When ripe wheat is harvested, the edible seed is encased in an outer husk. Before the seed can be ground into flour, or boiled into porridge, or plant

Why did we wait so long for the threshing machine?

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2021-06-30 21:30:05

When ripe wheat is harvested, the edible seed is encased in an outer husk. Before the seed can be ground into flour, or boiled into porridge, or planted in the field to produce next year’s harvest, it must be removed from the husk. This process is called threshing.

As the husk is quite hard, threshing is a violent process. Traditionally, it was done with a tool called a flail, which is simply a short stick attached by a cord to a longer handle. The grain was spread out on the ground (yes, disgusting) and beaten with the stick to open the casings.

Other methods included “treading”, in which livestock trampled the grain with their hooves (yes, even more disgusting) or dragged a sledge over the grain (the Latin word for this sledge is tribulum, from which we get the world “tribulation”).

Occasionally the grain would be rubbed against a wire screen, or placed in a sack and beaten with rocks. It’s no coincidence that the word “thrashing” is similar: it is an archaic spelling of the same term.

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