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128-405: Millstones or mill stones are stones used in gristmills , used for triturating , crushing or, more specifically, grinding wheat or other grains. They are sometimes referred to as grindstones or grinding stones . Millstones come in pairs: a stationary base with a convex rim known as the bedstone (or nether millstone ) and a concave -rimmed runner stone that rotates. The movement of

256-518: A day, whereas people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day. Sahlins' theory has been criticized for only including time spent hunting and gathering while omitting time spent on collecting firewood, food preparation, etc. Other scholars also assert that hunter-gatherer societies were not "affluent" but suffered from extremely high infant mortality, frequent disease, and perennial warfare. Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach

384-559: A diet high in protein and low in other macronutrients results in the body using the protein as energy, possibly leading to protein deficiency. Lean meat especially becomes a problem when animals go through a lean season that requires them to metabolize fat deposits. In areas where plant and fish resources are scarce, hunter-gatherers may trade meat with horticulturalists for carbohydrates . For example, tropical hunter-gatherers may have an excess of protein but be deficient in carbohydrates, and conversely tropical horticulturalists may have

512-621: A few quarries. In France, millstones from Cap d'Agde supplied Languedoc and Provence ; further north, quarries from the Massif Central ( Volvic ) supplied a vast territory stretching from Aquitaine to the Helvetic valleys ; finally, from the Saône valley to the German border, millstones came mainly from Eifel quarries ( Mayen ). In Europe as a whole, the hand mill remained the main milling method until

640-462: A fluted drum turns around a vertical mast like the section of a column. This type of mill is more common and can be found on many sites, even in recent times. Gristmill The Greek geographer Strabo reports in his Geography a water-powered grain-mill to have existed near the palace of king Mithradates VI Eupator at Cabira , Asia Minor , before 71 BC. The early mills had horizontal paddle wheels, an arrangement which later became known as

768-514: A given region. Some examples feature flatter wheels, with a much reduced taper, which reduces the stone mass. The speed of rotation became higher, providing a greater gyroscopic effect , but also requiring the installation of a system of claws fixed with molten lead on the upper side of the movable wheel, to hold it in place around the pivot. Romanization led to the widespread use of hand mills, which were perfected in terms of volume by increasing diameter and reducing height and weight. The profile of

896-471: A hard envelope such as a shell or bone is broken open to recover its contents, in this case, the aim is to reduce a much softer material to a powder or paste. Depending on the place and time, millstones were used for "dry" grinding: in the manufacture of flour , sugar , or spices , but also for the preparation of kaolinite , cement , phosphate , lime , enamel , fertilizer , and other minerals . The milling operation can also be carried out "wet", as in

1024-478: A horizontal axis rotating around a vertical pivot (1, columella ). This pivot rests on a short stone column ( milliarium ) at the center of a large hemispherical mortar (4). The lying millstone is a stone vat (4, mortarium ) whose walls follow the external profile of the two common millstones. The orbs can move in a circular motion inside the mortarium , and are set in motion by the action of two wooden handles (2, modioli ). Wooden wedges ( orbiculi ) inserted between

1152-413: A husk. This foundation isolated the building from vibrations coming from the stones and main gearing and also allowed for the easy re-leveling of the foundation to keep the millstones perfectly horizontal. The lower bedstone was placed in an inset in the husk with the upper runner stone above the level of the husk. American inventor Oliver Evans revolutionized the labor-intensive process of early mills at

1280-472: A key role in Mexican cuisine . Dry grinding is possible, but very few recipes are produced in this way: roasted coffee , roasted corn or beans , salt , sugar loaves, and cocoa are ground into powder. But most preparations require grinding with water. Fruits are ground into juices, beans or boiled vegetables, ingredients are added to various spicy sauces and, above all, corn is used to make the tortillas that form

1408-412: A mechanical sieve to refine the flour, or turning a wooden drum to wind up a chain used to hoist sacks of grain to the top of the mill house. The distance between the stones can be varied to produce the grade of flour required; moving the stones closer together produces finer flour. This process, which may be automatic or controlled by the miller, is called tentering . The grain is lifted in sacks onto

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1536-773: A more constant supply of sustenance. In 2018, 9000-year-old remains of a female hunter along with a toolkit of projectile points and animal processing implements were discovered at the Andean site of Wilamaya Patjxa, Puno District in Peru . A 2020 study inspired by this discovery found that of 27 identified burials with hunter gatherers of a known sex who were also buried with hunting tools, 11 were female hunter gatherers, while 16 were male hunter gatherers. Combined with uncertainties, these findings suggest that anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of big game hunters were female. A 2023 study that looked at studies of contemporary hunter gatherer societies from

1664-516: A new gesture, that of grinding from front to back, with both hands, which implies a new posture for the body, kneeling in front of the millstone. The appearance of large, asymmetrical, shaped millstones ( Mureybet , Sheikh Hassan, circa 10,000 BP) led to the "saddle-shaped" millstones still known today as the metate . At the Tell Abu Hureyra archaeological site, as early as the 8th millennium BC, women's skeletons show traces of osteoarthritis in

1792-500: A paper entitled, " Notes on the Original Affluent Society ", in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from

