lowlands. The local noble family had ruled over Agame from the "Era of the Princes" until the Derg deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. This family retained sufficient power and respect following
3680-575: The Roman era. The prime purpose of ploughing is to turn over the uppermost soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface while burying weeds and crop remains to decay . Trenches cut by the plough are called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is normally left to dry and then harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating soil evens the content of the upper 12 to 25 centimetres (5 to 10 in) layer of soil, where most plant feeder roots grow. Ploughs were initially powered by humans, but
3772-568: The Sabagadis family still governed Agame until the revolution. Topographically, the Agame area exhibits diverse physical features: mountain massifs , plains, plateaux, deep gorges and river valleys. Archaeological evidence indicates that Agame was one of the earliest places in Ethiopia to adopt ploughshare agriculture, but centuries of over-cultivation and maximum utilization of resource turned
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3864-583: The United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. In Australia, Tigrinya is one of the languages broadcast on public radio via the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service . Tigrinya dialects differ phonetically, lexically, and grammatically. No dialect appears to be accepted as a standard. Even though the most spread and used in, for example books, movies and news is the Asmara dialect. For
3956-491: The area into agriculturally marginal land. The principal inhabitants of Agame are Tigrayans with Afar & Saho minorities. The Afar-speaking population predominated in the lowlands. The north-eastern and south-eastern sector of the escarpment is principally inhabited by the Saho-speaking Irob and Afar-speakers respectively. Adigrat prevailed as the capital of Agame throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Since
4048-452: The body in its working position under normal conditions resets the plough after the obstruction is passed. Another type of auto-reset mechanism uses an oil (hydraulic) and gas accumulator. Shock loads cause the oil to compress the gas. When the gas expands again, the leg returns to its working ploughing position after passing over the obstacle. The simplest mechanism is a breaking (shear) bolt that needs replacement. Shear bolts that break when
4140-517: The bottom of the shaft with bits of rope, which made them more fragile than the Chinese ones, and iron mould-boards did not appear in Europe until the 10th century. The first indisputable appearance after the Roman period is in a northern Italian document of 643. Old words connected with the heavy plough and its use appear in Slavic , suggesting possible early use in that region. General adoption of
4232-583: The capital was located), with a distinct sub-culture that separated the two regions from that of Central Tigray ( Axum , Adwa , & Yeha ), Central Eritrea ( Seraye , Hamasien , Akele Guzai and Adulis ), and frontier areas in northern Eritrea. Agame is one of the very few place-names identified in the Adulis inscription as early as the 3rd century. It is mentioned there as an apparently viable local political entity and it seems that it continued as such from then onwards. The area also appears to have been part of
4324-457: The consonant and the vowel. In the table below the columns are assigned to the seven vowels of Tigrinya; they appear in the traditional order. The rows are assigned to the consonants, again in the traditional order. For each consonant in an abugida, there is an unmarked symbol representing that consonant followed by a canonical or inherent vowel . For the Ethiopic abugida, this canonical vowel
4416-432: The consonants, with the exception of the pharyngeal and glottal , can be geminated. The velar consonants /k/ and /kʼ/ are pronounced differently when they appear immediately after a vowel and are not geminated . In these circumstances, /k/ is pronounced as a velar fricative . /kʼ/ is pronounced as a fricative, or sometimes as an affricate . This fricative or affricate is more often pronounced further back, in
4508-446: The coulter. By the time of the early 1900s, the steel plough had many uses, shapes and names. The "two horse breaking plough" had a point and wing used to break the soil's surface and turn the dirt out and over. The "shovel plough" was used to lay off the rows. The "harrow plough" was used to cover the planted seed. The "scratcher" or "geewhiz" was used to deweed or cultivate the crop. The "bulltongue" and "sweeps" were used to plough
