The plow and specialization

Overcoming Bias leads me to an interesting article on the plow vs hoe farming, and its effect on specialization in families. When a society switches from a hoe to a plow, the society become patriarchal instead of matriarchal. Men specialize in the plow and women in the home.

What happens in our brain to allow that? Still we speculate, but I speculate that specialization has much to do with right/left domination in the hemisphere. We had developed the ability to put one hemisphere in charge for a time, a Freudian superego in which the dominating hemisphere forces the personality to act in terms of a role model. This remain unproven, but here is Wiki:

Brain hemisphere division of labor

Division of labor is the most commonly accepted theory of handedness.[citation needed] The premise of this theory is that since both speaking and handiwork require fine motor skills, having one hemisphere of the brain do both would be more efficient than having it divided up. Also, if all functions were carried out in both hemispheres, the size of the brain and its energy consumption would increase, which is not affordable. Since in most people, the left side of the brain controls speaking, right-handedness would prevail. It also predicts that left-handed people would have a reversed brain division of labor.

Consider hemisphere specialization in development. It occurs early in childhood and requires practice. So, we are left with the conundrum of the Industrial Revolution. Before 1720, we expected children to die of the plague and they were not induced to practice. After we defeat the plague, handedness is developed earlier with toys, as the parents expect the children to live. If specialization and handedness go hand in hand, then one almost has proven the plague theory of the IR.