1920-581: A percentage called the "miller's toll". Early mills in England were almost always built by the local lord of the manor and had the exclusive right (the right of mulcture ) to a proportion on all grain processed in the community. Later, mills were supported by farming communities and the miller received the "miller's toll" in lieu of wages. Most towns and villages had their own mill so that local farmers could easily transport their grain there to be milled. These communities were dependent on their local mill as bread

2048-472: A practice that persisted in some villages until the mid-20th century. The use of metal tools, probably inherited from building stonemasons, made it possible to use the hardest basalts, resulting in millstones with a lifespan of over thirty years. While the manufacture of apod millstones from blocks of stone naturally polished in a riverbed was once within the reach of many farmers, the production of tripode metates requires specialized craftsmanship. Grinding plays

2176-578: A size of a few dozen people. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution . The Late Pleistocene witnessed the spread of modern humans outside of Africa as well as the extinction of all other human species. Humans spread to the Australian continent and

2304-436: A slight gap is maintained between the two millstones. The running wheel pivots around a wooden axle embedded in the standing wheel, and it is thanks to its suspension on this axle that the gap between the two wheels is ensured. This type of millstone could be powered either by two or four men, or by animal rides, hence its name mola asinaria , literally "donkey mill". An example of this type of millstone can be found as early as

2432-405: A smaller selection of (often larger) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as fishing nets , hooks, and bone harpoons . The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated as early as 12,000 years ago in

2560-432: A surplus of carbohydrates but inadequate protein. Trading may thus be the most cost-effective means of acquiring carbohydrate resources. Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant variability, depending on climate zone / life zone , available technology, and societal structure. Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool kits to measure variability across different groups. Collard et al. (2005) found temperature to be

2688-434: A system that allows the sequential milling of these grists, noting that "a mill, thus constructed, might grind grists in the day time, and do merchant-work at night." Over time, any small, older style flour mill became generally known as a gristmill (as a distinction from large factory flour mills). Modern mills typically use electricity or fossil fuels to spin heavy steel, or cast iron, serrated and flat rollers to separate

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2816-461: A three-lobed feed opening. The more sharply tapered inner surfaces of the millstones ensured that the grains flowed more quickly under the effect of gravity, but the quality of the flour obtained remained mediocre. On the other hand, the effort required to operate the current millstone is considerable. The profile of the millstones makes them more difficult to cut, imposes a standardization of the millstones, and explains their diffusion and maintenance in

2944-439: A two-handed wheel, called a " mano ", whose size generally exceeds the width of the millstone and which is driven in an alternating rectilinear motion. On tripod wheels, one of the legs is slightly higher than the other two, giving the whole unit an inclination, with the user standing in front of the highest part. The manufacture of millstones was essentially a male occupation. In pre-Hispanic times, millers used only stone tools,

3072-492: A wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members of an extended family. The Archaic period in

3200-449: Is a common practice among most vertebrates that are omnivores . Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies , which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct. Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in

3328-596: Is found in northern Australia, at the Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land , dating back around 60,000 years. Grinding stones or grindstones, as they were called, were used by the Aboriginal peoples across the continent and islands, and they were traded in areas where suitable sandstone was not available in abundance. Different stones were adapted for grinding different things and varied according to location. One important use

3456-678: Is inhospitable to large scale economic exploitation and maintain their subsistence based on hunting and gathering, as well as incorporating a small amount of manioc horticulture that supplements, but is not replacing, reliance on foraged foods. Evidence suggests big-game hunter-gatherers crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land bridge ( Beringia ), that existed between 47,000 and 14,000 years ago. Around 18,500–15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between

3584-409: Is never total but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees , are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male . So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by paleoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving

3712-456: Is not necessarily a one-way process. It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy , which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in

3840-596: Is probably the Barbegal aqueduct and mill where water with a 19-metre fall drove sixteen water wheels , giving a grinding capacity estimated at 28 tons per day. Water mills seem to have remained in use during the post-Roman period. Manually operated mills utilizing a crank-and-connecting rod were used in the Western Han dynasty . There was an expansion of grist-milling in the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Persia from

3968-405: Is the field of study whereby food plants of various peoples and tribes worldwide are documented. Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available. Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of

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4096-493: Is usually rectangular, sometimes oval, with a central hopper parallel to the long sides, designed to receive the grain to be ground. The mill is capped by a horizontal axle attached to a pivot (1) on one side of the table, the other end being operated by a worker who moves the lever (2) back and forth horizontally. The Olynthus mill thus shows the beginnings of mechanization, with millers now standing on their feet, making work easier. This type of mill certainly appeared as early as

4224-932: The Classical era , used to grind ore in the Laurion mines , although it did not overtake the less efficient reciprocating millstone. Despite its qualities, it didn't really spread throughout the Roman world until later. They were found throughout the Mediterranean basin , but never in very large numbers, except in Italy. Their very high cost - 1,250 denarii in the Late Roman period, compared with 250 denarii for hand millstones - meant that they were only used by millers and bakers. In Gaul , millstones are known from Lyon , Saint-Raphaël , Paris , Amiens and Clermont-Ferrand , all fashioned from basalt from

