Neolithic farming device in Greece 6,500 BCE, thousands of years earlier than thought
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
- A new study of flints and other stones from ancient sites in Greece has upset some previously held assumptions about the adoption and use in the Near East and Europe of the threshing sledge, one of the most fundamental devices associated with the domestic farming of cereals.
"Forget suprcivilizations and megasites. Forget megaliths and great temples.
It's often the small stuff that tells us what really went on in the past and shaped the arc of the human story.
Little bits of flint, for example".
00:00 - Introduction
01:00 - Study overview
03:55 - Sickle blades, threshing blades
06:49 - What is a threshing sledge?
08:54 - The threshing sledge in prehistory
10:52 - Prehsitoric cereal farming efficiency
11:53 - Study techniques
14:12 - Profound implications
15:58 - The sample size
18:37 - Secondary products
20:45 - Wrapping up
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I came home from a week in Lesbos today. Every taverna had one of these sledges on the wall. We visited the 20m year old petrified forest there and it's museum where the guide said that pieces of petrified trees were used on the bottom of these sledges because it is incredibly hard material
I remember watching people doing this on Patmos many years ago. The sledge was pulled round by three donkeys, the youngest one was learning how to do the work. I still have the photo.
Interesting
In Cheshire one of the tudor houses used bog oak from surrounding peat lands as it was tough as iron.
what a coincidense my friend..as a student I visited Patmos in 1975 and I was getting photos of a man making circles with four ponies...suddenly he stopped, put some rugs on the animals and left quickly for the port because a ship with tourists had just come in...10 drachmas a photo, he said@@franc9111
We are constantly learning how smart they were. Much smarter than most thought.
Born in 52 and I have seen them. My grandfather used it.
Time Team had an episode where they created a threshing sledge, done by an experimental archaeologist named Peter Reynolds, I think.
I was wondering how I already knew about threshing sledges. I guessed it may have been on an old Time Team episode, so thanks for confirming it.
Yes, it was an episode about the Romans.
Eugenio Monesma....un español tiene todo un canal donde recupera antiguos oficios europeos y españoles....muy recomendable!!!
Yes it was Peter Reynolds, I remember because I know a guy called Peter Reynolds and he is a dead ringer for the Peter Reynolds who past away not long after the episode was shot.
Archeo metal band: Treshing Sledges
I look forward to every post you create! Thank you.
I absolutly love the Idea that someone somewhere put the first thresher together and shapped the first piece of potery. We can hardly expect to find the first one of any of these inventions, its such a big world! You guys are hands down the most entertaining informers of archeology, keep it up!
As a flintknapper and a potter, I know exactly what you mean.. whenever I've made something, even if I think I've not been influenced and think my idea is new, there I find something that predates it! There is nothing new under the sun, and I always say... d is Gold!😊
I would say that this technology would indicate that farming took hold in Greece far earlier than is assumed at present
I just knew it was going to be a threshing sledge. They figure in farming museums here in Andalucia. My Spanish friend born dec.1947 has seen them in use.
Very interesting, much earlier than I thought. Winnowing itself is an art, not just because of the chaff, but also because of the various unwanted seeds that occur, such as darnel. (Wild oats. Looks just like oats, but with a far lower yield.) Thank you!
YAAASSSS!!! IVE MISSED YOU!!!!!!
Sheshing thredge Rupert? Haha interesting stuff as always guys :)
Threading sleds? Wow! Thanks for this info. The past is fascinating.
Did autocorrect strike again?
@@JeanMacgregor-ln6lr yes, it did. Lol
Thanks. Great to see a new post from the two of you.
Realmente fueron más inteligentes que en la actualidad......mucho!!!
Interesting video, had no idea about what a threshing sled was until watching this. A pretty brilliant idea.
This video reminded me about my personal take on the whole “clapham station cart ruts” on Malta. I’ve never been to Malta, I am not an expert, and I’ve only really looked at Clapham Station pictures and video online, so I can’t speak for other sites. Either way, you should take the next part with a healthy level of skepticism.
I think you had a Filipino Carabao sled type of situation going on as a regular means of transportation on Malta, which possibly created the specific ruts at Clapham as people travelled through a volcanic natural cement mud, possibly created post-Etna eruption.
