AIEALING IMPLEMENTS OPERATED EY HAND.
From the earliest historic periods to the present, the edible grains have been ground between two stones. The original grinding implement was a fixed stone, in a hollowed-out portion of which the grain was pounded with a boulder in the hand. If such a crude device is worthy the name of mill, then, indeed, corn-mills have the highest antiquity.
Primitive Schliemann, in his //los, makes mention of certain rudely-cut, nearly globular stone instruments which he found in great numbers in all the four lower prehistoric cities, and of which he says he could have collected thousands. They are of basaltic lava, granite, quartz, diorite, porphyry, or other hard and gritty stone, and in rare instances of silex. Similar implements are found in the cave-dwell ings of France, and are numerous in the most ancient Swiss lake-habita tions. In the opinion of Professor Lindenschmitt, these implements, which are of the simplest kind, were the most ancient millstones, and were employed for bruising the grain on the slabs of sandstone which abound in the lake-habitations. The fact that these stones occur in con siderable numbers in the thlevieres, many of them having a diameter of 24 inches, indicates that the grain was triturated by means of rounded pes tles (fl. i, fig. r). These, as well as the millstones, were of granite or grit, and never of limestone.
It was scarcely to be expected that the products of these primitive con trivances would be discovered, but in Eastern Switzerland there have been found the remains of bread which has been preserved by carbonization (Desor). Three varieties of wheat, two of barley, and two of millet were cultivated by the lake-dwellers.
At Wanwyl, in the canton of Lucerne, many corn-crushers have been found in the villages of the Stone Age; these are balls of hard stone 2 or 3 inches in diameter (Lubbock). Round corn-bruisers were also found in the debris of the Stone Age of Egypt. Stone balls for bruising corn are utilized by the Indians of the Yosemite Valley, in California. Their squaws pound acorns with round-stone mullers on a granite rock, whose flat sur face is worn into holes by the operation. These stationary mortars ("pot holes ") are abundant in other parts of the State.
Dr. Schliemann, quoting Helbig, remarks that "tradition has ever preserved a trace of the fact that there existed no proper apparatus for grinding at the time of the oldest Italic development, inasmuch as the mola most perfect apparatus, whose upper part was turned by a handle above the lower one—was, according to Varro, an invention of the Volsinians. This tradition, therefore, presupposed an older epoch, during which people utilized other more imperfect means, possibly with two stones, such as were used by the ancient inhabitants of the lerramarc villages for pounding the grains."
In Biblical history evidences are not wanting of the early existence of means for reducing the cereals to powder, and we may conclude that when Abraham hastened into the presence of Sarah, saying, " Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes" (Gen. xviii. 6), there must have existed some sort of mill for rapidly grinding grain into flour, and to meet the demand for "fine meal" it is evident that there was used a more efficient implement than the mill above described.
The literature of ancient decorticating- and grinding-mills and of their details of construction is exceedingly meagre. Early writings give results without mentioning the means employed for obtaining them. These mills, however, were probably like the mill shown in Figure 2 (pl. 1), which was sent to England by Dr. Livingstone from the banks of the Shire, in South Africa. This mill comprises an upper stone and a fixed nether stone with a hollow upper surface, in which the corn was ground by the action of the upper stone moved upon the lower by hand.
"The mill consists of a block of granite, syenite, or even mica schist, 15 or IS inches square and 5 or 6 inches thick, with a piece of quartz or other hard rock about the size of a half-brick, one side of which has a convex surface and fits into a hollow in the larger and stationary stone. The operator, kneeling (fig. 3), grasps the upper millstone with both hands and works it backward and forward in the hollow of the lower millstone in the same way that a baker works his dough when pressing it and pushing it from him, The weight of the person is brought to bear on the movable stone, and while it is pressed and pushed forward and backward one hand supplies, every now and then, a little grain, to be thus at first bruised and then ground on the lower stone, which is placed on the slope; so that the meal, when ground, falls on a skin or mat spread out for the purpose." The Kaffirs and other natives of Africa use a similar mill, consisting of a large stone slightly hollowed on its upper surface, and of a muller formed of a large oval pebble, which is used with a peculiar rocking and grinding motion. In Abyssinia the grain is reduced to flour on a similar nether stone by repeated grinding or rolling with a stone rolling-pin. Such mealing-stones are also in use in South America. They have occa sionally been found in Great Britain and in Ireland.