Three women seated on the ground in front of a building. On the left, a woman in a red dress has her hands in a bowl of wheat seeds. On the right, a woman in a blue dress holds the handle of a rotary quern. On the far right, a woman in white feeds wheat into the hole in the centre of the quern. From a 1912 postcard entitled Peasants Grinding Corn at Jerusalem.

It has been a long time since anyone who wanted to eat bread had to first grind their wheat. Grinding, however, was absolutely fundamental to agricultural societies, and still is for some. Archaeologists can see how the work left its mark on the skeletons of the women who ground the corn in the valley of the Euphrates. Then, about 2500 years ago, in the area now called Catalonia, an unknown genius invented the first labour-saving device.

Listen to The Daily Grind at Eat This Podcast.

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