4352-725: The Ebro River in Spain is associated with the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda , built by the Cistercian monks in 1202. The Cistercians were known for their use of this technology in Western Europe in the period 1100 to 1350. Although the terms "gristmill" or "corn mill" can refer to any mill that grinds grain, the terms were used historically for a local mill where farmers brought their own grain and received ground meal or flour, minus

4480-469: The Fertile Crescent , Ancient India , Ancient China , Olmec , Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte Chico . As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use. Archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility. Ethnobotany

4608-596: The Gravettian period onwards (circa 29,000 years), this equipment became more diversified, with the appearance of new types of tools such as millstones and pestle grinders. At the end of the Palaeolithic , millstones from Wadi Kubbaniya (Middle East, 19,000 B.C.) were involved in dietary processes and associated with residues of tuberous plants, which were known to require grinding before consumption, either to extract their toxins ( Cyperus rotundus , nutsedge), or to remove

4736-559: The Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women help men track down quarry. In the Australian Martu, both women and men participate in hunting but with a different style of gendered division; while men are willing to take more risks to hunt bigger animals such as kangaroo for political gain as a form of "competitive magnanimity", women target smaller game such as lizards to feed their children and promote working relationships with other women, preferring

4864-527: The Kebarian ( Ohalo II , 19,000 BC). As tools improved, the material was increasingly finely ground, but only when it became a real powder could we speak of grinding. Thus, the men of the European Upper Paleolithic were already dissociating grinding and milling , as attested by the appearance at this time of the first grinding slabs used with grinders or millstones. While there is no evidence of

4992-568: The Kebarian and Natufian periods. It gradually evolved into the heavy, generally wooden, thrown pestle. This type of equipment is still used today in many regions, such as in Ethiopia for milling millet. The appearance of flat, elongated millstones in the Natoufian period ( Abu Hureïra on the Euphrates ) dates back to the 9th millennium BC. They feature larger active surfaces and mark the emergence of

5120-802: The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America. Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic coast , and as far south as Chile , Monte Verde . American hunter-gatherers were spread over

5248-512: The Mesolithic and Neolithic eras, with the domestication of plants, much larger, fully formed grinding, pounding, and milling equipment appeared. From the Natufian onwards, several types of millstones can be found side by side, such as the deep "trough-shaped" millstone or the flat millstone, indicating a specialization of their function. In the Near East , the pestle-grinder began to be developed in

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5376-585: The Middle East , and also independently originated in many other areas including Southeast Asia , parts of Africa , Mesoamerica , and the Andes . Forest gardening was also being used as a food production system in various parts of the world over this period. Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in

5504-477: The Roman Empire by the end of the first century BC, and these were described by Vitruvius . The rotating mill is considered "one of the greatest discoveries of the human race". It was a very physically demanding job for workers, where the slave workers were considered little different from animals, the miseries of which were depicted in iconography and Apuleius ' The Golden Ass . The peak of Roman technology

5632-509: The Southwest , Arctic , Poverty Point , Dalton and Plano traditions. These regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish , seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods. Scholars like Kat Anderson have suggested that the term Hunter-gatherer is reductive because it implies that Native Americans never stayed in one place long enough to affect

5760-438: The bran and germ from the endosperm . The endosperm is ground to create white flour, which may be recombined with the bran and germ to create whole grain or graham flour . The different milling techniques produce visibly different results, but can be made to produce nutritionally and functionally equivalent output. Stone-ground flour is preferred by many bakers and natural food advocates because of its texture, nutty flavour, and

5888-449: The catillus (runner millstone), the Romans were able to overcome this constraint with the animal-drawn Pompeian mill , also known as the "blood" mill . In this mill, the nether millstone is conical at the top and the runner millstone looks like an hourglass , with its lower half covering the conical top of the nether millstone. The upper part of the runner millstone acts as a funnel , and

6016-426: The milliarium and the columella are used to adjust the height of the orbs above the bottom of the vat. In this system, the olives are not crushed under the millstone, but between the millstone and the sides of the vat. As in the previous model, a gap was maintained between the two millstones. The resistance offered by the fruit forces the stone half-spheres to turn slightly on their axis; the two movements combine and

6144-413: The sack floor at the top of the mill on the hoist . The sacks are then emptied into bins, where the grain falls down through a hopper to the millstones on the stone floor below. The flow of grain is regulated by shaking it in a gently sloping trough (the slipper ) from which it falls into a hole in the center of the runner stone. The milled grain (flour) is collected as it emerges through the grooves in

6272-482: The " Norse wheel ", as many were found in Scandinavia. The paddle wheel was attached to a shaft which was, in turn, attached to the centre of the millstone called the "runner stone". The turning force produced by the water on the paddles was transferred directly to the runner stone, causing it to grind against a stationary " bed ", a stone of a similar size and shape. This simple arrangement required no gears , but had

6400-548: The 1800s to the present day found that women hunted in 79 percent of hunter gatherer societies. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in the same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies". At the 1966 " Man the Hunter " conference, anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism

