page_title: Threshing board
section_title: Traditional threshing systems
hierarchical_section_title: Threshing board / Traditional threshing systems
context_page_description: A threshing board is an obsolete agricultural implement used to separate cereals from their straw; that is, to thresh. It is a thick board, made with a variety of slats, with a shape between rectangular and trapezoidal, with the frontal part somewhat narrower and curved upward and whose bottom is covered with lithic flakes or razor-like metal blades.
  One form, once common by the Mediterranean Sea, was "about three to four feet wide and six feet deep, consisting of two or three wooden planks assembled to one another, of more than four inches wide, in which is several hard and cutting flints crammed into the bottom part pull along over the grains. In the rear part there is a large ring nailed, that is used to tie the rope that pulls it and to which two horses are usually harnessed; and a person, sitting on the threshing board, drives it in circles over the cereal that is spread on the threshing floor. Should the person need more weight, he need only put some big stones over it."
  The dimensions of threshing boards varied. In Spain, they could be up to approximately two metres in length and a metre and a half wide.
context_section_description: Until the arrival of combine harvesters, which reap, thresh and clean grain in a single process, the traditional methods of threshing cereals and some legumes were those described by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, with three variants: "The cereals are threshed in some places with 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".
  In this manner, Pliny refers to the three traditional methods of threshing grain:
  Beating sheafs of grain against a crushing stone or a crushing lump of wood.
  Trampling grain spread on the threshing floor; the trampling would be done by a train of mules or oxen
  Threshing with flails, a type of traditional wooden tool with which one strikes the pile of grain until the seed is separated from the chaff.
caption: Preparing sheafs to bring to the threshing floor
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