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37-472: The karambit was originally an agricultural implement designed to rake roots, gather threshing and plant rice in most of island Southeast Asia. It's a smaller variant of the Southeast Asian sickles (Indonesian celurit , arit , or sabit ; Filipino garab and karit ; and Malaysian sabit ). It still possesses many efficient uses for the modern laborer, allowing use of the blade for utility work, with

74-426: A combine harvester , which harvests, threshes, and winnows the grain while it is still in the field. The cereal may be stored in a barn or silos . A threshing bee was traditionally a bee in which local people gathered together to pitch in and get the season's threshing done. Such bees were sometimes festivals or events within larger harvest festivals . The original purpose has largely become obsolete, but

111-449: A concave sieve beneath another revolving drum or rake with pegs which rubbed the straw on to the concave and caused the grain and chaff to fall through. Another revolving rake tossed the straw out of the machine. The straw thus passing under one peg drum and over the next was subjected to a thorough rubbing and tossing which separated the grain and chaff from it. These fell on to the floor beneath, ready for winnowing. A later development of

148-577: A handheld, metal tool of any kind can cause massive damage to the equipment and those around it, especially if the tool is ejected at high velocity from rotating components. The karambit is believed to have originally been weaponized among the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra where, according to folklore, it was inspired by the claws of a tiger . As it was weaponised, the blade became more curved to maximise cutting potential. Through Indonesia 's trade network and close contact with neighbouring countries ,

185-418: A large comb, with the teeth made of hard wood and pointing upwards. The straw after being reaped was brought to this and combed through by hand, the heads being drawn off and afterwards threshed on the threshing floor by the flail. Much more recently, just such an implement, known as a "heckle", has been used for combing the bolls or heads off flax , or for straightening the fibre in the after-treatment. After

222-457: Is easily stored and transported with limited spoilage, unlike other agricultural products. Healthy grain supply and trade is important to many societies, providing a caloric base for most food systems as well as important role in animal feed for animal agriculture . The grain trade is as old as agricultural settlement, identified in many of the early cultures that adopted sedentary farming. Major societal changes have been directly connected to

259-468: Is held with the blade pointing downward from the bottom of the fist, usually curving forwards. While it is primarily used in a slashing or hooking motion, karambit with a finger ring are also used in a punching motion hitting the opponent with the finger ring. Some karambit are designed to be used in a hammering motion. This flexibility of striking methods is what makes it useful in self-defense situations. The finger guard makes it difficult to disarm and allows

296-556: Is sometimes grown as a perennial . Winter varieties are hardy enough to be planted in the autumn, becoming dormant in the winter, and harvested in spring or early summer; spring varieties are planted in spring and harvested in late summer. The term cereal is derived from the name of the Roman goddess of grain crops and fertility, Ceres . Cereals were domesticated in the Neolithic , some 8,000 years ago. Wheat and barley were domesticated in

333-715: The Fertile Crescent ; rice was domesticated in East Asia, and sorghum and millet were domesticated in West Africa. Maize was domesticated by Indigenous peoples of the Americas in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. In the 20th century, cereal productivity was greatly increased by the Green Revolution . This increase in production has accompanied a growing international trade , with some countries producing large portions of

370-486: The grain market is a major global commodity market that includes crops such as maize , rice , soybeans , wheat and other grains. Grains and cereal are synonymous with caryopses , the fruits of the grass family . In agronomy and commerce, seeds or fruits from other plant families are called grains if they resemble caryopses. For example, amaranth is sold as " grain amaranth ", and amaranth products may be described as "whole grains". The pre-Hispanic civilizations of

407-401: The straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping . Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain. Through much of the important history of agriculture , threshing was time-consuming and usually laborious, with a bushel of wheat taking about an hour. In the late 18th century, before threshing was mechanized, about one-quarter of agricultural labor

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444-421: The threshing sledge , a heavy frame mounted with three or more rollers, sometimes spiked, which revolved as it was drawn over the spread out corn by two oxen. A common sledge with a ridged or grooved bottom was also used. Similar methods to these were used by the ancient Greeks , and continued to be employed in the modern period in some places. In Italy the use of a tapering roller fastened to an upright shaft in

481-404: The 18th century there were efforts to create a power-driven threshing machine. In 1732 Michael Menzies, a Scot , obtained a patent for a power-driven machine. This was arranged to drive a large number of flails operated by water power, but was not particularly successful. The first practical effort leading in the right direction was made by a Scottish farmer named Leckie about 1758. He invented what