6528-533: The 3rd century AD onwards, and then the widespread expansion of large-scale factory milling installations across the Islamic world from the 8th century onwards. Geared gristmills were built in the medieval Near East and North Africa , which were used for grinding grain and other seeds to produce meals . Gristmills in the Islamic world were powered by both water and wind. The first wind-powered gristmills were built in

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6656-580: The 9th and 10th centuries in what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The Egyptian town of Bilbays had a grain-processing factory that produced an estimated 300 tons of flour and grain per day. From the late 10th century onwards, there was an expansion of grist-milling in Northern Europe. In England, the Domesday survey of 1086 gives a precise count of England's water-powered flour mills: there were 5,624, or about one for every 300 inhabitants, and this

6784-799: The Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge. During the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans obtained food via scavenging , not hunting . Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands , which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes. Scientists have demonstrated that

6912-401: The Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna. The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers. Individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, however, and thus archaeologists have identified a pattern of increasing regional generalization, as seen with

7040-474: The Americas for the first time, coincident with the extinction of numerous predominantly megafaunal species. Major extinctions were incurred in Australia beginning approximately 50,000 years ago and in the Americas about 15,000 years ago. Ancient North Eurasians lived in extreme conditions of the mammoth steppes of Siberia and survived by hunting mammoths , bison and woolly rhinoceroses. The settlement of

7168-554: The Eifel, Volvic or Cap d'Agde. During the Late Antiquity, the donkey mill retreated, probably disappearing after the 5th century as a result of the expansion of the watermill, then the windmill , except in Sardinia , where it remained until the 20th century. The Hellenistic period also saw the appearance of the olive crusher, which the Romans called the trapetum . Legend has it that it

7296-530: The Greek Konstantinos Kourouniotis elucidated the workings of the hopper millstone, which played an important role in ancient Greece . In the Olynthus mill, the nether millstone(4) is rectangular, resting on a table (5); it measures between 0.42 m and 0.65 m in length, 0.36 m to 0.54 m in width and 0.08 to 0.25 m in thickness. The grinder, which forms the upper millstone (common millstone (3)),

7424-584: The Greek world was confirmed by the discovery, in 1967, of 22 hopper mills in the cargo of a ship wrecked off Kyrenia , dated to the end of the 4th century BC. Increasing demand undoubtedly led to standardization in manufacturing and specialization of production centers. For example, flat Argolidian millstones, made of andesite and rhyolite , were produced from local quarries ( Isthmus of Corinth , Saronic Gulf ), while grinders came from more distant quarries (islands of Nysiros , Milos ). The use of this type of mill

7552-651: The Northwest Coast of North America and the Calusa in Florida ) are an exception to this rule. For example, the San people or "Bushmen" of southern Africa have social customs that strongly discourage hoarding and displays of authority, and encourage economic equality via sharing of food and material goods. Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system as primitive communism . The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers

7680-857: The Pacific Northwest Coast and the Yokuts , lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary. Amongst the earliest example of permanent settlements is the Osipovka culture (14–10.3 thousand years ago), which lived in a fish-rich environment that allowed them to be able to stay at the same place all year. One group, the Chumash , had the highest recorded population density of any known hunter and gatherer society with an estimated 21.6 persons per square mile. Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting

7808-407: The Roman period (1st century-2nd century). These mills consist of a truncated cone-shaped standing millstone and a convex grinding ring to which the wooden machinery is connected, apparently operated without the aid of animal power. In this arrangement, the grinding ring is fitted onto the lying millstone. The Volubilitan olive millstone differs from the grain millstone by having oblique striations on

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7936-513: The Syrian-Egyptian region ", " simultaneously in Spain and England " for others, and even though it was found in China in the 1st century BC. According to L.A. Moritz, the rotating grain mill only appeared in the first century BC. He bases his demonstration on Latin texts, in particular those of Plautus and Cato , and fixes the introduction of this type between the time of Plautus' death in 184BC and

8064-568: The activity in which it participated. Neanderthal people were already using rudimentary tools to crush various substances, as attested by the presence of rudimentary grinders at the end of the Mousterian and millstones in the Châtelperronian . From the Aurignacian period onwards (around 38,000 years ago), Cro-Magnon man regularly used millstones, elongated grinders, and circular wheels. From

8192-412: The age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years. They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases. Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e., meat gained from hunting) are important in

8320-477: The arguments put forward by Wilmsen. Doron Shultziner and others have argued that we can learn a lot about the life-styles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially their impressive levels of egalitarianism. There are nevertheless a number of contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence or with modifications that perpetuate

8448-480: The basis of every meal. The latter are made from nixtamal , i.e. dry corn kernels cooked with lime, then rinsed with water, which softens the kernels and produces a paste. Maize or nixtamal can be ground for preparations other than patties: tamales , pozole , atole , pinole , and masa , with variations in the fineness of the grind depending on the use. The metate was used exclusively by women, and in Mixtec lands ,

8576-556: The beginning of the 5th century BC. Its use was widespread throughout the Greek civilization in the 4th century B.C., from Macedonia to the Peloponnese , and was adopted as far afield as the islands of Anatolia , Egypt , and modern-day Syria . It continued into the 1st century B.C., and sometimes even later, as the excavations at the Agora in Athens suggest. The importance of this mill type for