Volcanic ash pushed over Malta by the Bora wind, depositing on exposed Upper Coralline Limestone, maybe mixed in with some rainwater during, or sometime after to create a chemical pozzolanic reaction to form the hydraulic limestone volcanic ash concrete. For whatever reason, a large number of people then moved through this muddy area with their sleds that later hardened. Further water erosion wears away the remaining unmixed surface layer of crumbly ash cement over time, leaving behind the layer of hardened limestone concrete that already underwent the pozzolanic reaction, which is further eroded by rain water, sitting on the original upper coralline limestone that did not react since it was not exposed to the ash, to give us our present day condition.
A good example of “volcanic ash to concrete” from one island deposited on another would be the 2021 eruption of La Soufrière on St. Vincent which had ash deposits all the way to Barbados, forming a similar type of “crumbly ash cement”. ruclips.net/video/fIJSJtzmyTw/видео.html
Again, this is specific to the clapham junction ruts which I have never been to. However, it is the only plausible solution I’ve been able to come up with from the comfort of my computer desk to explain the strange “muddiness” of the Clapham ruts.
Threshing with 1000 flint stones. Agricultural implement to separate wheat from chaff
Eugenio Monesma - Documentales
Recently posted video (last month) . Use captions.
Great piece on threshing sledges, which I hadn't heard of before. Had to do a quick evilwikki check and they say that they're mentioned on the earliest writings ever from Uruk (iraq)! 😊
I have seen and photographed these objects (with metal in place of flint) in several Spanish and Italian Museums, but was unable to find out what they were. Thanks for explaining. My guess was correct !
thats an incredible date and tool. once again i learn something when i visit your channel
What an interesting topic.
You can still see these threshing boards in Spain in some of the villages and local museums.
Great show as usual. Thank you. You really separated the wheat from the chaff on threshing sledges. One thought jumped out at me. I think more likely to find single blade pulled out possibly away from site and a threshing sledge would be valued and not left out. Any wear on it would possible make stand out a bit. Anyway, thanks again. I am going to work in threshing sledges into some upcoming conversations and be that guy.
😂
Thank you
They were quite commonly in use certainly in Greece until modern machines took over. But they were more like pre-threshing machines, crushing and breaking the cereal heads up in preparation for threshing. Also they were used to help with soil preparation and sowing.
Thanks chaps.
Thanck you....prehistory guys....loves you!!!
thanks again
Only 23 minutos for such a topic? It´s too short. We love to see you guys so... make longer videos please xD
Fantastic date map … where does that come from guys? ⚔️👍⭐️🙏👀
thank you for your content. I knew about the sledges, but what is the story about the ankle bones you mentioned. please enlighten me/us. thx T
There is a time team episode where they made a Roman threshing sledge aided but expert Peter. It explains clearly how it works n why constructed. Phil even made the flints. Check it out
There should be threshing-related videos by the homesteader/grow-my-own community. Try looking for linen "seed-to-shirt" ones or wheat "seed-to-loaf" for an overview. I'd guess those communities have some good overlap with experimental archaeology.
Also - why must a threshing floor be circular? Sure, the sledge doesn't catch what's in a corner, but nor does it get the center, so you have to rake some bits into its path, whatever the shape.
Shelling wheat would be an extremely laborious and tedious task without some sort of contraption to separate the wheat from the chaff. I bet the wheat required for the second loaf of bread baked was separated by some sort of tool.
Threshing sledges would turn the straw into chopped straw I think. It might be OK as a building material but less useful for winter bedding of livestock. Now I wonder if threshing sledges were employed in more Northern climes.
The can of worms is circular too, guys! Well done!
So some of the random chips were not so random as all that! I see lots of people eyeing their assortment of flint chips suspiciously.
I've seen a very similar thing been used in Portugal up in the mountains
Did they develop the thresher before the flail? The ancient flail for de-sheathing grain is known from Egypt to Japan.
why is the podcast not updated on the podcast app?
This is fascinating, Prehistory Guys.
I am ignorant of much of the neolithic spread of agriculture. Is there any chance of explaining the map with arrows, showing Crete and Greece at 6,200 to 6,700. I note that Cyprus shows a date of 9,000 and would like to know more about that (I lived in Cyprus for 3 years in the late 60's, and have time now to learn more about its history).
It'll all be part of the Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge project. Hope you don't have to wait too long!
@@ThePrehistoryGuys Many thanks.
