Another theoretical question: what are those Central African swords used for anyway?

tom hyle · 19th May 2005, 11:12 AM

I don't think it's off topic at all, but then I've never felt there should be tight bonds of topicality. If nothing else it interferes with my thought process. We shouldn't need a new thread every time a discussion takes a little bend. It'd make searching the archives easier, I supose......
Europe used to pretty much be a forest.
The practices of sustainable forestry you speak of have existed but are hardly universal.
What I've read is that the main deforestation came with the early industrial/postmedieval age (16th/17th), after the population recovered from the great plagues, when the emptied lands were filling back in, when steel was becoming cheap, but "coke" from stone coal was not yet in use; charcoal from wood was the fuel and the alloying ingredient for making steel. As I've mentioned I don't remember how much charcoal it takes to produce a ton of steel under preindustrial conditions, but I just remember it is an impressive figure; it's a lot. An outcaste caste of charcoal burners came into existance to feed this need. They were landless, itinerate. I don't know how the economics, etc. worked as to who owned the forests they worked or whatever.
Africa has seen a lot of deforestation, too, usually blamed on Imperialistic foreign exploitation, goats, and market agriculture (Africa never invented steel; this may fit in there somehow).........interesting to see how this or that must be the main cause; let us content ourselves to say a significant factor in the deforestation of Europe may have been steel production. If anyone wants to look into it further, please let us know what you find out.

fearn · 19th May 2005, 01:25 PM

Hi Tom,

Let's break this down a bit. Part of the problem is that our terminology about "forest" has changed over the last 500 years, as have our thoughts about tree usage.

For instance, in the 16th century England, a "Forest" was a royal reserve. New Forest actually has far more grass than trees (that's why the New Forest Pony is just a pony, not some miraculous horse that lives on tree leaves). A park was a forest with a wall around it. A "Desert" was an uninhabited area (Shakespeare has people sitting under the trees in the middle of a desert in one play)--this is the origin of our term "deserted." And when you start translating from other languages, it gets worse. "Monte" in Spanish can mean both mountain and forest, for example.

Now, when you read many accounts of "deforestation," what are they talking about? If they are using modern translations of older terms, they can get well and truly screwed up. For instance, a region of Spain may have become "desert," in an old text. Aha! says the historical ecologist--deforestation! Actually, a town got sacked in a war, and as a result, the number of trees nearby actually *increased*. THAT is the level of evidence we're dealing with. In Grove and Rackham's excellent The Nature of Mediterranean Europe, there's an entire chapter devoted to how to read historical evidence for ecological purposes, and I recommend it (and the entire book) to anyone who's interested. A major purpose of the book is to discuss and correct the errors made in reconstructing the ecological history of the Mediterranean Basin, and it's a fascinating read.

Getting back to forests and woodlands: Woodlands (at least in the UK and probably elsewhere) were used to produce two things: wood and timber. Wood is the small stuff used for things like charcoal, fence posts, furniture, etc (think "firewood"). Timber are the tall trees used for major construction projects, like buildings and ships. In a woodland, most trees were deliberately pruned (coppiced or pollarded) for wood production, because that is what most people used in everyday life. Timber was a major source of wealth. Property owners deliberately planted and cared for timber trees, replanting immediately when they were cut down. Essentially, they were long-term trusts. A well-known example: when Oxford Cathedral was built, they planted a number of timber oaks, for the repairs that they knew it would need in a few centuries. Today, only the rich have investments that run on this time-scale, but in the old days when they couldn't get timber from the US, Norway, or Brazil, they had to make sure that the resources would be available when they needed them.

So...deforestation in Europe? It gets pretty complex. Certainly a lot of trees have been cut down in the last 150 years, especially with the introduction of American "Scientific Forestry" which drastically changed the way Europeans looked at their woodlands (for instance: woodlands were to only be used for growing trees for industry, not for raising pigs, firewood, etc). Prior to that...? Well, in the UK (where I've got the best evidence to hand), basically all the land was cleared and in use by around the 4th century BC. Deforested? Not really. There are lots of woodlands that have probably been in continuous use and harvest since that time. It's something to think about.

In Africa, we simply don't have the record. It's pretty obvious from aerial surveys and some archeological work that parts of the Congo basin that are now forest were densely settled at one time. What happened to those people is (to my knowledge) largely unknown. My guess is that, in Central Africa, we've got at least as complex a land use history as in Europe. I suspect that parts of central Africa have been as consciously and complexly managed as parts of England. Given the wars and colonialism of the last few centuries, much of the evidence is hidden. I'll note in passing that the same thing can be said for North and South America's precolumbian history.

To sum up: basically, I think that deforestation, and blaming steel production for it, is a radically over-simplified idea, to the point that I'd suggest that it's wrong. To start with, throw in harvesting timber for ships, switching to coal for industry and cutting down woodland for other industrial uses (such as farming or sheep-herding), and the switch in how forests were both understood and managed, from a local-scale sustainable use to global-scale resource extraction. In transferring the argument to Africa, you need to factor in all the history that have disappeared into the mists, since we don't have any records other than the griot's stories and similar myths. Personally, I don't this can be parsed very simply as increased steel production=> deforestation.

