Basic question - how did people gather sufficient firewood in times before they had metal saws/axes?
We recently attended a presentation on people in the Chicago area over the past 12,000 years. They had displays of the various tools throughout the ages. I asked how they dealt with the cold winters. The speaker said they were presumed to have spent much of their time indoors other than hunting, and kept warm with skins and fire.
After the talk, I started thinking about what would be involved in gathering and preparing sufficient wood to make it through a Chicago winter - without the benefit of a metal axe/saw.
If you were limited to gathering deadfalls and materials that were small enough to break with leverage, that would require a HECK of a lot of wood - if you wanted to keep a fire going all night and be large enough to warm a dwelling. And it is hard to imagine the effort it would take to fell, cut to length, or split anything more than 6" in diameter.
This YouTube channel shows a guy building all sorts of things without the benefit of metal tools (he makes everything he needs from what he finds in the forest). Including just chopping wood (you see him do it in the first 10 seconds in the video below).
People could use stone tools to cut down trees. Also, since mankind came out of Africa and the Mediterranean area, there would be less need for heating. By the time people got to those colder climates, the toolmaking and knowledge would have lessened the issue.
That stone axe works better than I would have expected. Thanks for the link to the interesting vid. I guess I should not underestimate what can be done w/ essentially endless time and vast resources.
It still seems to me, tho, that the sort of chopping he does in the clip is different from what would be required to maintain a heating/cooking fire in a northern clime. Could you maintain a decent fire using approx 6’ lengths of 4" diameter green wood like he is cutting?
The discussion I attended covered the last 12,000 years. By 1000 CE, was the Woodland era (IIRC), and people were living in long houses, in a climate pretty similar to present day. Believe me, in January in norther Illinois, there would be considerable need for heating - unless skins and insulation were sufficient.
Also, keep in mind they weren’t trying to heat a 6,000 SF house. You don’t need to chop down a forest to heat a small hut/lean-to primarily used for sleeping and keeping out of the rain.
Very interesting. and the ‘fireplace’ vents under a ‘concrete’ slab that would continue to stay warm through the night. I suppose you would sleep on it.
There was a related thread a while back; IIRC consensus was that, given an adequate number of skins to make tents and clothing, you wouldn’t freeze to death in any inhabited part of the world. So although I’m certain they wanted as much fire as they could get, they wouldn’t have actually needed to have one going 24/7.
I’m sure that had substantial fire making skills. I’m likely jaded by my recollections of goofballs on Survivor unsuccessfully trying to rub sticks together. But ISTR plenty of stories about even more recent societies in which people were careful to not let the fire go out, carried embers with them, etc.
The speaker said by the late woodland period, they were living in longhouses, I believe family groups of 10-12.
And they were not trying to heat to 18° or 20°C ( 68°F I guess)
Only above freezing temperature would have been fine.
And an grease rich diet.
And plenty of fur, that was covering all that grease.
And the ones who couldn’t bear the weather died…
Remember, body heat counts. I used to setup big conference rooms (IT stuff) and, before the attendees arrived, it was downright cold in there (on purpose). The reason being that once you packed a thousand people in the room it will heat up nicely.
IIRC, in ancient times, this is why they would keep animals on the first floor (donkeys and such) and the people would live above them. The animals’ body heat helped heat the place.
Of course, there are limits on how far that will get you but it is enough to count and mitigate the amount of heating you need to do.
I would think someone living in such a climate would use the warmer months to chop more wood than they need for cooking and such. Pile that wood up and it will dry itself out (hopefully a covered wood pile).
When winter comes all that green wood will be better for burning since it has dried some. Hopefully you stocked enough for the cold months or you will be chopping or looking for wood in winter.
Indeed, better still, the video below shows how to make charcoal which will be much, much better for cooking and heating. Also, easier to store and use. After all, charcoal is basically wood with all of the water driven off (and some other stuff).
Interesting. I wonder if there is archaeological evidence of charcoal burning.
I obviously have more reading to do. I like to spend time in the parks and forest preserves around here, and I often wonder what would really be involved for the first settlers, or those who preceded them. Hard to imagine what it would be like in extreme weather/the depth of winter.
On further thought I am not sure charcoal would be better for heating a small room. Wood burning heaters burn wood for a reason. On a small scale I think a log burning all night might be a better choice. Not sure though, hopefully others with more experience will chime in.
You should look up some of the shows from Les Stroud, who does for real what the “Survivor” people pretend to do. One point he makes quite often is that it doesn’t actually take that much fire to survive and do a bit of cooking.
And on the specific topic of keeping a fire going, I found this tweet:
Modern notions of what it takes to “survive” are really more about what it takes to be in luxurious comfort.
I used to heat with wood. 1700 sq ft. Was a tremendous amount of work.
I gathered and split it all at first, but then had split wood delivered. And then my Wife and I would use a tractor to carry it around to a place to access it and stack it. Those where always long weekends. Cleaning the flue was another weekend of work every year. And a bit scary.
Six cords a year.
What we would do weekly is bring into the house a weeks load of wood and stack it inside. A lot of work also.
Now I do sometimes miss the actual wood burning stove, I don’t miss the work and the mess. The worst was coming home from work, walking up the drive to the house, spend 15 minutes getting the stove going and then plowing our drive so I could get my car up and my wife could get home.
We now have a propane fired stove. All I do is set the thermostat. It’s wonderful. We are actually on our second propane stove. The first one a Vermont Castings had problems with the gas valve and could not be replaced.
Yeah, I was in the first work group that moved into a newly built building using this principle. They didn’t move any more people in for quite a few months. We were freezing…and this was SoCal.
Once the building was fully occupied we needed the a/c.
