When scythes were invented, they were a very hot, new, efficient tool. Previously they only had some curved had knifes and had to harvest every few bits of wheat individually, but with a scythe you could take those wide swings and get lots of wheat at once.
Think of it as going from a handgun revolver to a machine gun, except in a way that a medieval peasant would understand.
To add to this, the image of the grim reaper carrying a scythe first started showing up during the bubonic plague in Europe, where people were dying en masse.
even better: Mowing with a scythe lets you easily deposit the grain neatly in a row (windrow), which means you can just have one person hauling ass on the scythe and another behind them bundling up the straws.
It’s honestly pretty insane how close to ideal scythe harvesting is.
When scythes were invented, they were a very hot, new, efficient tool. Previously they only had some curved had knifes and had to harvest every few bits of wheat individually, but with a scythe you could take those wide swings and get lots of wheat at once.
Think of it as going from a handgun revolver to a machine gun, except in a way that a medieval peasant would understand.
Also scythes are stupidly sharp, could have been a lot of lethal accidents at the time giving them an association with death?
To add to this, the image of the grim reaper carrying a scythe first started showing up during the bubonic plague in Europe, where people were dying en masse.
even better: Mowing with a scythe lets you easily deposit the grain neatly in a row (windrow), which means you can just have one person hauling ass on the scythe and another behind them bundling up the straws.
It’s honestly pretty insane how close to ideal scythe harvesting is.