SO: 1. threshing can pre-date farming as you can gather wild grains as they seem to have done. 2. there is an industrial sized late Neolithic/Bronze age threshing floor left to us, now called Temple Mount in Jerusalem, worth 50 Shekels (?30kg) of silver with the Oxen thrown in! 2Sa24:18-25
That isn't history, that is worthless fiction. Story time for soft heads.
Don't even mention that toilet paper around people that care about reality.
Poor Rupert's sniffles 😮
This marries with the early example of threshing floors as noted places.
Ive even seen a video of one in use to the accompaniement of a threshing song. Look for Threshing in Andalucia 1970s. You tube. This doesnt have the song though. 😊
Agriculture is a by product of medical cultivation that predates its by thousands of years. Wild grasses were cultivated for the fungus that grows on the grain. These fungi were used to reduce bleeding during child birth. I talk about this in my book.
The Bible mentioning separating the wheat from the chaff wouldn't be out of place with what critical scholars have to say when Psalms or the dead sea scrolls were first written.
There is a good chance Christians might try to use this one, that will be another mistake.
thank you very much for the update.
Threshing onto the ground doesn’t quite make sense. It seems it would have been a tiller instead which is more important to break the ground before seeding. Picking up separated grain from the ground would be more difficult work and sandy. Grinding up the straw would make building materials less useful perhaps.
Technologically capable humans have been around for far longer than anyone can imagine. I suspect twenty thousand or more years. Certainly before the last Ice Age 12,600 years ago. The problem is the devices made of wood or leather do not preserve well. It takes a lot of luck to find them.
Was there evidence of threshing floors as well? Would they have been stone or just hard packed earth?
You'd probably only find odd grooves in a common stone floor used for everything, like a courtyard. Somewhere they can rake and shovel without a ton of dirt.
Which reminds me, couldn't help noticing there's a bit of a similarity between the shape of Stonehenge and the stones (staddles?) that support traditional Spanish granaries or horreos... a slight difference in scale, though!
Some inventions are gradual refinements of a pre-existing more primitive tool. The threshing sledge seems to be a tool that must have been devised in one intuitive leap of the imagination! One can see a stick becoming a club, becoming a club with a knob on the end, becoming a shaft with a cobble lashed to it, becoming an axe. It's hard to imagine such a process for the development of the threshing sledge. Without all the blades--it would not have been effective as flails or the tramping of animal hoofs. So it seems unlikely that it was ever used for threshing before the concept of the blades. Though the sledge itself no doubt pre-existed--perhaps as a stone-boat used to drag rocks from the fields.
I wonder what limited human population growth before the spread of agriculture? Research consistently shows that hunter gatherers were frequently taller and healthier than farming populations due to the more varied diet. Heavy dependence on a single grain crop seems to have led to malnutrition in many cases.
Did hunter gatherers experience periods of starvation due to periodic crashes in the prey species? This seems to be a limiting factor on predator populations that depend on the snowshoe hare. There is a boom and bust cycle in hare populations caused, I believe, by the spread of disease when the population is dense. When the snowshoe hare population crashes, the predator population crashes due to starvation (whether by death from hunger, or reduced litter sizes, I don't know).
Was a similar mechanism limiting human hunter gatherer population? Is this known?
Very dense populations of hunter gatherers were possible, such as in the case of the Pacific Northwest tribes. But even in harsh conditions like the Kalahari desert, the San seem to thrive on fewer hours of work per day than an agriculturist.
I'm sure there were many ways of agitating that crop to separate it. With a board covered in flints like this thing you could just slap those plants on it by hand to get the seeds out. I doubt you would use cattle for it, at least initially.
As a ground aerator implement but not for threshing
@@GroberWeisenstein Yeah it would be good for loosening that soil before you toss some seeds around.
Where can I purchase a Neolithic package?
New Video
"Threshing with 1000 flint stones. Agricultural implement to separate wheat from chaff"
Eugenio Monesma - Documentales, youtube channel.
Released April 1st 2024
Captions in all languages (almost)
Highly recommend his channel.
Well, well.Never heard of a threshing sledge. Just hand beating..😢
😂😂😂
Funny that. My idea of oldfashioned threshing is the village women standing in a circle each with a flail beating wheat or whatever on the threshing floor/ threshold(?) singing to the rhythm. And that would be not that long ago.
So now this makes me wonder.