Fearn

Jens Nordlunde · 19th May 2005, 05:17 PM

Hi Fearn,

An interesting subject you bring up. I doubt that many, if any, of us had thought of it this way, although it should have been taken in consideration, as it is part of the whole thing. I know you could have added a lot of other countries where the same thing happened, but the countries you mentioned gives us an idea of what did happened.

Jens

tom hyle · 20th May 2005, 12:36 AM

Interesting. It seems the ships are fairly commonly mentioned, too; I've heard that before. I'm really not on some kind of swords wiped out forests crusade, but swords are the pinnacle of technology at the time, and I would not be the first to see them as drivers fo industrial technology. Certainly there are many factors; mostly all boil down to too many humans.
A bit more folklore about the charcoal burners in postmedieval Europe:
The charcoal burners worked in large wild forests; I don't know who owned or dominated them; perhaps they were "deserts" this is the impression I get. They did not replant that I know of. There is generally no need to replant a small semicleared area in a healthy forest. They did not make charcoal from small stuff, but from large straight trees. Perhaps forest giants so called were off limits to them in theory; in fact the story I've heard is they had little to no official oversight. I've seen in books the structure they built to cook the charcoal; it is a cylinder, about 10-15' tall, very wide proportionally; maybe 40' or something, and is made out of straight logs stacked in a very specific pattern. It is neccessary to use straight logs so as to limit and control the amount of airspace to make the thing work properly. It is then covered with dirt with just enough air let in to sustain fire; not enough to burn up the wood, which thus becomes charcoal.
I'll add also that the people of Europe also traditionally got a great deal of food from their forests, from which their overculture dominators have busily and insistantly seperated them for many years. This is where the whole pigs thing comes full circle, for instance. The traditional way to feed pigs was to drive them into the forest to eat nuts, roots, small animals, etc. Industrial use of the wood has largely outcompeted these uses in modern times, it seems.

tom hyle · 20th May 2005, 03:24 AM

Re the planned use of wood: I've seen where even now there are some functioning examples of special gardens/groves where growing wood is bent, etc. to form shapes it will be used for. I gather this is or was fairly common for tool handles, but also for a variety of architectural and probably maritime purposes. "Waste" pieces with interesting but not strong grain; ie. bird's eyes, burl, etc. was often used for knife handles, but daggers' and swords' are usually straight grain wood, AFAIK.

20th May 2005, 12:36 AM	#4
tom hyle Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Houston, TX, USA Posts: 1,254	Interesting. It seems the ships are fairly commonly mentioned, too; I've heard that before. I'm really not on some kind of swords wiped out forests crusade, but swords are the pinnacle of technology at the time, and I would not be the first to see them as drivers fo industrial technology. Certainly there are many factors; mostly all boil down to too many humans. A bit more folklore about the charcoal burners in postmedieval Europe: The charcoal burners worked in large wild forests; I don't know who owned or dominated them; perhaps they were "deserts" this is the impression I get. They did not replant that I know of. There is generally no need to replant a small semicleared area in a healthy forest. They did not make charcoal from small stuff, but from large straight trees. Perhaps forest giants so called were off limits to them in theory; in fact the story I've heard is they had little to no official oversight. I've seen in books the structure they built to cook the charcoal; it is a cylinder, about 10-15' tall, very wide proportionally; maybe 40' or something, and is made out of straight logs stacked in a very specific pattern. It is neccessary to use straight logs so as to limit and control the amount of airspace to make the thing work properly. It is then covered with dirt with just enough air let in to sustain fire; not enough to burn up the wood, which thus becomes charcoal. I'll add also that the people of Europe also traditionally got a great deal of food from their forests, from which their overculture dominators have busily and insistantly seperated them for many years. This is where the whole pigs thing comes full circle, for instance. The traditional way to feed pigs was to drive them into the forest to eat nuts, roots, small animals, etc. Industrial use of the wood has largely outcompeted these uses in modern times, it seems. Last edited by tom hyle; 20th May 2005 at 01:07 AM.

19th May 2005, 11:12 AM	#1
tom hyle Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Houston, TX, USA Posts: 1,254	I don't think it's off topic at all, but then I've never felt there should be tight bonds of topicality. If nothing else it interferes with my thought process. We shouldn't need a new thread every time a discussion takes a little bend. It'd make searching the archives easier, I supose...... Europe used to pretty much be a forest. The practices of sustainable forestry you speak of have existed but are hardly universal. What I've read is that the main deforestation came with the early industrial/postmedieval age (16th/17th), after the population recovered from the great plagues, when the emptied lands were filling back in, when steel was becoming cheap, but "coke" from stone coal was not yet in use; charcoal from wood was the fuel and the alloying ingredient for making steel. As I've mentioned I don't remember how much charcoal it takes to produce a ton of steel under preindustrial conditions, but I just remember it is an impressive figure; it's a lot. An outcaste caste of charcoal burners came into existance to feed this need. They were landless, itinerate. I don't know how the economics, etc. worked as to who owned the forests they worked or whatever. Africa has seen a lot of deforestation, too, usually blamed on Imperialistic foreign exploitation, goats, and market agriculture (Africa never invented steel; this may fit in there somehow).........interesting to see how this or that must be the main cause; let us content ourselves to say a significant factor in the deforestation of Europe may have been steel production. If anyone wants to look into it further, please let us know what you find out.