4600-470: The cut formed by the coulter, turning over the soil to the side. The ploughshare spread the cut horizontally below the surface, so that when the mould board lifted it, a wider area of soil was turned over. Mould boards are known in Britain from the late 6th century onwards. There are multiple types of ploughs available. When a plough hits a rock or other solid obstruction, serious damage may result unless
4692-465: The design. Using mathematical methods, he eventually arrived at a shape cast from a single piece of iron, an improvement on the Scots plough of James Anderson of Hermiston . A single-piece cast-iron plough was also developed and patented by Charles Newbold in the United States. This was again improved on by Jethro Wood , a blacksmith of Scipio, New York , who made a three-part Scots plough that allowed
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#17327649308764784-565: The eastern cultural province of ancient Aksum: to this period dates back the foundation of the monastery of Debre Damo , which played a major role in Ethiopia's ecclesiastic history throughout the Middle Ages up to the modern times. The chiefs of Agame would assume the title of Shum Agame ( Ge'ez : ሹም ዓጋመ) in medieval times and throughout history. Even though in the 16th century the Shum Agame submitted to Ahmad Ibrahim al-Gazi's army,
4876-504: The ethnic sense of the word in Tigrinya, Tigre , Amharic and Ge'ez. The Jeberti in Eritrea also speak Tigrinya. Tigrinya is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea (see Demographics of Eritrea ), and the fourth most spoken language in Ethiopia after Amharic , Oromo , and Somali . It is also spoken by large immigrant communities around the world, in countries including Sudan , Saudi Arabia , Israel, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden,
4968-475: The fields were often cross-ploughed lengthwise and breadth-wise, which tended to form squarish Celtic fields . The ard is best suited to loamy or sandy soils that are naturally fertilised by annual flooding, as in the Nile Delta and Fertile Crescent , and to a lesser extent any other cereal -growing region with light or thin soil. To grow crops regularly in less-fertile areas, it was once believed that
5060-567: The first plough widely built in factories and commercially successful there. In 1789 Robert Ransome , an iron founder in Ipswich , started casting ploughshares in a disused malting at St Margaret's Ditches. A broken mould in his foundry caused molten metal to come into contact with cold metal, making the metal surface extremely hard. This process, chilled casting, resulted in what Ransome advertised as "self-sharpening" ploughs. He received patents for his discovery. James Small further advanced
5152-412: The frame carry (from the front) the coupling for the motive power (horses), the coulter, and the landside frame. Depending on the size of the implement, and the number of furrows it is designed to plough at one time, a fore-carriage with a wheel or wheels (known as a furrow wheel and support wheel) may be added to support the frame (wheeled plough). In the case of a single-furrow plough there is one wheel at
5244-617: The frame supporting the under-share (below-ground component). The heavy iron moldboard plow was invented in China 's Han Empire in the 1st and 2nd century, and from there it spread to the Netherlands , which led the Agricultural Revolution. The mould-board plough introduced in the 18th century was a major advance in technology. Chinese ploughs from Han times on fulfill all these conditions of efficiency nicely, which
5336-419: The front and handles at the rear for the ploughman to maneuver it. When dragged through a field, the coulter cuts down into the soil and the share cuts horizontally from the previous furrow to the vertical cut. This releases a rectangular strip of sod to be lifted by the share and carried by the mould board up and over, so that the strip of sod (slice of the topsoil ) that is being cut lifts and rolls over as
5428-550: The greater part of the first quarter of the 19th century. One of the prominent warlords of northern Ethiopia, Dejazmatch Sabagadis Woldu , who ruled Tigray in the period 1822–31, had his power base in Agame. His demise at the Battle of Debre Abbay marked a decline in the political importance of Agame in the Tigrayan political arena. In the period 1896–1936, Agame was led by the descendants of Sabagadis. Dejazmatch Kassa Sebhat
5520-470: The long sides and being dragged across the short sides without ploughing. The length of the strip was limited by the distance oxen (later horses) could comfortably work without rest, and their width by the distance the plough could conveniently be dragged. These distances determined the traditional size of the strips: a furlong , (or "furrow's length", 220 yards (200 m)) by a chain (22 yards (20 m)) – an area of one acre (about 0.4 hectares); this