8704-901: The belief that it is nutritionally superior and has a better baking quality than steel-roller-milled flour. It is claimed that, as the stones grind relatively slowly, the wheat germ is not exposed to the sort of excessive temperatures that could cause the fat from the germ portion to oxidize and become rancid, which would destroy some of the vitamin content. Stone-milled flour has been found to be relatively high in thiamin, compared to roller-milled flour, especially when milled from hard wheat. Gristmills only grind "clean" grains from which stalks and chaff have previously been removed, but historically some mills also housed equipment for threshing , sorting, and cleaning prior to grinding. Modern mills are usually "merchant mills" that are either privately owned and accept money or trade for milling grains or are owned by corporations that buy unmilled grain and then own

8832-449: The case of durum wheat semolina , nixtamal , or the grinding of mustard seeds . During preparation, some raw materials produce a naturally fluid paste, as in olive crushing or cocoa grinding. In his typology of percussion, André Leroi-Gourhan defines several families of gestures, three of which are essential for the preparation of raw materials: Until the invention of the watermill , mills operated using "strength-powered", i.e.

8960-604: The composition of De agri cultura , around 160 BC. Several types of mills can be identified in Europe, depending on the morphology of the millstones used in these manually operated rotary mills. The Celtic mill is made up of massive millstones, with a conical external profile and virtually flat active stone surfaces. In Dacia , between the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D., the Celtic mill evolved into an intermediate type with two millstones superimposed and integrated, featuring

9088-400: The country of Denmark in 2007. In addition, wealth transmission across generations was also a feature of hunter-gatherers, meaning that "wealthy" hunter-gatherers, within the context of their communities, were more likely to have children as wealthy as them than poorer members of their community and indeed hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate an understanding of social stratification. Thus while

9216-422: The countryside, owned by municipalities, cooperatives or private individuals. However, still in use today, nether millstones are still part of Mexico's rural heritage. The town of Olynthus was destroyed in 348 BC by Philip II of Macedonia , and the name " Olynthus millstone, Olynthus grinder, Olynthus mill " has come to be attached to this type of mill, which represents a genuine technical revolution . In 1917,

9344-532: The developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America , for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by

9472-553: The diet until relatively recently, during the Late Stone Age in southern Africa and the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. Fat is important in assessing the quality of game among hunter-gatherers, to the point that lean animals are often considered secondary resources or even starvation food. Consuming too much lean meat leads to adverse health effects like protein poisoning , and can in extreme cases lead to death. Additionally,

9600-436: The disadvantage that the speed of rotation of the stone was dependent on the volume and flow of water available and was, therefore, only suitable for use in mountainous regions with fast-flowing streams. This dependence on the volume and speed of flow of the water also meant that the speed of rotation of the stone was highly variable and the optimum grinding speed could not always be maintained. Vertical wheels were in use in

9728-702: The driving mechanism of the mill ( wind , water (including tide ), or other means). Often referred to as the "oldest industry", the use of the millstone is inextricably linked to human history. Integrated into food processes since the Upper Palaeolithic , its use remained constant until the end of the 19th century, when it was gradually replaced by a new type of metal tool . However, it can still be seen in rural domestic installations, such as in India , where 300 million women used hand mills daily to produce flour in 2002. The earliest evidence for stones used to grind food

9856-409: The economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies. Therefore, these societies can be described as based on a " gift economy ". A 2010 paper argued that while hunter-gatherers may have lower levels of inequality than modern, industrialised societies, that does not mean inequality does not exist. The researchers estimated that the average Gini coefficient amongst hunter-gatherers was 0.25, equivalent to

9984-472: The end of Antiquity, and then throughout the Middle Ages ; it only began to give way to the advances of water and then wind mills. With a diameter limited to the reach of an arm's movement, i.e. 40 to 70 cm, the hand mill could only produce a limited quantity of flour and was therefore essentially reserved for domestic use. By increasing the diameter and, above all, the height of the meta (nether millstone) and

10112-541: The end of the Pleistocene —according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans, one of several explanations offered for the Quaternary extinction event there. As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of the first forms of government in agricultural centers, such as

10240-634: The end of the eighteenth century when he automated the process of making flour. His inventions included the Elevator, wood or tin buckets on a vertical endless leather belt, used to move grain and flour vertically upward; the Conveyor, a wooden auger to move material horizontally; the Hopper Boy, a device for stirring and cooling the newly ground flour; the Drill, a horizontal elevator with flaps instead of buckets (similar to

10368-461: The environment around them. However, many of the landscapes in the Americas today are due to the way the Natives of that area originally tended the land. Anderson specifically looks at California Natives and the practices they utilized to tame their land. Some of these practices included pruning, weeding, sowing, burning, and selective harvesting. These practices allowed them to take from the environment in

10496-399: The evidence for early human behaviors for hunting versus carcass scavenging vary based on the ecology, including the types of predators that existed and the environment. According to the endurance running hypothesis , long-distance running as in persistence hunting , a method still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary force leading to

10624-456: The evolution of certain human characteristics. This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence strategies may have been in use sequentially, alternately or even simultaneously. Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherer bands began to specialize, concentrating on hunting

