 Local historian W.J.Varley speculates that the earliest Neolithic farmers cleared the forest to cultivate emmer wheat and barley using mattocks of bone or stone, and herded oxen, goats, sheep and pigs using dogs; they lacked ploughs and horses.The absence of lime-rich basic soils and the high rainfall might have delayed Cheshire's agricultural exploitation compared with the adjacent areas of North Wales and the Peak District, with light soils overlaying sand, gravel or sandstone being cultivated before poorly drained clay soils.