Neolithic farming device in Greece 6,500 BCE, thousands of years earlier than thought

forget super civilizations and megasites forget the megaliths and the 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 little bits of Flint are probably the most telling pieces of evidence as to what human beings have

been up to throughout all of prehistory but today we're looking at particular little bits of Flint that f Fus our attention on what is probably one of the most profound Revolutions in all of

human existence I'm Michael bot and I'm Rupert saskin we're the prehistory guys with more news of old stuff uh old stuff and it doesn't come

much better old stuff than this old stuff tell us ruper about the um about the study that's kicked off our our thoughts on this we we do have thoughts

on this we do thoughts we do have thoughts yes um it's really exciting actually it's a multinational team uh of researchers archaeologists have uh come

up with evidence for threshing sledges in Greece 8,000 years ago or so um why is this important well it's important

because this is at the time when farming was really kicking off in uh in Greece and beginning to move west and uh and and what is a threshing Sledge apart

from anything else I've got to be honest I'd never heard of one before this paper um but the fact that people in the early stages of farming had got it together

that the need for large scale uh threshing so basically separating grain

from uh from stem of crops uh that that they have found an actual tool a machine and they're using an animal to do this um animals attraction it's a thing that

we've talked about in the past we'll talk about it again today uh but it is it's a significant discovery that that they've made over

there I mean uh don't get us wrong I mean uh we often give the impression that we know quite a lot you know and that we've and that we've got some of

the fundament fundamentals nailed down enables us us to you know talk over the top of it you know to to bring context

for stuff but I have to say I think this one um took a knocked us for six because we're thinking how can we talk about the

movement of farming from Mesopotamia and out of Anatolia and the Levant and across the aan to Greece and Beyond

without knowing of this particular um bit of um Machinery call it that um which would have made it profound which

must have been fundamental to the ability to uh reap um the Harvest uh the

ability to create Surplus um uh and to feed people in such a way that you know populations begin to expand it's it's

quite quite quite something so we'll probably Park that you know the profound bit of the conversation maybe till a little bit later so uh hang around for

that um but but in in the meantime there's some nitty-gritty about this uh this

research um you know I mean where does it start from uh the research where do you get the impression you know that what kicked this bit of research off what were what were they looking for do

we think well when you start looking at micro blades so early sickles for example we do know that uh that uh Flint

was used widely make flint blades and uh glue them into uh whatever sort of handle you uh you want to be using different shapes were available um and

uh and so when you're looking at different types of Blade and and their different uses I think what uh what flagged things up for people was the rare occasions when they would find a

variety of blades some of which were not sharp at all some of which had clearly they had a different purpose and uh it was the um the

knowledge of of threshing sledges I don't know why I find that so difficult to say threshing sledges uh the the we've known about these they were still

using them up until in fact there are probably some places in the world where they still do but uh they they were being used up until very recently just because of modern machinery that it's

more you know it's quicker and more efficient to use the modern machinery but they were still using threshing sledges very very recently we're talking

decades ago uh so our our knowledge and understanding of threshing sledges is uh is Extreme so being able to recognize

that some of these little blades were clearly not cutting blades it looked as if they had come from this sort of usage uh so that was the game changer really

to push back this use of Machinery I'm going to call it Machinery uh to uh to that far back in Greece that I think that was what kicked it off isn't it am

I right I think I'm right yes I I think so and the other thing is that what are seem to be very very fine points that's a bit of a pun on what

we're talking about but what know as archaeological fine points is the distinguishing factor between how you uh that you can uh distinguish

between uh distinguish what a piece of stone has been used for by looking at the wear signature on the blade or

wherever it is uh on the stone and being able to distinguish the wear characteristics of a piece of stone attached to a threshing Sledge on the

botom is distinguishable from a piece of flint that's been attached to a sickle for the for for cutting before we go any further um I think we should probably

describe a threshing sledge so that there's a kind of visual thing obviously I'll put a picture up I'll put a picture

up but you know maybe some kind of uh um description I think is appropriate as well the I think the the the easiest

description is imagine a flat board uh and on the side of the flat board uh you have embedded lots and lots

and lots of stone blades so that and they're not sharp necessarily they don't need to be sharp all they need is uh to

be able to crush the uh the grass the crop agitate grass agitate it that's a good word um when you're dragging it across so it would they would have been pulled by