5612-440: The middle of the rows. All these metal plough points required being re-sharpened about every ten days, due to their use on rough and rocky ground. The first mould-board ploughs could only turn the soil over in one direction ( conventionally to the right), as dictated by the shape of the mould board; therefore, a field had to be ploughed in long strips, or lands . The plough was usually worked clockwise around each land, ploughing
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#17327649308765704-575: The mould board. Abrasion eventually wears out all parts of a plough that come into contact with the soil. When agriculture was first developed , soil was turned using simple hand-held digging sticks and hoes . These were used in highly fertile areas, such as the banks of the Nile , where the annual flood rejuvenates the soil, to create drills (furrows) in which to plant seeds. Digging sticks, hoes and mattocks were not invented in any one place, and hoe cultivation must have been common everywhere agriculture
5796-477: The northern Tigrayan plateau on the other. In pre-1991, Agame had a total area of about 4,889 square kilometres (1,888 sq mi) with an estimated population of 344,800. Agame is one of the oldest regions of Ethiopia, being part of the Kingdom of D'mt in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea that would develop into the Kingdom of Aksum . It was a main center of Aksumite culture (second only to Central Tigray, where
5888-403: The original plough body classification. The various types have been traditionally classified as general purpose, digger, and semi-digger, as described below. The land side is the flat plate which presses against and transmits the lateral thrust of the plough bottom to the furrow wall. It helps to resist the side pressure exerted by the furrow slice on the mould board. It also helps to stabilise
5980-478: The origins of this family to the marriage of King Margedir of Rome and Eleni, sister of King Solomon . The current lineage of the rulers of Agame is as follows: Tigrinya language Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ , Təgrəñña ), sometimes spelled Tigrigna , is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia 's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples respectively. It
6072-410: The other components of the bottom are attached. It is an irregular piece of metal, which may be made of cast iron for cast iron ploughs or welded steel for steel ploughs. The frog is the foundation of the plough bottom. It takes the shock resulting from hitting rocks, and therefore should be tough and strong. The frog is in turn fastened to the plough frame. A runner extending from behind the share to
6164-536: The other is borne upside-down in the air. At the end of each row the paired ploughs are turned over so that the other can be used along the next furrow, again working the field in a consistent direction. These ploughs date back to the days of the steam engine and the horse. In almost universal use on farms, they have right and left-handed mould boards, enabling them to work up and down the same furrow. Reversible ploughs may either be mounted or semi-mounted and are heavier and more expensive than right-handed models, but have
6256-404: The other side of the plough to turn to the left. (The coulter and ploughshare are fixed.) Thus adjacent furrows can be ploughed in opposite directions, allowing ploughing to proceed continuously along the field and so avoid the ridge–furrow topography. The reversible (or roll-over) plough has two mould-board ploughs mounted back to back, one turning right, the other left. While one works the land,
6348-514: The physical inaccessibility of lowland Agame suited the purpose of providing safe hideouts to various political, religious and social dissidents. It remained the centre of prominent monasteries such as Gunda Gunde Maryam, which was established by the Stephanites ( Abba Estifanos of Gwendagwende ) during the 15th century. Agame was mentioned in the 16th century charter written during the reign of Emperor Lebna Dengel . During medieval times, Agame
6440-455: The plough is equipped with some safety device. The damage may be bent or broken shares, bent standards, beams or braces. The three basic types of safety devices used on mould-board ploughs are a spring release device in the plough drawbar, a trip beam construction on each bottom, and an automatic reset design on each bottom. The spring release was used in the past almost universally on trailing-type ploughs with one to three or four bottoms. It
6532-410: The plough moves forward, dropping back upside down into the furrow and onto the turned soil from the previous run down the field. Each gap in the ground where the soil has been lifted and moved across (usually to the right) is called a furrow. The sod lifted from it rests at an angle of about 45 degrees in the adjacent furrow, up the back of the sod from the previous run. A series of ploughings run down
