So, I have an idea. I’ve had a lot of these ideas. They are the “stupid questions” that I have been asking recently and persistently. I’ve really been bothered a lot by the idea I have in my head that people would show up in the “dark ages”, in Medieval Europe or whatever, which spices and silk and fancy trade goods. Why would anyone who had fancy trade goods go to a pestilential, violent, uncivilized and feral corner of the Mediterranean War Universe? What did Europe have that people with spices and silk and fancy trade goods could possibly want?
My overarching theory is that civilizations / countries/ empires / wtf start by some people going to find a place to live. It’s very nice! It has water, and a lot of trees. They can cut the trees down and plant a nice garden and use the trees to build a house and maybe a temple or whatever. They can burn some trees to keep warm and to cook food and to keep the insects and whatever at bay, have a little light in the night time. They can build boats with the wood to go travel to other places and buy and sell things. They can build fences with the wood. Wood is great. Over time, as the people become numerous and the boats become numerous and they move from trade to disputes over trade and then war first on land and then on the water, they cut down more and more trees and after a while it’s not a very nice place to live. It is hot and dry and there are not very many trees and the trees are scrubby and the nice soil has become sandy and blown away so the gardens do not grow well. But still, the people need fuel to cook their food and keep warm and so forth.
Anyway. Charcoal. They buy other people’s forests and bring it home in a nice portable form that still has good energy value and also it is handy if you want to make fancy things like Damascus steel or glass or whatever.
My _theory_ is that the people with the stuff from the Silk Routes went up into Europe to sell stuff and get some gold or whatever _and come back with charcoal_. I’m not convinced the charcoal was as valuable as what they brought up to Europe, but two way trade is way better than one way trade.
So, researching charcoal!
https://www.medieval.eu/medieval-charcoal/Here, we have deep history of coppices to fuel a charcoal industry. All was fine until some big landowners started unsustainably chopping down forests to make charcoal. Sounds about right for my theory.
https://newforestguide.uk/history/new-forest-charcoal-burners/Evidence of colliery in England to supply the Roman empire. Suspicious gap there between the end of that and the Normans.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ecumne/it_seems_like_charcoal_would_have_been_the_main/Thoughtful discussion of German colliers.
https://regia.org/research/life/charcoal.htmSuper detailed discussion of how it was done in a particular place and time, humorous.
https://www.fairplanet.org/story/axis-of-evil-the-illegal-charcoal-trade-from-kenya-to-the-gulf-states/A somewhat horrifying description of a contemporary two way trade involving charcoal and sugar, international in scope and involving terrorist groups.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378874114006916Not about charcoal, but a tantalizing look at the spice trade in the Roman era.
https://news.mit.edu/2022/ancient-african-smelting-technique-sparks-anew-mit-0706Charcoal being used at MIT in recreating an old African smelting technique, apparently not particularly successfully.
It’s become clear to me that charcoal is absolutely a thing that people who have trees, time and not a whole lot else to trade can generate an item to trade with people who have all kinds of fancy things. I’ve also gotten curious about saltpeter (potassium nitrate), because I’ve gotten distracted by questions of glass and that Pliny story about the Phoenicians building a fire on the beach and not having rocks so they brought out some chunks of saltpeter and used them to support their cooking pots. Presumably, they then built some kind of wood fire and/or charcoal fire around their pots to heat things up. Pliny claims that there was liquid runoff in the sand and that’s how glass was invented / made, and there is some skepticism about this story (reasonable to be skeptical!). I’m trying to figure out just how hot various types of possible wood might get (like that juniper I was looking at), and whether saltpeter might get hot enough in a wood, charcoal or wood/charcoal fire to start acting as an oxidizer, and thus make the fire way, way, way hotter. In the MIT article, they are using bellows to get more air into the reaction to get the fire hot enough to melt the iron out of the ore. But I’m betting the potassium nitrate in the Pliny beach fire would be pretty fucking effective at helping shit burn, too.
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