Ancient rice milling tools

The tool of ancient rice milling was a stone mill.

In ancient China, millet occupied an important position as the main food crop. Millet is round and easy to shell. From Peiligang culture and magnetic mountain culture eight thousand years ago to Yangshao culture and Hongshan Culture five or six thousand years ago, stone mills and stone mills appeared.

The working principle of stone mill is to spread crops under the roller and roll them by human or animal power. Crops include sorghum, millet, corn and soybean. These crops will be gradually pressed into a surface under constant gravity rolling. Before the popularization of mechanization, stone mill was an important tool for people's production and life.

Modern northern rural areas are still using improved stone mills, such as enlarging the stone mill and turning the stone mill rod into a stone mill, which can be pushed by people or pulled by animals. It can be seen that the technology has improved but the principle remains unchanged.

Rice milling tools in southern China;

In southern China, rice is the main food crop, but because the grain shape is flat and long, it can't roll, so there is no stone mill and stone mill bar. Brown rice is mainly produced in Chu Jiu. At first, Chu Jiu was composed of a pestle made of broken wood and a dug mortar. In Honghuatao, Yidu, Hubei Province, two mortar remains dating back about 6,000 years were found in Daxi Cultural Site. These mortars are about 20 cm deep and shaped like a round pit at the bottom of a pot. The pit wall is hard and smooth.

In addition, a wooden pestle about 1.4m long was found, with round ends. Although it is difficult to preserve Chu Jiu, these findings prove their existence. In the Neolithic cultural sites in the south, we can often see a kind of coarse pottery with round bottom and thick wall. This unusual pottery is actually a clay mortar for rice. Pottery mortar is lighter than stone mortar and easier to carry, so it was still used in rural areas of southern Jiangsu until the late Qing Dynasty, and it was called "kiln mortar" locally.