10752-613: The evolutionary emergence of human consciousness , language , kinship and social organization . Most anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers do not have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed. Within a particular tribe or people, hunter-gatherers are connected by both kinship and band (residence/domestic group) membership. Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially. Young mothers can enjoy childcare support from their own mothers, who continue living nearby in

10880-463: The fibrous texture that would make them indigestible ( Scirpus maritimus ). The rhizomes of ferns and the peel of the fruit of the doum palm , also found on this site, benefit from being ground to improve their nutritional qualities; they thus complemented the meat diet of hunter-gatherers . Grinding barley or oat seeds was practiced at the end of the Upper Palaeolithic ( Franchthi ) or

11008-694: The flour produced. One common pest found in flour mills is the Mediterranean flour moth . Moth larvae produce a web-like material that clogs machinery, sometimes causing grain mills to shut down. Hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived lifestyle , in which most or all food is obtained by foraging , that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, especially wild edible plants but also insects , fungi , honey , bird eggs , or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game (pursuing and/or trapping and killing wild animals , including catching fish ). This

11136-485: The force of animals or people. The metate is a nether millstone for domestic use, for grinding corn . It has been used for several thousand years (around 3000 BC) in the cultural area of Mesoamerica , and its name comes from the Nahuatl " metatl ". Today's millstones are monolithic, usually made of basalt , apodous, or tripod, rectangular, and slightly concave on the grinding surface. These millstones are associated with

11264-554: The handle of a millstone in Korea was made from an ash tree, the process for making a handle from the ash tree was known as "Mulpure-namu". To ensure that everything is "all right" with the creation of a millstone, a mason within ancient Kora offered food and alcohol in a ritual. Millstones were introduced to Britain by the Romans during the 1st century AD and were widely used there from the 3rd century AD onwards. In 1932-1933 in Ukraine, during

11392-400: The idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work on average, about 6.5 hours

11520-418: The installation of the double lever or the use of a crank fixed to the center of the millstone (14th - 15th centuries), meant that this type of hand mill was used in the countryside until the 20th century. Because they wear more quickly, this type of millstone requires a stricter selection of stones, among which basalt has a privileged place. Most of the stone used in Roman times seems to have come from just

11648-510: The knees, spinal deformity and deformation of the first metatarsal , pathologies associated with long periods of bending while grinding, supporting the theory that early humans practiced a sexual division of labor . In India, millstone ( Chakki ) were used to grind grains and spices. These consist of a stationary stone cylinder upon which a smaller stone cylinder rotates. Smaller ones, for household use, were operated by two people. Larger ones, for community or commercial use, used livestock to rotate

11776-655: The last 10,000 years. Nowadays, some scholars speak about the existence within cultural evolution of the so-called mixed-economies or dual economies which imply a combination of food procurement (gathering and hunting) and food production or when foragers have trade relations with farmers. Some of the theorists who advocate this "revisionist" critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after colonial (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly, 24–29; see Wilmsen ) Lee and Guenther have rejected most of

11904-493: The man-made famine known as Holodomor , the Soviet authorities prohibited the use of millstones, claiming that a millstone is a "mechanism for enrichment" (which was a negative term in Soviet communist ideology). This forced Ukrainian villagers to hide their manually-operated millstones and use them secretly during the famine. In response, Soviet authorities regularly searched villages for "illegal" millstones and destroyed them. In 2007,

12032-571: The middle-late Bronze Age and Iron Age societies were able to fully replace hunter-gatherers in their final stronghold located in the most densely forested areas. Unlike their Bronze and Iron Age counterparts, Neolithic societies could not establish themselves in dense forests, and Copper Age societies had only limited success. In addition to men, a single study found that women engage in hunting in 79% of modern hunter-gatherer societies. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in

12160-442: The milling of wild cereals in the early Upper Paleolithic, at least in Europe, there is no reason not to believe that other plant matter ( acorns , nuts , hazelnuts , etc.) and animal matter ( fat ) were already being ground into paste before cooking. Similarly, it's likely that millstones were being used at this time for technical purposes, to crush mineral substances ( dyes ) and certain plant or animal fibers for technical use. In

12288-410: The millstones became flatter, and a number of improvements were introduced, such as an upper wedge to center the movable wheel on the pivot. A device for adjusting the distance between the millstones (the anille ) also appeared, enabling grinding quality to be controlled (1st century B.C.), and radii cut into the millstone could accentuate the natural abrasiveness of the stone. Later developments, such as

12416-524: The natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history . Following the invention of agriculture , hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world. Across Western Eurasia, it was not until approximately 4,000 BC that farming and metallurgical societies completely replaced hunter-gatherers. These technologically advanced societies expanded faster in areas with less forest, pushing hunter-gatherers into denser woodlands. Only

12544-496: The old wheel mills. In most wheel-driven mills, a large gear-wheel called the pit wheel is mounted on the same axle as the water wheel and this drives a smaller gear-wheel, the wallower , on a main driveshaft running vertically from the bottom to the top of the building. This system of gearing ensures that the main shaft turns faster than the water wheel, which typically rotates at around 10 rpm . The millstones themselves turn at around 120 rpm . They are laid one on top of

