272 REPORT ON THE DENEHOLE EXPLORATION
there is no doubt that it is one of the earliest of habits, yet one can-
not but believe that *" this form of granary is the same as that
between the Lena and the Oxus before the days of Arpad," and that
it was either reintroduced or refreshed by the migrating hordes which
came again and again from Central Asia, and peopled Russia and
Europe with swarms of half savages.
When M. Jourdain was in Spain in 1810, the smaller husbandmen
had no barns, and kept their corn exclusively underground, but
there is plenty of evidence to show that the custom has now
declined. French writers state that the same has happened in France,
and perhaps it may be said of most countries. Just as there has
been a falling off of the habit of storing grain in pits in recent
times, it may be shown that it was more common and wide-spread
in mediaeval and earlier ages. M. Doyere says that all the towns
of Spain had once collections of silos, which is certainly not the case
at present. In searching for ancient silos, he came upon some
interesting examples at Alcala; he could get no information about
them, and he had to rely on his own observations, thus becoming
personally acquainted with seventeen. He subsequently heard of
about one hundred more of a like antiquity. He does not define
the age, except by speaking of them as Moorish, though they may,
from his description of the situation, be just as well of Roman age.
The pits are close to each other. Some are filled up with surface
rubbish, others less so; a result partially accounted for by the habit
of passers by testing their depth by throwing great stones into them.
From a small one which had a communication, of recent and
accidental formation with another, he was able to enter and measure
one of the large ones. This, which had a cone of rubbish at the
bottom, could not have been less than ten metres deep, though the
bottom was not reached. The mouth was narrow, originally narrower,
and widening out gradually. This pit was excavated in a very hard
rock, either with a pick or a hammer, some of the pick marks crossed
each other. It once had a covering plate. Other such ancient pits
have been met with at Cordova and elsewhere. It has always been
the custom to store grain thus, from the earliest times in Spain, but
it is very rare to find any account of the matter.
In France it was a commoner custom to store corn in silos, in
comparatively recent times, as at Le Quercy, etc., than it is now, and
still more so in the mediaeval periods. Most of the instances
recorded are, however, not merely pits, but souterrains, in which the