19th May 2005, 01:25 PM	#2
fearn Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,247	Hi Tom, Let's break this down a bit. Part of the problem is that our terminology about "forest" has changed over the last 500 years, as have our thoughts about tree usage. For instance, in the 16th century England, a "Forest" was a royal reserve. New Forest actually has far more grass than trees (that's why the New Forest Pony is just a pony, not some miraculous horse that lives on tree leaves). A park was a forest with a wall around it. A "Desert" was an uninhabited area (Shakespeare has people sitting under the trees in the middle of a desert in one play)--this is the origin of our term "deserted." And when you start translating from other languages, it gets worse. "Monte" in Spanish can mean both mountain and forest, for example. Now, when you read many accounts of "deforestation," what are they talking about? If they are using modern translations of older terms, they can get well and truly screwed up. For instance, a region of Spain may have become "desert," in an old text. Aha! says the historical ecologist--deforestation! Actually, a town got sacked in a war, and as a result, the number of trees nearby actually increased. THAT is the level of evidence we're dealing with. In Grove and Rackham's excellent The Nature of Mediterranean Europe, there's an entire chapter devoted to how to read historical evidence for ecological purposes, and I recommend it (and the entire book) to anyone who's interested. A major purpose of the book is to discuss and correct the errors made in reconstructing the ecological history of the Mediterranean Basin, and it's a fascinating read. Getting back to forests and woodlands: Woodlands (at least in the UK and probably elsewhere) were used to produce two things: wood and timber. Wood is the small stuff used for things like charcoal, fence posts, furniture, etc (think "firewood"). Timber are the tall trees used for major construction projects, like buildings and ships. In a woodland, most trees were deliberately pruned (coppiced or pollarded) for wood production, because that is what most people used in everyday life. Timber was a major source of wealth. Property owners deliberately planted and cared for timber trees, replanting immediately when they were cut down. Essentially, they were long-term trusts. A well-known example: when Oxford Cathedral was built, they planted a number of timber oaks, for the repairs that they knew it would need in a few centuries. Today, only the rich have investments that run on this time-scale, but in the old days when they couldn't get timber from the US, Norway, or Brazil, they had to make sure that the resources would be available when they needed them. So...deforestation in Europe? It gets pretty complex. Certainly a lot of trees have been cut down in the last 150 years, especially with the introduction of American "Scientific Forestry" which drastically changed the way Europeans looked at their woodlands (for instance: woodlands were to only be used for growing trees for industry, not for raising pigs, firewood, etc). Prior to that...? Well, in the UK (where I've got the best evidence to hand), basically all the land was cleared and in use by around the 4th century BC. Deforested? Not really. There are lots of woodlands that have probably been in continuous use and harvest since that time. It's something to think about. In Africa, we simply don't have the record. It's pretty obvious from aerial surveys and some archeological work that parts of the Congo basin that are now forest were densely settled at one time. What happened to those people is (to my knowledge) largely unknown. My guess is that, in Central Africa, we've got at least as complex a land use history as in Europe. I suspect that parts of central Africa have been as consciously and complexly managed as parts of England. Given the wars and colonialism of the last few centuries, much of the evidence is hidden. I'll note in passing that the same thing can be said for North and South America's precolumbian history. To sum up: basically, I think that deforestation, and blaming steel production for it, is a radically over-simplified idea, to the point that I'd suggest that it's wrong. To start with, throw in harvesting timber for ships, switching to coal for industry and cutting down woodland for other industrial uses (such as farming or sheep-herding), and the switch in how forests were both understood and managed, from a local-scale sustainable use to global-scale resource extraction. In transferring the argument to Africa, you need to factor in all the history that have disappeared into the mists, since we don't have any records other than the griot's stories and similar myths. Personally, I don't this can be parsed very simply as increased steel production=> deforestation. Fearn

19th May 2005, 05:17 PM	#3
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,718	Hi Fearn, An interesting subject you bring up. I doubt that many, if any, of us had thought of it this way, although it should have been taken in consideration, as it is part of the whole thing. I know you could have added a lot of other countries where the same thing happened, but the countries you mentioned gives us an idea of what did happened. Jens

20th May 2005, 03:24 AM	#5
tom hyle Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Houston, TX, USA Posts: 1,254	Re the planned use of wood: I've seen where even now there are some functioning examples of special gardens/groves where growing wood is bent, etc. to form shapes it will be used for. I gather this is or was fairly common for tool handles, but also for a variety of architectural and probably maritime purposes. "Waste" pieces with interesting but not strong grain; ie. bird's eyes, burl, etc. was often used for knife handles, but daggers' and swords' are usually straight grain wood, AFAIK.