12672-423: The only statistically significant factor to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits. Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard et al.'s results suggest that environments with extreme temperatures pose a threat to hunter-gatherer systems significant enough to warrant increased variability of tools. These results support Torrence's (1989) theory that the risk of failure is indeed the most important factor in determining

12800-414: The other. The bottom stone, called the bed , is fixed to the floor, while the top stone, the runner , is mounted on a separate spindle, driven by the main shaft. A wheel called the stone nut connects the runner's spindle to the main shaft, and this can be moved out of the way to disconnect the stone and stop it turning, leaving the main shaft turning to drive other machinery. This might include driving

12928-568: The people of Victorivka village in Cherkasy Oblast built a monument using the millstones they had managed to hide and save from the Soviet plunder during the Holodomor . The preparation of vegetable products ( roots , tubers , almonds , leaves , etc.), animal products ( marrow , tendons , etc.), or mineral products ( ochre ) by grinding or milling, for consumption or technical use, has existed for several dozen millennia. Unlike crushing, in which

13056-590: The place where the millstone is located was a space reserved for women. A couple often acquires, or is given, a millstone when they set up home. This acquisition represents a major expense in the life of a Mixtec peasant, as evidenced by the wills of nobles and wealthy peasants from the 16th to 18th centuries, which included metates. Daily tortillas are made from sufficiently moistened corn dough , which, unlike flour, cannot be preserved. This technical characteristic no doubt explains why domestic metates were not replaced centuries ago by mills, as they were in Europe. During

13184-418: The present state of Victoria used grinding stones to crush roots, bulbs, tubers , and berries, as well as insects, small mammals, and reptiles before cooking them. Careful examination of Paleolithic grinders ( pebbles , wheels , mortar and pestle, etc.) enables us to determine the nature of the action exerted on the material and the gesture performed; the function of the tool can then be specified, as well as

13312-498: The pressure is exerted only moderately, without breaking the stones, which would give bad taste. The resultant pulp could then be subjected to the action of a press to collect the oil. A melting pot of African, Eastern and Mediterranean civilizations, Morocco has preserved tools and techniques from different eras. The Volubilis site, located in Mauritania Tingitana (northeastern Morocco), features grain and olive mills from

13440-418: The process. Evans himself did not use the term gristmill to describe his automatic flour mill, which was purpose designed as a merchant mill (he used the more general term "water-mill"). In his book his only reference to "grist" (or "grists") is to the small batches of grain a farmer would bring in to have ground for himself (what would be generally called barter or custom milling). In his book, Evans describes

13568-660: The researchers agreed that hunter-gatherers were more egalitarian than modern societies, prior characterisations of them living in a state of egalitarian primitive communism were inaccurate and misleading. This study, however, exclusively examined modern hunter-gatherer communities, offering limited insight into the exact nature of social structures that existed prior to the Neolithic Revolution. Alain Testart and others have said that anthropologists should be careful when using research on current hunter-gatherer societies to determine

13696-406: The rotating millstone spread at the end of the 5th century BC from Spain, and that it was directly derived from attempts to perfect the Olynthus mill. André Leroi-Gourhan states that " the transformation of rectilinear reciprocating motion into circular-continuous motion leads to another form of milling ". Some authors do not agree on its geographical origin, located for some " towards Carthage and

13824-554: The ruins of the town of Olynthus : it was the millstone of an oil mill , not a flour mill. Historians Marie-Claire Amouretti and Georges Comet point out that these millstones pre-date the earliest known examples of circular grain mills. So it was probably through oil production that the first rotary crushing machine was introduced. Cereals and other fruits and seeds followed. The oldest rotating millstone are thought to have originated in Spain 2,500 years ago(600 BC - 400 BC). It seems that

13952-406: The runner on top of the bedstone creates a "scissoring" action that grinds grain trapped between the stones. Millstones are constructed so that their shape and configuration help to channel ground flour to the outer edges of the mechanism for collection. The runner stone is supported by a cross-shaped metal piece ( millrind or rynd) fixed to a "mace head" topping the main shaft or spindle leading to

14080-416: The runner stone from the outer rim of the stones and is fed down a chute to be collected in sacks on the ground or meal floor. A similar process is used for grains such as wheat to make flour, and for maize to make corn meal . In order to prevent vibrations from the millstones shaking the building apart, they were usually placed on a separate timber foundation, not attached to the mill walls, known as

14208-452: The same camp. The systems of kinship and descent among human hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible, although there is evidence that early human kinship in general tended to be matrilineal . The conventional assumption has been that women did most of the gathering, while men concentrated on big game hunting. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'. A recent study suggests that

14336-646: The same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies". Only a few contemporary societies of uncontacted people are still classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism . Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus , and from its appearance some 200,000 years ago by Homo sapiens . Prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived in groups that consisted of several families resulting in

14464-503: The sexual division of labor was the fundamental organizational innovation that gave Homo sapiens the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe. A 1986 study found most hunter-gatherers have a symbolically structured sexual division of labor. However, it is true that in a small minority of cases, women hunted the same kind of quarry as men, sometimes doing so alongside men. Among

