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Discovering the Threshing Board: How wheat was separated from the chaffe!

Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I escaped from a downpour into a coffee shop, “Le Pain Quotidien“ and grabbed a fresh coffee.

I was surprised to see a 2 meter vintage wooden board with inlaid sharp stone flint blades arranged in rows.



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The entire contraption seemed like a sled.

But the blades needed explanation. Didn’t seem this was for transport in snow!

Perhaps over a frozen lake?


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Then it occurred to me that this was for “cutting” and so threshing grains, recovering the seeds from all the stalks and chaffe required some efficient mechanism for running production for scaled-up agriculture.

It turns out that folk sat or stood on these boards and oxen or a horse pulled them over the later out grain on the threshing floor.

Asher
 
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Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Fascinating the workmanship that went into these threshing boards. They are still used in Turkey and in the Caucasus region.

If the fellow on the sled is not heavy enough, they add rocks!

The ancient Egyptians might have had these already, but I did find a much simpler tooth-comb and far more labor intensive design here:

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Asher
 
M

Maggie Terlecki

Moderator
Isn't it wild how a rainstorm can bring such information because you stepped into a dry café and found this threshing board. How fabulous. Glad to know also that California is getting some much needed rain lately. I read that people were driving for miles to see the wild California poppies that have not bloomed in years! Thanks for the share, Asher, this was so interesting!
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Rain and snow storms lead to happenstance.

I once fell into the arms of a beautiful woman in a Boston Snowstorm!

It was something from Zhivago! Trumpets, canons going off, the whole works! ❤Serendipity can be amazing! ...but I lost her tel number.

The next time it happened I made sure to marry her! ?

...... back to lesser “things”:

What’s so amazing is that kids who know all the scores of all the major teams and player, don’t have a clue hoectge wool gets in their socks or the beans in the can.

Theshing boards could just s well come from Mars!

Asher
 
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