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The stone mill was a product of large Cultural Exchange between East and West

During my study of stone mill, I found large alternating current of civilization between west and east. It was first stage of my study. When I had begun to be interested in a stone mill, a photograph of a stone mill of Britain Roman Empire period was same to the 8 querters.

Reynolds,J."Windmills & Water mills"(Hugh Evelyn London,1970)p13

Typical Japanese pattern of stone mill surface in Japan

Why same? Just, It is my start of study for mills. This is not accident. It was an entrance to an unknown magnificent history of civilization. Hedin, Sven Anders (1865-1952) (http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0823182.html) or (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/shedin.htm) reported in his writing ,that there was a stone mill more than a diameter of 1m on the Silk Road, and there was the stone mill rotating by waterpower. At the starting point of the Silk Road confirmed a stone mill of , Chinese Tunhuang museum , which was 8 quater. DUNHUANG ( http://www.textile-art.com/dun1.html)


A old stone mill displayed the museum (there is a very possibility BC２１０)
I upset it, and the moment that confirmed the drawing for wonderful eight 8 querters. In that moment an official woman in charge found that, and controlled cry that "don't move that". I can not got the phonograph of the under side. More unfortunately there was not interest to that, and about the source was a general private house. They have no information for the importance of the stone mill. There were similar remains by Mr.Yonezawa in a museum neighborhood, but says that it was lost by public work.

This was a form of the ancient times different from a stone mill used until recently in China each place recently. We cannot even imagine, the time many temple managed prospered. ( Japanese old document, Auther Naha(1941). The stone mill which used until recently which I am about to often look at in China (I discovered it by the roadside to Mausoleum of the First Bin Emperor).

Comparison of the rice civilization and the wheat civilization
The rotary cuern that appeared for several centuries in orient before B.C. several century possessed nature worth of technical superiority for expelled a quern of dominately linear motion, saddle cuern before it. It is because there was on the basis of rotary motion. In particular, in civilization with much depending on wheat like Europe, rotary cuern did a basis of the wheat flour milling, and it was the leading role of an industrial civilization establishment process of the West. Here, it is important to think about diffence of the processing of rice and wheat. The paddy from a ear of a rice plant are covered with a hard chaff. To remove the chaff we can eat. I hull the all and can process it with a mortar, and there is not a process to grind. For the the process we can use We hull it more and polish rice wi th a mortar, and, as for the rice, it is polished rice with unpolished rice if I thresh it. However, there is not it hard skin eats wheat deeply in an albumen part and is crowded, and I begin to take this, and to separate if I want to crush it finely.

Fig. rice preparation process in Japan e_riceprep
In the processes from grain to a human mouth, there are no fine grinding process. The labor for the ancients to eat wheat extorted more labor in comparison with rice diet. People of the Ancient Orient invented, a quern (a stone mill) in labor to be necessary for it and let they are develop. And it was Egyptian civilization that let you jumboize saddle khan to an extremity. Because it turned rotary motion into a basis, the rotary khan that appeared on the development line was tied to power of a waterwheel and a windmill and was able to open up a road to industrialization of a flour milling process later.

A water wheel flour milling factory: K.Marx(1818-1883) writes in the work "Das Kapital that "the Roman Empire had handed down the elementary form of all machinery in water-wheel. " Almost all Japanese water-wheel under standed is as same as Japanese drawing by Indian ink.

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