14592-451: The size of peas, throw it into the millstones, in numerous lines, two or three people standing at each lever and grind it." Photius' version specifies " on either side " of the lever. It's also known as a "hand millstone", "arm millstone" or "moulinet", and in Latin as a " molendinum bracchis " or " molendinum manuale ". According to de Barry, the oldest circular stone millstone was unearthed in

14720-403: The structure of hunter-gatherer toolkits. One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarianism and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian. Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food. Hunting-gathering

14848-765: The structure of societies in the paleolithic era, emphasising cross-cultural influences, progress and development that such societies have undergone in the past 10,000 years. As one moves away from the equator , the importance of plant food decreases and the importance of aquatic food increases. In cold and heavily forested environments, edible plant foods and large game are less abundant and hunter-gatherers may turn to aquatic resources to compensate. Hunter-gatherers in cold climates also rely more on stored food than those in warm climates. However, aquatic resources tend to be costly, requiring boats and fishing technology, and this may have impeded their intensive use in prehistory. Marine food probably did not start becoming prominent in

14976-410: The truncated surface of the lying millstone and on the inside of the grinding ring. Columella asserts that, to extract the oil, the millstones ( molae ) are more useful than the crusher ( trapetum ), as they can be lowered or raised according to the size of the fruit, so as to avoid crushing the stone. A second type of olive mill can be found on the same site, and consists of a monolithic vat on which

15104-582: The upper cylinder. Today a majority of the stone flour mills (Atta Chakki) are equipped with lower stone rotating and upper stone stationary millstones also called Shikhar Emery Stones which are made from abrasive emery grains and grits, with a binding agent similar to Sorel Cement. These stones are made from two types of emery abrasives - Natural Jaspar Red Emery or Synthetic Calcined Bauxite Black Emery. In Korea, there were three different millstones, each made from different materials, serving other purposes, such as threshing, grinding, and producing starch. Generally,

15232-595: The use of a conveyor but easier to build); and the Descender, an endless strap (leather or flannel) in a trough that is angled downward, the strap helps to move the ground flour in the trough. Most importantly, he integrated these into a single continuous process, the overall design later becoming known as the Automatic (or Automated) mill. In 1790 he received the third Federal patent for his process. In 1795 he published "The Young Mill-Wright and Miller’s Guide" which fully described

15360-813: The viability of hunting and gathering in the 21st century. One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex people) of Western Australia , whose land in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism). Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean , who live on North Sentinel Island and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them. The Savanna Pumé of Venezuela also live in an area that

15488-543: The wars of the 19th century and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 , Mexican armies were accompanied by women and metates to ensure the stewardship of the country; the Spanish conquest did not replace tortillas with bread - quite the contrary. At the end of the 19th century, the owners of the large plantations introduced motorized corn mills, which freed up female labor for the fields. From 1920 onwards, electric mills appeared in

15616-522: Was a staple part of the diet. Classical mill designs are usually water-powered , though some are powered by the wind or by livestock. In a watermill a sluice gate is opened to allow water to flow onto, or under, a water wheel to make it turn. In most watermills the water wheel was mounted vertically, i.e., edge-on, in the water, but in some cases horizontally (the tub wheel and so-called Norse wheel ). Later designs incorporated horizontal steel or cast iron turbines and these were sometimes refitted into

15744-440: Was for foods, in particular to grind seeds to make bread, but stones were also adapted for grinding specific types of starchy nuts, ochres for artwork, plant fibres for string, or plants for use in bush medicine , and are still used today. The Australian grindstones usually comprise a large flat sandstone rock (for its abrasive qualities), used with a top stone, known as a "muller", "pounder", or pestle . The Aboriginal peoples of

15872-592: Was invented by Aristaeus , and excavations at Olynthus have revealed examples dating back to the 5th century BC. The trapetum was precisely described by Cato the Elder, who gave us the technical names of all its parts. Excavations at Stabies, Pompeii , the villa at Boscoreale and in Roman Africa show that the system was widely used in ancient Rome and disappeared with it. The trapetum consists of two plano-convex millstones (3, orbes ), standing vertically, supported by

16000-441: Was not limited to grinding cereals, as the finds from Thasos or Lavrio suggest: it was also used to grind ore, so as to calibrate it for subsequent selection by washing. It may even have appeared in the mines of Pangaion Hills . The text by Agatharchides on the gold mines of Egypt in the 1st century B.C., transmitted by Photios and Diodorus , mentions a mill with a lever: "Women and older men then receive this ore crushed to

16128-429: Was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population. Therefore, no surplus of resources can be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition. At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented

16256-466: Was probably typical throughout western and southern Europe. From this time onward, water wheels began to be used for purposes other than grist milling. In England, the number of mills in operation followed population growth, and peaked at around 17,000 by 1300. Limited extant examples of gristmills can be found in Europe from the High Middle Ages . An extant well-preserved waterwheel and gristmill on

16384-459: Was the common human mode of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic , but the observation of current-day hunters and gatherers does not necessarily reflect Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent "pristine" conditions found in uncontacted peoples . The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture

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