I am going to have to modify the diorama which is used by the bible class teachers! This is so fun. There is a tiny threshing sledge in my future!
threshing sledge stones being thrown: quite sure no archaeologist digging on a Neolithic site would throw away polished stones, and the stones in a threshing sledge would be polished on one side
And the dung from the cattle…. that’s useful too
I could listen to Michael and Rupert narrate the dictionary
Eugenio Monesma had a non-religion based documentary about threshing sledges recently, “Threshing with 1000 flint stones”
Ah, yes, thr threshing sledge guys
16:08 "The sample is small..."
Greece: Has essentially no valleys for farming... And thereby shouldn´t have ANY threshing-sledges at all...!!!
Things just keep getting older.
I've never understood how people could get cattle or donkeys to walk around on top of their grain when I know the animals eat a high fiber diet. I suspect before threshing the animals are fasted and also they dehydrate them a bit.
Well, it’s not exactly machinery. It is however, definitely an apparatus.
Levers, wedges, pulleys and screws are all machines. Why not this?
Who, in the hell, hits thumbs down?
The clumsy?
usually, that'll be conspiracy theorists and religious nuts.
Dates keep getting put back...
Given that wheat was invented in Turkia after the Ice Age ended, I would expect threshing sledges, etc., would also be developed.
Not finding the blades as such might also be because the "threshing sledge" would be only used for the one harvest and a new one built for the next harvest. No need to keep an old sledge through the rest of the year unless another use could be found for it. The sledge would be used for maybe a week then allowed to rot away over the winter and spring. Cheers
Nah, as an aerator not for threshing
Circles, meh. Thier just a passing fad. We won’t hear about circles again, ever. Lol
All piss and Wind.
What a terrible presentation. These people might be educated. But have no idea of practical agriculture
And they are candid about this. I do think that academics who theorise on the origins of agriculture were more conversant with what it takes, however.
Practical agriculture has changed quite a bit since its inception, with many local variations. What is your superior objection to this discussion?
Gentlemen, do you believe the Bible? Have you studied Genesis? Thank you. Suzanna
Was there a point?
threshing slegdes are still used in turkey...
theyre called düven in turkish...
both oxen and horses carry the sledge
the birthplace is anatolia
use automatic translation when watching the last video
ruclips.net/video/roB8QzHFx9A/видео.htmlsi=XJdY4q5YLCuKe0P3
ruclips.net/video/J40zLs8iaQU/видео.htmlsi=7naZQinWtMG7q03K
ruclips.net/video/yY-k861243Y/видео.htmlsi=epDLg6koOvCIXQXa
neolithic people didn't plow the land... they only furrowed it for seed..... plowing fields only began with steel...
There were wooden plows (ards) for thousands of years, and then the Roman plow came along that was made of iron (which Virgil talks about). That's what the word "plow" (or "plough") refers to. Modern plows are the weird plow out.
@@suburbanbanshee
the word plow doesn't have a specific origin but it means to open up... people through most of the middle ages didn't plow or till fields... they furrowed them... China invented the heavy plow in the beginning of the common era but Europe didn't adopt it till near the end of the middle ages....
Up until the 19th century in Haute Provence, up in mountain villages, they used an earlier form of a plough called - un araire - made of wood, which simply gouged out a rough furrow, but it didn't turn the sod over as a plough does. The word in Provençal comes from the Latin - aratrum. One family left their village to go and farm in a nearby valley, where conditions were of course much better. They left their araire behind because they knew it was out of date and they were ashamed of what their new neighbours might think of it.
@@franc9111
to love the earth is the epic journey of man... we do NOT understand ourselves in our reality with it.... when you till the soil... when you turn it over and leave it bare it causes oxidation of the soil through exposure to the atmosphere... there is a vast array of microbial life in the soil people do not know or understand... less do they understand plants themselves... when you kill off the first 6" of microbial life that microbial life goes up to heaven to live as carbon with wings... and 95% of all agricultural land in the world is deep tilled....
-->> Unlocking Nature's Secrets: The Mind-Blowing Rhizophagy Cycle Explained by Dr. James White - ruclips.net/video/E1g175UxSUs/видео.htmlsi=VAq4a7N8izCNJ2uv
@@franc9111
-->> ->> A full 90 per cent of the Earth's precious topsoil is likely to be at risk by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO. In a bid to protect soil globally and help farmers, the FAO warned on Wednesday that the equivalent of one soccer pitch of earth erodes, every five seconds.Jul 27, 2022..
These guys are so pretentious....it hard to watch