6624-487: The plough to create the desired width of furrow. The share is a plane part with a trapezoidal shape. It cuts the soil horizontally and lifts it. Common types are regular, winged-plane, bar-point, and share with mounted or welded point. The regular share conserves a good cut but is recommended on stone-free soils. The winged-plane share is used on heavy soil with a moderate amount of stones. The bar-point share can be used in extreme conditions (hard and stony soils). The share with
6716-427: The plough while in operation. The rear bottom end of the landslide, which rubs against the furrow sole, is known as the heel. A heel iron is bolted to the end of the rear of the land side and helps to support the back of the plough. The land side and share are arranged to give a "lead" towards the unploughed land, so helping to sustain the correct furrow width. The land side is usually made of solid medium-carbon steel and
6808-406: The rear of the plough controls the direction of the plough, because it is held against the bottom land-side corner of the new furrow being formed. The holding force is the weight of the sod, as it is raised and rotated, on the curved surface of the mould board. Because of this runner, the mould board plough is harder to turn around than the scratch plough, and its introduction brought about a change in
6900-486: The representation of Tigrinya sounds, this article uses a modification of a system that is common (though not universal) among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages , but differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet . Tigrinya has a fairly typical set of phonemes for an Ethiopian Semitic language. That is, there is a set of ejective consonants and
6992-617: The shape of fields – from mostly square fields into longer rectangular "strips" (hence the introduction of the furlong ). An advance on the basic design was the iron ploughshare, a replaceable horizontal cutting surface mounted on the tip of the share. The earliest ploughs with a detachable and replaceable share date from around 1000 BC in the Ancient Near East , and the earliest iron ploughshares from about 500 BC in China. Early mould boards were wedges that sat inside
7084-442: The share into the ground to a regular depth. The clearance, usually referred to as suction or down suction, varies with different makes and types of plough. Share configuration is related to soil type, particularly in the down suction or concavity of its lower surface. Generally three degrees of clearance or down suction are recognised: regular for light soil, deep for ordinary dry soil, and double-deep for clay and gravelly soils. As
7176-457: The share wears away, it becomes blunt and the plough will require more power to pull it through the soil. A plough body with a worn share will not have enough "suck" to ensure it delves the ground to its full working depth. In addition, the share has horizontal suction related to the amount its point is bent out of line with the land side. Down suction causes the plough to penetrate to proper depth when pulled forward, while horizontal suction causes
7268-411: The soil must be turned to bring nutrients to the surface. A major advance for this type of farming was the turn plough, also known as the mould-board plough (UK), moldboard plow (U.S.), or frame-plough. A coulter (or skeith) could be added to cut vertically into the ground just ahead of the share (in front of the frog), a wedge-shaped cutting edge at the bottom front of the mould board with the landside of
7360-409: The stilt (handle) and the other a share (cutting blade) dragged through the topsoil to cut a shallow furrow suitable for most cereal crops. The ard does not clear new land well, so hoes or mattocks had to be used to pull up grass and undergrowth, and a hand-held, coulter -like ristle could be made to cut deeper furrows ahead of the share. Because the ard left a strip of undisturbed earth between furrows,
7452-552: The table. When it is necessary to represent a consonant with no following vowel, the consonant + ə form is used (the symbol in the sixth column). For example, the word ʼǝntay 'what?' is written እንታይ , literally ʼǝ-nǝ-ta-yǝ. Since some of the distinctions that were apparently made in Ge'ez have been lost in Tigrinya, there are two rows of symbols each for the consonants ‹ḥ›, ‹s›, and ‹sʼ›. In Eritrea, for ‹s› and ‹sʼ›, at least, one of these has fallen into disuse in Tigrinya and