518-681: The Andes had grain-based food systems, but at higher elevations none of the grains was a cereal . All three grains native to the Andes ( kaniwa , kiwicha , and quinoa ) are broad-leafed plants rather than grasses such as corn, rice, and wheat. A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods . They include rice , wheat , rye , oats , barley , millet , and maize . Edible grains from other plant families, such as buckwheat and quinoa , are pseudocereals . Most cereals are annuals , producing one crop from each planting, though rice

555-586: The beater-drum was to fix iron pegs on the framework, and thus was evolved the Scottish "peg-mill," which remained the standard type for nearly a hundred years, and was adopted across the US. In Britain, the development of high-speed drums carried considerable risk, and a type of safety guard was mandated by the Threshing Machine Act of 1878. In modern developed areas, threshing is mostly done by machine , usually by

592-447: The blade, for example, could vary from one village or blacksmith to another. Some have no finger guard and some feature two blades, one on each side of the handle. Traditional types include: Additionally, modern karambit may have spikes or spurs on the front or rear ricasso , which may be intended for gripping clothing or horse tack , tearing flesh or for injecting a poison , such as the upas . The modern Western interpretation of

629-521: The centre of the thrashing floor and pulled round from the outer end by oxen seems to be a descendant of the Roman tribulum or roller sledge. The flail , a pair of connected sticks used to beat the grain, evolved from the early method of using a single stick. It, with the earlier methods, was described by Pliny the Elder in his first-century CE Natural History : "The cereals are threshed in some places with

666-420: The cereal supply for other countries. Starchy grains from broadleaf (dicot) plant families: Pulses or grain legumes , members of the pea family , have a higher protein content than most other plant foods, at around 20%, while soybeans have as much as 35%. As is the case with all other whole plant foods, pulses also contain carbohydrates and fat. Common pulses include: Oilseed grains are grown primarily for

703-482: The creation of the first temporary settlements and the division of society into classes. This assumption that grain agriculture led to early settlements and social stratification has been challenged by James Scott in his book Against the Grain . He argues that the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to settled agrarian communities was not a voluntary choice driven by the benefits of increased food production due to

740-454: The extraction of their edible oil . Vegetable oils provide dietary energy and some essential fatty acids . They are also used as fuel and lubricants. Ancient grains is a marketing term used to describe a category of grains and pseudocereals that are purported to have been minimally changed by selective breeding over recent millennia, as opposed to more widespread cereals such as corn , rice and modern varieties of wheat , which are

777-852: The festival tradition lives on in some modern examples that commemorate the past and include flea markets , hog wrestling , and dances . Grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit ( caryopsis ) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes . After being harvested, dry grains are more durable than other staple foods , such as starchy fruits ( plantains , breadfruit , etc.) and tubers ( sweet potatoes , cassava , and more). This durability has made grains well suited to industrial agriculture , since they can be mechanically harvested , transported by rail or ship, stored for long periods in silos , and milled for flour or pressed for oil . Thus,

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814-484: The finger ring eliminating the need to put the knife down between operations, if use of the fingers to manipulate the object to be worked on is required (such as the action of cutting and opening a shipping box, or removing plastic wrap from shipments, in two very basic examples). The finger ring also provides an added degree of protection against dropping the knife during use, which is particularly essential in work environments that include heavy machinery, into which dropping

851-413: The grain had been beaten out by the flail or ground out by other means the straw was carefully raked away and the corn and chaff collected to be separated by winnowing when there was a wind blowing. This consisted of tossing the mixture of corn and chaff into the air so that the wind carried away the chaff while the grain fell back on the threshing floor. The best grain fell nearest while the lightest grain

888-716: The grain trade, such as the fall of the Roman Empire . From the early modern period onward, grain trade has been an important part of colonial expansion and international power dynamics. The geopolitical dominance of countries like Australia, the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union during the 20th century was connected with their status as grain surplus countries. Those who handle grain at grain facilities may encounter numerous occupational hazards and exposures . Risks include grain entrapment , where workers are submerged in

925-409: The grain. This enclosure was placed on an elevated piece of ground so that when the straw was removed the wind blew away the chaff and left the corn. A contemporary version of this in some locations is to spread the grain on the surface of a country road so the grain may be threshed by the wheels of passing vehicles. This method, however, damaged part of the grain, and it was partially superseded by

