"Be he 'live, or be he dead I'll grind his bones to make my bread."
Jack and the Beanstalk, English Fairy Tales (1890)
As humankind ceased to live as nomadic hunter- gatherers and began to settle down and raise crops, a different style of tool became necessary. People were now able to grow grain. However, grain had to be ground into flour in order to make bread. To accomplish this task an early form of mill, called a quernstone, eventually emerged.
Approximately 4,000 years ago, humans worked out that they could place one rough stone on top of another and use the two of them to grind grain into small particles. Early versions consisted of a rough rock base, or quern, and a smaller rock that could be ground over the top of it, often referred to as a rubbing stone.
A major advance occurred when the top stone was made to turn on the stationary bottom stone rather than move parallel to the long axis of the stone. These so-called "rotary querns" eventually evolved to feature a central hole in the upper stone that would allow grain to be poured in from the top and flour to work its way out from between the two stones. Later societies experimented with using different types of stone—the Romans favoring types of lava for their rough and sharp surfaces.
The quernstone evolved into larger water- and wind-powered mills, but is still in use in societies where grain is ground by hand.
