Foot plough

The foot plough is a type of plough used like a spade with the foot in order to cultivate the ground.
Before the widespread use of metal farm tools from Europe, the Māori people used the kō, a version of the foot plough made entirely of wood.
Prevalent in northwest Scotland, the Scottish Gaelic language contains many terms for the various varieties, for example cas-dhìreach 'straight foot' for the straighter variety and on, but cas-chrom 'bent foot' is the most common variety and refers to the crooked spade. The cas-chrom went out of use in the Hebrides in the early years of the 20th century.
Describing the Scottish Highlands around 1760, Samuel Smiles wrote:
It was an implement of tillage peculiar to the Highlands, used for turning the ground where an ordinary plough could not work on account of the rough, stony, uneven ground. It is of great antiquity and is described as follows by Armstrong:
In the Western Isles, with a foot plough, one man can perhaps do the work of four men with an ordinary spade, and while it is disadvantaged compared to a horse-plough, it is well suited to the country.
The most advanced agricultural tool known in the New World before the coming of the Europeans was the Andean footplough, also known as the Chakitaqlla or simply taklla. It evolved from the digging stick and combined three advantages: metal point, curved handle, and footrest. No other indigenous tool utilized the pressure of the foot in digging up the sod which made it different from all farming implements known elsewhere in the Americas in pre-Columbian times. Although Chakitaqlla is a relatively simple instrument, it has persisted long after more sophisticated technology was introduced into the Central Andes, and its enduring presence demonstrates that more advanced innovations do not necessarily displace primitive forms that under certain conditions may be more efficient.
Historic distribution and the current diversity of forms point to the mountainous region of Southern Peru as the likely place of origin of the chakitaqlla. With the expansion of the Inca Empire, the taklla was carried north to Ecuador and south to Bolivia where early colonial writings confirmed its presence. It probably never occurred in Southern Chile, either before or after the conquest by the Spaniards.
It is probable, nevertheless, that agricultural peoples living on the Peruvian coast long before the Incas contributed to the idea of the taklla. Copper-shod digging sticks known by the Mochica culture (c. 500 CE) may have been a forerunner of the taklla. Pottery representations and remains of proto-taklla tools from the Chimu culture (1300 CE) on the coast verifies its development by at least that time. However, the friable soils of the coastal desert were easily turned without the taklla, and the incentive to develop such a tool probably came from the adjacent Highlands.
Men wielded the plow, called a chakitaqlla. It was made of a pole about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) long with a pointed end of wood or bronze, a handle or curvature at the top, and a foot rest lashed near the bottom.
The Inca Emperor and accompanying provincial lords used foot ploughs in the "opening of the earth" ceremony at the beginning of the agricultural cycle. Incan agriculture used the chaki taklla or taklla, a type of foot plough.
Chakitaqllas are still used by peasant farmers of native heritage in some parts of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. Modern chakitaqllas have a steel point.
This article incorporates text from Dwelly's [Scottish] Gaelic Dictionary (1911).