962-407: The karambit is far removed from the original agricultural tool. They may have folding blades, are finished to a high standard, made from expensive materials as opposed to being rudimentary and makeshift and are generally larger to accommodate larger hands giving it pure shape. Threshing Threshing or thrashing is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from

999-521: The karambit. Today it is one of the main weapons of silat and is commonly used in Filipino martial arts as well. Superficially, the karambit resembles the jambiyah , although there is no connection. The jambiyah was always designed as a weapon and serves as a status marker, often made by skilled artisans and jewelers using precious stones and metals, whereas the karambit was and still remains an unadorned farmer's implement and utility knife. The karambit

1036-490: The knife to be maneuvered in the fingers without losing one's grip. The short Filipino karambit has found some favor in the West because such proponents allege the biomechanics of the weapon allow for more powerful cutting strokes and painful "ripping" wounds, and because its usability is hypothesized as more intuitive, but more difficult to master than a classic knife. There are many regional variants of karambit. The length of

1073-402: The long storage potential of grains, but rather that the shift towards settlements was a coerced transformation imposed by dominant members of a society seeking to expand control over labor and resources. The grain trade refers to the local and international trade in cereals such as wheat , barley , maize , and rice , and other food grains . Grain is an important trade item because it

1110-421: The loosened sheaves were fed, ears first, from a feeding board between two fluted revolving rollers to the beating cylinder. This cylinder or "drum" was armed with four iron-shod beaters or spars of wood parallel to its axle, and these striking the ears of corn as they protruded from the rollers knocked out the grain. The drum revolved at 200 to 250 revolutions per minute and carried the loose grain and straw on to

1147-524: The product of thousands of years of selective breeding. Ancient grains are often marketed as being more nutritious than modern grains, though their health benefits over modern varieties have been disputed by some nutritionists . Because grains are small, hard and dry, they can be stored, measured, and transported more readily than can other kinds of food crops such as fresh fruits, roots and tubers. The development of grain agriculture allowed excess food to be produced and stored easily which could have led to

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1184-444: The purpose of winnowing the corn. The flail continued to be used for special purposes such as flower seeds, and also where the quantity grown was small enough to render it not worth while to use a threshing mill. With regard to the amount of grain threshed in a day by the flail, a fair average quantity was 8 bushels of wheat, 30 bushels of oats, 16 bushels of barley, 20 bushels of beans, 8 bushels of rye and 20 bushels of buckwheat. In

1221-474: The threshing board on the threshing floor; in others they are trampled by a train of horses, and in others they are beaten with flails". It seems to have been the thrashing implement in general use in all Northern European countries, and was the chief means of thrashing grain as late as 1860. It was known in Japan very early, and was probably used in conjunction with the stripper , an implement fashioned very much like

1258-567: The weaponization of the karambit was eventually dispersed through what are now Malaysia , the Philippines , Thailand , Cambodia , Laos , and Myanmar . European accounts tell that soldiers in Indonesia were armed with a kris at their waist or back and a spear in their hands, while the karambit was used as a last resort when the fighter's other weapons were lost in battle. The renowned Bugis warriors of Sulawesi were famous for their embrace of

1295-417: Was carried some distance before falling, thus an approximate grading of the grain was obtained. It was also performed when there was no wind by fanning while pouring the mixture from a vessel. Later, a fanning or winnowing mill was invented. Barns were constructed with large doors opening in the direction of the prevailing winds so that the wind could blow right through the barn and across the threshing floor for

1332-440: Was described as a "rotary machine consisting of a set of cross arms attached to a horizontal shaft and enclosed in a cylindrical case." This machine did not work very well, but it demonstrated the superiority of the rotary motion and pointed to the ways in which thrashing machines should be constructed. True industrialization of threshing began in 1786 with the invention of the threshing machine by Scot Andrew Meikle . In this

1369-513: Was devoted to it. It is likely that in the earliest days of agriculture the little grain that was raised was shelled by hand, but as the quantity increased the grain was probably beaten out with a stick, or the sheaf beaten upon the ground. An improvement on this, as the quantity further increased, was the practice of the ancient Egyptians of spreading out the loosened sheaves on a circular enclosure of hard ground, and driving oxen , sheep or other animals round and round over it so as to tread out

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