7544-640: The three-shared plow, the plow-and-sow implement, and the harrow were developed subsequently. By the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, Chinese ploughs had reached a state of development that would not be seen in Holland until the 17th century. The Romans achieved a heavy-wheeled mould-board plough in the late 3rd and 4th century AD, for which archaeological evidence appears, for instance, in Roman Britain . The Greek and Roman mould-boards were usually tied to
7636-423: The time needed to prepare a field and so allowed a farmer to work a larger area of land. In addition, the resulting pattern of low (under the mould board) and high (beside it) ridges in the soil forms water channels, allowing the soil to drain. In areas where snow build-up causes difficulties, this lets farmers plant the soil earlier, as the meltwater run-off drains away more quickly. There are five major parts of
7728-558: The use of farm animals is considerably more efficient. The earliest animals worked were oxen. Later, horses and mules were used in many areas. With the Industrial Revolution came the possibility of steam engines to pull ploughs. These in turn were superseded by internal-combustion -powered tractors in the early 20th century. The Petty Plough was a notable invention for ploughing out orchard strips in Australia in
7820-450: The usual seven-vowel system. Unlike many of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages, Tigrinya has preserved the two pharyngeal consonants which were apparently part of the ancient Geʽez language and which, along with [ xʼ ] , voiceless velar ejective fricative or voiceless uvular ejective fricative , make it easy to distinguish spoken Tigrinya from related languages such as Amharic, though not from Tigre, which has also maintained
7912-591: The wheeled heavy plough, common in Roman north-western Europe by the 5th century AD. Many view plough as a derivative of the verb * plehan ~ * plegan 'to take responsibility' (cf. German pflegen 'to look after, nurse'), which would explain, for example, Old High German pfluog with its double meaning of 'plough' and 'livelihood'. Guus Kroonen (2013) proposes a vṛddhi -derivative of * plag/kkōn 'sod' (cf. Dutch plag 'sod', Old Norse plagg 'cloth', Middle High German pflacke 'rag, patch, stain'). Finally, Vladimir Orel (2003) tentatively attaches plough to
8004-402: Was also discovered at Kalibangan , India. A terracotta model of the early ards was found at Banawali , India, giving insight into the form of the tool used. The ard remained easy to replace if it became damaged and easy to replicate. The earliest was the bow ard, which consists of a draft-pole (or beam) pierced by a thinner vertical pointed stick called the head (or body), with one end being
8096-581: Was part of a larger province of Bur in Ethiopia, which also included some northeastern Afar lowlands, and the Buri Peninsula ; Agame and Akkele Guzay were part of "Upper" (La'ilay) Bur, while the lowlands were further distinguished as "Lower" (Tahtay). Agame appears on indigenous maps of the northern Horn of Africa in the 15th century. Agame had a major role to play in the political ascendancy of Tigray in Christian Ethiopia during
8188-496: Was practised. Hoe-farming is the traditional tillage method in tropical or sub-tropical regions, which are marked by stony soils, steep slope gradients, predominant root crops, and coarse grains grown at wide intervals. While hoe-agriculture is best suited to these regions, it is used in some fashion everywhere. Some ancient hoes, like the Egyptian mr , were pointed and strong enough to clear rocky soil and make seed drills , which
8280-566: Was reported to be the first of its kind. Tigrinya (along with Arabic) was one of Eritrea's official languages during its short-lived federation with Ethiopia . In 1958, it was replaced by the Southern Ethiopic language Amharic prior to its annexation. Upon Eritrea's independence in 1991, Tigrinya retained the status of working language in the country. Eritrea was the only state in the world to officially recognize Tigrinya until 2020, when Ethiopia made changes to recognize Tigrinya on
8372-584: Was the chief of the area during the Italian war 1935–36. He mobilized the people of Agame and engaged the Italians at the battle of Fagena, in the Afar escarpment east of Addigrat. But he was defeated and ultimately surrendered. During 1941–74 Agame existed as an awraja (in the province of Tigray), having five districts (woreda) under it: Gulo Makeda, Ganta Afshum, Subja Sase, Dallol and Kalatte Balaza. Descendants of
8464-399: Was used up until the 1960s in poorer land. It suited the moist Irish climate, as the trenches formed by turning in the sods provided drainage. It allowed potatoes to be grown in bogs (peat swamps) and on otherwise unfarmed mountain slopes. In the basic mould-board plough, the depth of cut is adjusted by lifting against the runner in the furrow, which limited the weight of the plough to what
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