nobles to protect the population and impose justice, the peasants to labour the land and breed animals, and the clergy for the salvation of souls. The peasants worked the lands of the Lord in return for its protection. The manor was to a great extend self sufficient, the peasants laboured enough food for their population, the majority of manor had their own watermill where they could grind wheat and had necessary facilities to produces weapons for military purposes. Local trade did exist between manors especially in times of food shortage. Even though the nobles represented only about 5 % of the population, it is they that accounted for the vast majority of oversea trade, which consisted mostly of luxury goods.
             The most important economic inventions of the early Middle Ages were all concerned with the improvement of agricultural methods. The peasants gradually switch to a three-field system which allowed a field to rotate from an intensive culture to a less intensive culture to a period of rest and so on, leading to greater productivity of the soil. There was also the invention of the heavy wheeled plow, which was more suitable for heavy soil.
             No real economic expansion can be possible without improvements in the agricultural techniques. A starving population does not think about improving its means of production, it only thinks about getting food. Agricultural innovations are unarguably a positive change that allowed future generations to meet their most basic needs. Although it is true that still today a considerable proportion of the population dies because of the lack of food, it is due to the disparities in the world food distribution and not because of a shortage of it. The present total food production could
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