Archaeologists have discovered three wooden sickles in Italy, about 7,000 years old. About informs N+1 version.
“Agricultural” tools invented even before man mastered agriculture. The first sickles appeared before the last ice age more than 23,000 years ago, they were then used to collect wild plants, many of which were later domesticated.
Niccolo Mazzucco of the University of Pisa and colleagues from other countries, three wooden sickles in good condition at the archaeological site of La Marmotta. It dates from the Early Neolithic Age, 7570-7165 years ago, when humans were just beginning to switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Sickles have been discovered in past years, but not before.
Sickles are equipped with stone inserts for cutting grass – such tools are called microlites, they are very convenient and do not require rare stones of a special shape to make them. At the same time, sickles were significantly shorter than those used in the ancient world or in modern times. Microscopic analysis showed that all three sickles showed signs of wear. Apparently, the Neolithic inhabitants of the La Marmotta settlement uprooted plants with these tools, so certain traces remained on the stone inserts.
A paleobotanical study showed that micro-remnants of wheat and barley were found on two sickles. This indicates that the tools were used for grain harvesting. In the third sickle, the researchers found an unexpectedly large number of pollen from plants of the genus Omezhnik (oenanthe). Some types have a medicinal or psychoactive effect.
before in Poland found a buried woman with a sickle stuck in her throat so that she would not rise from the dead.