Quern-stone

The millstone and grindstone or millstone called, is a device for converting grains, primarily of various types of grain into flour. Millstones were also for crushing ore, used processing of sound and crushing of coloring materials ( ocher ). A distinction between the older saddle mill, which are reciprocated, and the younger rotary mills. A set of millstones consists of a rotor (moving upper millstone also called friction ball ) and a downstream water users or jewel bearing (lower millstone, motionless ).

Epi - Palaeolithic

The oldest mill-stone is said to come from the site " Cuddie Springs " - South Eastern Australia. The date was given as about 27,000 years. The archaeological excavations to prove that in this area even more primitive cereal production has taken place, this statement is very controversial, because the crops in Australia were not native.

Neolithic

The first real millstones appear in the Levant at the end of Epipaläolithikums on ( Ohalo II). Agriculture is not to accept at this time. As Israeli biologist Lev Yadun notes were those wild cereals, which were first domesticated, confined at the end of the Ice Age to an area in northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. On the millstones so wild grain was milled. In the grinding of grain indicates a discovered in Israel millstone. Scientists analyzed the starch granules, which have survived to the grindstone. They can be assigned to specific plant species: wild barley and wild wheat. For the processing of roots or tubers found on the millstone no evidence.

The same time arisen mortar, where today, for example, in Africa Millet is mashed, were used in the Levant for mashing coloring substances. Already more than 20,000 years ago, was laid under the head of the dead of Ohalo in the Levant a millstone. Also in some burials of the Linear Pottery millstones were under the head of the dead. For this reason, some consider it the forerunner of the grave stone, but this need not be conclusive.

Iron Age

In the early La Tène period were so-called Napoleon hats, which were made of basalt lava Eifel, in use. Since the middle La Tène period is known in Central Europe, the rotary hand mill.

Bible

According to the Mosaic law millstones could not be seized because they were among the most vital objects: 5, Moses 24, 6: "One should not mill [ downstream users ] repossessing still millstone [ runner ], for he who does that, pledged life." The downstream areas was considered particularly hard: Job 41, 24: "His heart is hard as stone, and hard as a lower millstone. " Matthew 24, 41 obviously refers to a larger rotary mill, as they came up with Hellenism: "Two women shall be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and the other left. "