Who came up with the Scarecrow?

[Superman]

I know some people are going to think this is a stupid topic but I was wondering about the origins of scarecrows.

Who came up with them? Who predicted that they'd actually, you know, scare away crows? Believe me, I've searched on the 'net and can't find anything. I am so curious about it. When I typed in the phrase "origin of scarecrows" on Google, only ONE web page come up.

By the way, no offence to anyone, but serious replies only, folks. If you have a theory or an opinion, please share. Thank you.

[Captain Patrick]

I don't know if this is what you wanted to know but here:

Earliest known written fact about scarecrow's written in 1592. Definition of a scarecrow - That which frightens or is intended to frighten without doing physical harm. Literally that which - scares away crows, hence the name scarecrow.

[Superman]

That's a good place to start. 1592, eh? Thank you, Captain, it's somewhere to start.

[Captain Patrick]

You're welcome. Why don't you try a dictionary or something like that.

[Superman]

Well, a dictionary wasn't much help. I was interested more in who came up with the idea, where the idea came from and all that. Google was no help so I threw it out to people like you.

Good thing about a forum is there will ALWAYS be someone who has an answer to the most obscure question, or can at least point you in the right direction.

[Captain Patrick]

Their were ScareCrows in ancient Egypt.

Egyptian Scarecrows
The first scarecrows in recorded history were made along the Nile River to protect wheat fields from flocks of quail.

[Superman]

Thanks very much, Captain. I never would have guessed.

I did learn about ancient Egypt once but I never knew that. Before I came online, I thought they may have originated in rural America sometime in the 19th century.

Egypt - WOW!

Thanks again.

[Captain Patrick]

You're welcome. I am a major histroy freak, Love Histroy.

[Superman]

I got a lot of history books at home but I've never read them. I brought one on African history way back in 1998 from a book club - skimmed through it but never read it.

Ancient history was always what I enjoyed learning about at school. Modern history didn't interest me much.

[Captain Patrick]

Yeah modern history is odd but you have to look at both aspects (Anicent, Modern) to be able to learn from it.

[Theresa]

http://www.scarecrowland.co.uk/history.html


Found that. Kind of... odd, really.

[Superman]

Very true. Take a country like China for example - I don't think you can fully appreciate it's culture now unless you learn about both ancient China and 1949 when the People's Republic of China was formally established. Only by learning about both, do I think you can appreciate China as it is today. That's just one example.

[Superman]

[Theresa]

Noooo, you don't. I do things like that a lot. One night I was thinking at work, and started to wonder why dollars were called bucks. I asked the customers all night, drove them nuts, Came home and found it online.

[Superman]

It's a good question. I'm the same with any phrase or word, I wonder about it's origin. I wonder who first discovered how to milk the cow, and weird things like that.

Answers to questions like that can't be found in an encyclopaedia or dictionary, you really have to look for the answers.

Now all I need to do is find out how long the boundary between Europe and Asia has existed (especially who defined the boundary) and I'll be one happy man.

[Theresa]

Here's one I can't figure out.

The first person who ever smoked tobacco. (I suppose in a cigarette form.)
Your first cigarrette chokes you, usually, and you don't get a "good feeling" from it. Why would the first person do it again?

[Superman]

Good question.

I think it was Sir Walter Raleigh who invented cigarettes, but I'm not 100% sure. I assume the inventor tried out his invention.

What we'll never know is why he did it again - good question, though. He wouldn't have known the health risks but it couldn't have been nice, why would he continue?

[Captain Patrick]

^ Because of Tobbacos highly addiction propertys . (spelled wrong)

[Seven of Nine]

[webtaz99]

I suspect that scarecrows have been used by nearly every agrarian society in history, but only when there weren't enough children (or they were being used for other things) to chase away birds. Something so commonplace and ordinary that no one pointed them out.

[madlilnerd]

Scarecrows were invented because crows are scared of human figures, so you make a human like figure and place it in a field and it will take a while for the crows to get used to it and approach it. The best scarecrows have moving parts, such as a bucket that flaps in the wind.

As for smoking tobacco, Sir Walter Raleigh chewed it and smoked it in a pipe, but whoever made it available to the masses should have been hung drawn and quatered for murder.

[Captain Dappet]

Mind that people didn't actually know smoking was dangerous until fairly recently. People thought it was healthy for a while too.

So quartering him for murder would be wrong, as he didn't know it would kill, and probably didn't have any way of checking if it was dangerous anyway.

[madlilnerd]

Yeah, I know.... why did a plant evolve to contain nicotine anyway?

Scarecrows are frightening. And that does NOT make me a crow.