Division of labor, as it developed during early agricultural times, eventually led to the appearance of organized communities of specialists called guilds (including merchants, craftsmen, and soldiers). From feudal times and throughout the Renaissance, guilds regulated many crafts and trained people in specialized labor.
The Industrial Revolution represented another turning point in the evolution of the division of labor. Industrialized mass production techniques allowed tasks to get broken down to the point where many don't require any specialized knowledge from workers. Mass production further reduced the cost of labor and increased the efficiency of the production process.
Before mass production, division of labor happened along the fields of expertise, and laborers were highly skilled craftspeople with narrow specialization (such as a seamstress or a jeweler). In a contemporary mass production situation, the division of laborer is usually highly task-specific (verifying the evenness of a fabrics dye, for example) and requires few specialized workers and large numbers of unskilled laborers.
