Horizontal-wheel watermill (Greek or Norse mill)
Molino de rueda hidráulica horizontal (molino griego o nórdico)
- Date
- century I a.C. (posiblemente antes) · confidence low
- Place
- Cabeira (Niksar), Tokat, Turkey
- Credited to
- Builders of Pontus and the eastern Mediterranean
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A mill whose paddle wheel lies horizontally, driven directly by a water jet on a vertical shaft that turns the millstone without gearing. It is the simplest form of watermill and the one that spread across mountainous regions with small streams.
Strabo places a water mill at Mithridates' palace at Cabeira around 65 BC, probably of the horizontal type. Horizontal mills may predate Vitruvius' vertical ones, but the relative chronology is much debated.
What it led to
- milling in mountain villages without gearing
- Norse and Celtic mills of the early Middle Ages
- an evolutionary route towards the modern water turbine