Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/96

knew no other form of food from grain than puls. It was only at a time comparatively late that leaven, the addition of which is so essential to make flour into wholesome savoury bread, came into general use. It was still considered as an unusal innovation at the time when the Romans regulated the discipline of the Flamen Dialis; for the priest was forbidden to touch farinam fermento imbutam.^[1] Tradition has even preserved a trace of the fact that there existed no proper apparatus for grinding at the time of the oldest Italic development; because the mola versatilis, the more perfected apparatus, whose upper part was turned by a handle above the lower one, was, according to Varro,^[2] an invention of the Volsinians. This tradition, therefore, presupposed an older epoch, during which people put up with other more imperfect means, possibly with two stones such as were used by the ancient inhabitants of the terramare villages for pounding the grains. I may here remind the reader that the identical Greek and Latin words, μύλη = mola, πτίσσω = pinso, πόλτος = puls, prove that the Graeco-Italians used the cereals in the same manner as the inhabitants of the terramare villages—a fact which is not without significance for our investigation, as among all Italic settlements these villages stand in time and space nearest to the Graeco-Italic stage of civilization (stadium)."

Of well-polished perforated axes like No. 91, p. 244 in Ilios, only two halves were found in the first city; of single and double-edged saws of white or brown flint or chalcedony, like Nos. 93–98, p. 246 in Ilios, a very large number were again gathered in all the four lower prehistoric settlements of Troy. Besides the localities enumerated on pp. 245 and 246 of Ilios, I must mention seventeen similar saws, which were found in the recess of a rock at