Ancient Grooming Tools – 20,000 Years in the Making

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220 – September, 2022

By Wendell Sammet

The history of grooming tools dates back to 20,000 B.C. in Asia and Africa. Archeologists have discovered in caves, paintings of men with beards and beardless. At the grave sites were found sharpened flints and sea shells. As soon as man mastered the metals–copper and bronze–the blades for razoring were hammered out.

History shows that cutlery began with the use of the sea shell and sharp flint before man-made tools. The beginning of primative craftmanship of chipping flint improved the natural sharp edges. The chipped knives of the New Stone Age were eventually replaced by copper and bronze as the metals came into use. Steel and steel alloys then replaced copper and bronze for the blades of cutting instruments. Scissors were developed in the 1200s, shortly after the sharp metal knives.

The following is a 1933 dictionary definition of scissors:

“Scissors, a cutting instrument, consisting of a pair of handle blades, pivoted on a pin in the center so that the instrument can be opened to a shape resembling a letter X, and the handles then brought together again so as to cause the edge of the blades to close and cut the object.”

The Romans were the first to invent the spring scissors as well as the forceps. The spring scissors were without a pivot; the handle doubled as a spring to open the shears and hand pressure closed them. The forceps was operated by a pivot, similar to the forceps we use to pluck hair from the ears.

Click here to read the complete article
220 – September, 2022

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