cattle um I suppose they could have been pulled pulled by uh uh by very strong people but no pulled by cattle and uh well I

think in some cases they were pulled by people um you know it's just a question of what you got available um asses donkeys whatever yeah indeed uh yes in

fact um any Beast of Burden you've got to feel sorry for them um but it's just dragging the board with all those little blades across the top of the grasses and

and that would uh would make would separate out the uh the the grass seeds it would separate all the Grain in theory um yeah is that a good enough

description yeah and then make it um available um for winnowing separating out you know on a good windy day yes uh

separating out the seeds from the chaff yeah indeed the wheat from the chaff um it's such a familiar phrase the wheat from the chaff I mean I suppose it's biblical isn't it

that's where it gets uh embedded and yet such an uh a phrase is such embedded in our minds and yet we've forgotten how fundamental it is to our existence you

know certainly is the way we've uh we are today with our um yeah we rather take for granted the process of the creation of bread and other side

products yes yay so I think the the other thing aspect of this is is that previously it had been assumed that the

threshing sled or the use of it was a later development um in EUR you know 2,000

years later than this uh Discovery or Than This research proves so the

the I think um the surprise in all of this or one of the surprises I should put it

that way is that this um way of doing things uh lands or is apparent in Greece in

thessaly uh at this time so shortly after uh it is known that the Neolithic package at the the first farmers in other words arrived in Greece you know

from across the aene um I mean the first record that there is of Neolithic settlement uh in

the aan is on cre I think 6,800 6,900 BCE and here we are on the mainland uh and you know the fact that

this has been worked out from several different sites gives you the impression oh this isn't a oneof this is this is this is um

already common practice on the mainland land so few years after we know the first settlements arrived in in the

aan um which um tends to tell us that the threshing Sledge would have been part of the whole Neolithic package

coming over from uh Anatolia and um the Levant do you know it it it raised a really big question for me in that um a

little while ago when we were talking about early farming and a team of researchers had done a lot of number crunching and had come up with a

statistic that uh that one man if he worked hard for three weeks at harvesting time if one man worked hard for three weeks he could gather enough

grain to feed his family for a year family of four was how it was calculated and this made me think who

hold on uh this made the Gathering of grain quite a lot more efficient so if threshing sledges were a thing back then

just how much grain could you have gathered as a group of people at harvesting time you know that suddenly the uh the possibilities for feeding a

lot of people uh they change significantly don't they so I mean in brief I mean quoting I think from the paper itself it says the

findings sh headlight on the diffusion and evolution of Neolithic farming systems from the nearest East to Europe suggesting a complex interplay of

technological transfer adaptation to new environments and socioeconomic factors in Agricultural Development there should

have just read that often at the beginning would have been sorted what we are bypassing though for the moment are

the technical aspects of this paper and of this research um because uh they they're quite deep quite Technical

and uh I'll show you some pictures of blades and uh it just boggles a mind the ability you using these techniques uh to

be able to discern use wear one sort uh for another um at these times it says by integrating traditional use wear analysis with quantitative methods the

study provides a more precise understanding of the wear patterns associated with threshing sledges

yes um it has to be said that uh you have to take your hats off to uh to the people who were doing this research

because when you look at the detail in the paper uh what they have analyzed on uh macroscopic and microscopic level how they've analyzed the blades and how they

could tell the difference between a blade that had been used for cutting for example that's quite obvious but then the blades underneath that had always been in contact with with essentially

the ground and just being dragged along and the different wear patterns uh to discern those differences on very small blades a lot of the time uh it's

impressive work it's got to be said uh yeah hats off and cedos to Nicolo matsuko uh who's the guy in

charge the uh lead author on uh on this um I'll uh I'll put up a sidebar um it'll tell you a little bit more about

uh him so hats off to him so what else can we say about this there is so much we could do a whole uh we could do several programs on

this and I think it'll probably underline when we go back to looking at Mesopotamia we talk about gcle tap to Stonehenge if we're talking about the

development of um of agriculture in the first place uh um you know very early you know with 8,000 U

BCE preot Neolithic B uh the time scale we're looking at you know for us it really focuses on that transition point

you know when do people start uh transitioning from using wild cereals to domestic cereals what happened who was

it invented the threshing Sledge hats off to him yes absolutely and also another Point that's uh that's worth bearing in mind is that

it's only in the last uh few years I think 2018 Jane gastra uh from UCL um

and her team uh they showed that uh an bones in uh in cattle had been used for traction uh in Eastern Europe so

