Gems from the Mills Archive. An ancient milling revolution
Full details
| Authors & editors | |
| Publisher | Milling & Grain |
| Year of publication | 2023 June |
| Languages | |
| Medium | Digital |
| Edition | 1 |
| Topics | |
| Tags | |
| Scope & content | It’s the oldest item in our collections – a heavy, smooth, conical lump of rock, about nine inches across and four and a half inches high. Known as a beehive quern (due its similarity in shape to a traditional dome-shaped wicker beehive), it was found in north west Essex in the Stansted area and is made of Hertfordshire puddingstone. Although this ancient artefact is probably over 2000 years old, in its day it was a revolutionary new form of technology, both literally and metaphorically. Today we are so familiar with each new year bringing new technological advances, we can hardly imagine what it was like to live in a time when most of the tools people used as part of their everyday lives were the ones they had inherited from their parents and grandparents before them, and when a new form of technology would have seemed wholly unprecedented. For thousands of years, from perhaps as early as 4000 BC or before, the form of millstone used the world over was the saddle quern, consisting of a large flat stone with a smaller upper stone which would be rubbed back and forth across it. Grinding enough flour for the daily bread at a saddle quern was very strenuous work. Research from the University of Cambridge in 2017 indicates that Neolithic women had stronger arms than today’s elite rowers due to spending up to five hours a day grinding wheat…Read more. |
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