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‘THE EVOLUTION OF THE MILLSTONE. 
J. R. MORTIMER, 
Driffield, 
(PLATES VII. and VIII). 
Tue study of anthropology and allied sciences suggests that 
primitive man did not possess the luxury of prepared food of 
any kind. For a long period he would simply feed on raw 
fruits in their crude condition, in the same way as the lower 
animals, his companions ; and, possibly, man was then very 
little more intellectual than the higher mammals. However, 
even at this early period, he must have possessed some mental 
power superior to that of any of his brute contemporaries ; 
and this, during a slow and lengthy evolution, has produced 
the mighty human achievements of the present day. 
The stone shewn in No. 1 (Plate VII.) is the embryo, as it 
were, of the matured millstone, shown in No. 14 (Plate VIII.). 
Man’s earliest mode of pounding his food was by using a 
natural stone, about the size of his fist, such as the rounded 
-cobble (fig. 1). The sides of this stone are battered and rubbed, 
through having been used in breaking the shells and pounding 
the kernels of wild fruits and other substances, on a stone 
anvil. Moreover, this form of pounder seems to have served, 
at times, as a hammer, etc., as well as a weapon in time of 
need, and it was probably for a long time his only implement. 
While many of these pounders are natural cobbles with 
faces abraded from use, others are entirely artificially shaped, 
such as fig. 2, which seemed to have been newly made, when 
placed where it was found, near the hand of a body, in barrow 
No. 37.* Fig. 3 alsoseemed to have been new when placed with 
a body in barrow No. 18. As time progressed this globular 
pounder developed into two other forms, viz., the pear-shaped 
(fig. 3) and that with a flat grinding surface (fig. 4) due to rubbing 
and not to pounding. Of the former type, I found three in 
barrow No. 18, each accompanying a body. This form, by 
frequent pounding on the same anvil, developed into the 
pestle and mortar mill (fig. 5). 
On the other hand the frequent rubbing with the flattened 
stone (fig. 4), to and fro, as a painter grinds his colours, resulted 
in an elongated hollow being formed on the surface of the 
lower stone, resembling the seat of a saddle; hence named 
the Saddle Mill (fig. 6). 
The globular and the pear-shaped crushers seem to have 
obtained in East Yorkshire during the Neolithic, and well 
* For particulars of the localities of these barrows see my ‘ Forty 
Years’ Researches.’—J. R. M. 
igi Feb. t. 