Bulgaria Romania places like that and there was a big question of what was the traction uh you know because okay you know the animals were being used for dragging things but was it Timbers was

it this was it that and now you have a very solid reason for uh what the animals may have been uh used for uh that's quite significant I think one

thing I I didn't want to mention before we uh finish or start wrapping up is that uh what's remarkable is that there's a small sample size to this

there's a small sample size to to the whole study and that in relationship to the number of um uh sickle um blades that have been found the number of

stones that relate to the threshing Sledge is pretty tiny by comparison you know so working on a small sample sample

sides and it sort of just brings to my mind well maybe that's why not a lot of fuss has been made about the threshing Sledge as a thing because the evidence

is actually fairly slim I think it's um uh the evidence is good enough to be able to State the existence of threshing

sledges uh way back to into the prey Neolithic um but we don't enough know enough about them to be able to state that uh uh categorically it's one of

those areas where you've got to take your where you've got to uh respect the problems of archaeology in the field the sorts of stones that we're

looking at here whether it be Flint or the other stones used on the bottom of a threshing Sledge is that they're completely unremarkable

yes yeah with a with a sickle blade you've got half a chance in the field of get having your eye in and and recognizing it as a bit of worked

Flint with a threshing sledg Stone um easy to toss aside I would have thought and especially as they're finding them seems to be relatively

random I'll tell you what I would have thought you know if they were going to find a threshing Sledge it would come in a sort of there would be a bundle of flints and stones of this sort all in

one place if one had been left somewhere but the thing is with the threshing Sledge is less likely to have been taken back to the settlement that they related to so they're probably still out there

in in the wilderness or on the threshing wherever the threshing for was away from the uh the settlement a sickle blade would have been take are found in settlement contexts because they're

taken home they'd be more personal uh objects with need for attendance and and sharpening on a almost daily basis well during the harvesting time anyway yeah

that's it's a good point and and there's another point that I I think is uh interesting actually and that's um because this is uh this is integral to

they call it the secondary product Revolution this is when when when people uh so we we' got past just killing animals to eat them we had started using

them for their secondary products now whether that was milk or wool uh or traction the thing is that there was a

reason for keeping animals for different purposes and the side effects I don't mean side effects what do I mean secondary products byproducts thank you that's the word the byproduct side

effects the uh the byproduct uh one of the byproducts from this is that we're talking about a time when people were

making uh wle and dorb houses and so if you've got all your Grain Together you've got all your hay together for

threshing that when you've extracted all the grain what you're left with is straw which is there you are you got Building Material you mix that with but you know

so the fact that you've got in this one thing of extracting your food from a situation you've now got building materials as well okay food for the animals at the same time uh but that

it's a you know it's an interesting aspect of that that it it would make uh the creation of building material uh more efficient as

well well yes I mean it it's a phase shift in the whole sort of agricultural economic condition I suppose when you

you you've suddenly shifted from where you're making a a bare living out of stuff it to something where you're

actually producing byproduct as well um the ability to settle and and uh Focus your lives or build a settlement a

community around this activity becomes much more um uh uh a real Prospect um yay so um threshing sledges

who knew we didn't maybe we were the last I don't know um well and yet you know I mean like I said about sorting the the

wheat from the chaff and the mention of the threshing floor it's it's quite a a Biblical them if you do a a search on

YouTube um for uh threshing sledges or threshing floor or that you're likely to come up uh come up with a um um a uh

something from a biblically themed YouTube channel as anything else in fact I haven't found anything else it all

seem to be uh religious based and um yeah so maybe we're you know we're breaking the mold here rer maybe we should mention threshing sledges a lot

more I think we should I think and I think we probably will once I get used to saying it a little bit more clearly yes yeah yeah I mean another byproduct of thres the threshing Sledge and the

concept of the threshing floor is they got to be circular how often you know how much do circles come up in honestly opening a can of worms there

opening a can of worms yeah um so what possibilities uh lie there I don't know and how would we

go about um relating the two uh that's a subject for another day perhaps um so until uh that other day uh I think it's

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and with that is time to say bye-bye from me and a bye-bye from me and we'll see you again soon see you folks thanks all right as threshing sledges

who knew D where will we get where will it take us dear