by Bismillah » Sat Jul 08, 2006 7:22 am
Richard Cowan has written a fascinating online history of mining and metallurgy. At times inspiring, but often simply chilling, it provides some indispensable background information to the current "debate" on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH4.html">www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~...15CH4.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>This is from Chapter 4, "The Bronze Age":<br><br>----------<br><br>Stripped of sex and violence, the Gilgamesh epic is about deforestation. Gilgamesh and his companion go off to cut down a cedar forest, braving the wrath of the forest god Humbaba, who has been entrusted with forest conservation. It's interesting that Gilgamesh is cast as the hero, even though he has the typical logger mentality: cut it down, and never mind the consequences. The repercussions for Gilgamesh are severe: he loses his chance of immortality, for example. But the consequences for Sumeria were even worse. It's clear that the geography and climate of southern Mesopotamia would not provide the wood fuel to support a Bronze Age civilization that worked metal, built large cities, and constructed canals and ceremonial centers that used wood, plaster, and bricks. Most timber would have to be imported from the surrounding mountains, and deforestation there, in a climate that receives occasional torrential storms, would have led to severe erosion and run-off. The loss of Gilgamesh's immortality may be a literary reflection of the realization that Sumeria could not be sustained. <br><br>Theodore Wertime suggested that massive deforestation of the eastern Mediterranean began about 1200 BC, for construction, lime kilning, and ore smelting. Probably it began earlier in the drier regions further east. King Hammurabi's laws (around 1750 BC) carried the death penalty for unauthorized felling of trees in Mesopotamia. The problem may have been even worse in intensive metal-working regions like Anatolia. Metal smelting and forging had been going on in Anatolia for at least 3000 years by 1200 BC. <br><br>At any rate, most likely the Bronze Age saw a westward spread of a timber crisis. By 800 BC an extensive new use (ornamental and roof tiles) added to the burden, and around 500 BC the rise of the classical civilizations brought the final intolerable strain on the forests immediately round the Mediterranean. Eratosthenes, writing of the Late Bronze Age, say 1200 BC, reports that Cyprus was so heavily forested at that time that even smelting copper and silver, and felling trees for shipbuilding, had made little inroads on the forest. Farmers were even encouraged by gifts of land to clear the forest for agriculture. But soon after this a boom in mineral production, and a major improvement in the technology of tree-felling tools (as well as military weapons) both allowed and encouraged major forest clearing. <br><br>The great silver mines of Laurion, near Athens, required not only the fuel to smelt the ores, but the fuel to build and maintain the water cisterns. Wertime estimated on the basis of 3500 tonnes of silver and 1.4 million tonnes of lead production for classical Athens over perhaps 300 years, that the Laurion mines had consumed 1 million tonnes of charcoal and 2.5 million acres of forest. It is, in fact, quite likely that the mines declined, not because they were exhausted of ore, not because the miners had reached the water table, but because the fuel costs had risen to the point that they were uneconomic to run. It is clear that deforestation, accompanied by soil erosion, was already a severe problem in Attica, the region surrounding Athens. Plato wrote that the region is <br><br><br>a mere relic of the original country.... What remains is like the skeleton of a body emaciated by disease. All the rich soil has melted away, leaving a country of skin and bone. Originally the mountains of Attica were heavily forested. Fine trees produced timber suitable for roofing the largest buildings: the roofs hewn from this timber are still in existence. <br><br>Shipbuilding timber had to be imported from the Balkans and southern Italy to build the great Athenian fleet that beat the Persians at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Timber was a vital strategic commodity during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens. In 422 BC the Spartans conquered the Athenian trading cities on the coast of Macedonia. This alarmed the Athenians greatly, because it cut off their gold supplies and their ship-building timber, which had been shipped down the coast from the inland forests of Macedonia. By 415 BC Alcibiades of Athens was arguing for a major expedition to try to seize control of Sicily because of the supplies of timber there‹and the failure of this expedition was the critical point at which Athens lost control of the war and went down to defeat. <br><br>[A similar situation faced the British during the war against Napoleon. Napoleon had ordered an embargo on trade with the British, and in 1801 the French armies controlled Denmark. The Danes controlled seaborne trade with the Baltic Sea, because all ships had to pass by Copenhagen on their way out through the Kattegat into the North Sea. The Baltic trade was vital for the British because it provided them with their only supply of fir trees for ships' masts for the Royal Navy. (The American colonies, with their vast forests, had been lost in 1783 or 1776, depending how you like to count it.) The British fleet bombarded Copenhagen, destroyed the Danish fleet, and opened that vital strategic route. History might have taken a very different turn if the British had failed. It was close. Admiral Nelson ignored orders to withdraw (by putting his telescope to his blind eye) and pressed home the critical attack on the Danish fleet.] <br><br>- Continues here:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH4.html">www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~...15CH4.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
