Thought Experiment

TE for today is, "what muscle are you working when you deadlift?"
Those of you who understand the CrossFit idea will immediately think, "Look, we don't care about working this muscle or that muscle, we want increased work capacity."
Exactly.
That said, and trick questions aside, most of us are hamstring deficient, core strength deficient, and glute activation deficient. DLs are a great way to address those deficiencies - 'holistically.'
Most of us will be limited by mobility or weakness in the back initially. As we dead lift, we gain some of both strength and mobility, and perhaps hamstring strength becomes the limiter. Perhaps the back gets stronger and upper torso muscles become the limiter (unable to resist spinal deflection under load). At some point, we may get stronger but find we are not aware enough of our body position when under high loads. In any event, to have the capacity to safely lift objects from the ground - whether that be a barbell, a pot or an injured buddy - we must be stronger in all the relevant muscles AND have the capacity to use them skillfully to execute the lift.
IOW - you want adaptations in your bones (more stress to the bones means they add more density/strength), your muscles, and in the nervous system that dictates how these structures interact.
This is exactly why machines have failed to produce performance improvements. They can give an improvement in contractile potential, some bone density, but almost all the nervous system adaptations to machine based training are not helpful to performance. Machines are better than nothing, and offer the benefit that any fool can use them and most won't get hurt.  But an athlete can do much better.
Dead lift early and often!