Researching the origins of windmills for our booklet we found several assertions that they had originated in Persia or Mesopotamia. For instance, in Ancient Engineers, the improbably named L. Sprague de Camp asserts that they originated in Sistan, a province in the northeast of Persia where he says there is a continuous strong wind from the same direction for months on end. Clearly, in a land where water is also often scarce, this makes sense. What did not entirely make sense were the descriptions that often followed. These said that the wind rotated a kind of fan with a vertical axis driving a millstone supported on the floor above.

Why put a fan to catch the wind at ground level, where the wind speed is lowest, rather than 3 metres or more in the air? The extra speed of the wind would soon repay the work of putting-up the supporting structure. Why mount a heavy millstone and its supply of grain on a supporting structure, when it could rest on the ground beneath?

As it happens, although the sources assumed that such a primitive device no longer exists Iranians continue to catch the wind to cool their houses through ingenious structures on top of their houses that can be traced back almost 2000 years. One can easily imagine such a structure adapted for a simple wind-driven mill.




Could such a primitive mill still survive? In a society strong (at least until recently) on tradition, it is possible that such a design could remain unaltered for many centuries and even that such an early adobe structure could exist, with frequent inexpensive maintenance, for centuries – plenty of caravansaries did just that.

Now we have discovered that at least one such windmill has survived.