A sickle or reaping knife — a hand-held agricultural tool with a short handle and a flat rounded blade. The cutting part of the blade has small notches on the inner edge. The blade length is 25-50 cm, width — 4-6 cm. The crescent-shaped sickle shape allows you to grasp and cut the stems. Usually, the sickle is used for harvesting small areas with grain crops, reaping grains, cutting grasses, gardening and floriculture. Also, with the help of a sickle, fresh fodder grass is mowed for pets.
The prototype of the sickle is the reaping knife, which, unlike the sickle, had a straight shape. Stone inserts into a wooden, bone, or horn handle were made using the technique of microliths (sections of prismatic plates) or represented a single blade. Reaping knives have been used in gathering since the Paleolithic and especially since the Mesolithic. As the tool became more specialized, it acquired a curved shape that was more suitable for reaping. As a result, the sickle appeared, and this time is considered the beginning of the transition to agriculture.
In the bronze age, sickles made of baked clay, solid stone sickles were known, and metal ones also appeared. In Europe, bronze sickles spread: among the steppe people, they acquired a perfect shape with the top of the arc of bending in the first third of the blade, best suited for cutting a large bundle of ears near the ground. Researchers associate the development of arable farming with the appearance of this shape. In China, sickles with a blade set perpendicular to the handle, like a scythe, became widespread. In the first millennium BC, bronze sickles were replaced by iron ones.
The sickle crossed with a hammer was the state emblem of the USSR, personifying the unity of workers and peasants. Now it continues to be widely used as a symbols of various communist parties around the world, including Russia.
The tool displayed at the museum has a traditional semi-oval blade shape with a serrated blade. It was made in an artisanal way and used for cutting grass and crops.
The prototype of the sickle is the reaping knife, which, unlike the sickle, had a straight shape. Stone inserts into a wooden, bone, or horn handle were made using the technique of microliths (sections of prismatic plates) or represented a single blade. Reaping knives have been used in gathering since the Paleolithic and especially since the Mesolithic. As the tool became more specialized, it acquired a curved shape that was more suitable for reaping. As a result, the sickle appeared, and this time is considered the beginning of the transition to agriculture.
In the bronze age, sickles made of baked clay, solid stone sickles were known, and metal ones also appeared. In Europe, bronze sickles spread: among the steppe people, they acquired a perfect shape with the top of the arc of bending in the first third of the blade, best suited for cutting a large bundle of ears near the ground. Researchers associate the development of arable farming with the appearance of this shape. In China, sickles with a blade set perpendicular to the handle, like a scythe, became widespread. In the first millennium BC, bronze sickles were replaced by iron ones.
The sickle crossed with a hammer was the state emblem of the USSR, personifying the unity of workers and peasants. Now it continues to be widely used as a symbols of various communist parties around the world, including Russia.
The tool displayed at the museum has a traditional semi-oval blade shape with a serrated blade. It was made in an artisanal way and used for cutting grass and crops.
