The Age of Wood

{5/5} “Wood has actually played a central role in our history. It is the one material that has provided continuity in our long evolutionary and cultural story, from apes moving about the forest, through spear-throwing hunter-gatherers and ax-wielding farmers to roof-building carpenters and paper reading scholars.”

The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization by Roland Ennos, published in 2020

This book goes through the history of what humans and our ancestors have done with wood, and then posits what we should do in the future. The prologue starts off talking about the Pine Tree Riot, which I’d never heard about — but had a huge impact on the Revolutionary War. Some of these things you might need to read the details to find persuasive — Ennos has research to back up all of his points.

Things that are discussed:

  • how primates evolved to live in trees
  • why apes are smarter than monkeys
  • how apes’ knowledge of wood allows them to build tools and nests
  • a new theory about when and why our ancestors started walking on 2 legs
  • how our ancestors wouldn’t have completely left the trees until they could use fire to keep away predators
  • how cooking our own food allowed us to spend less time eating and more time thinking
  • how sleeping in huts allowed us to lose our body hair
  • how wooden spears, spears with stone tips, and bows and arrows allowed us to become more effective hunters
  • how wooden boats allowed people to trade over longer distances
  • how fires with charcoal (instead of wood) burn hotter and allow you to work with metals such as copper and bronze
  • how wheels were made for thousands of years — at the moment it’s thought that wheels date back to 3500 BC
  • how many stone buildings are supported by wood, particularly the roofs
  • how wooden buildings in China and Japan were built hundreds of years ago to withstand earthquakes
  • how using wood pulp to produce paper led to a reduction in cost — and a proliferation of newspapers
  • how various materials were created — glass, iron, steel, concrete, plastic, fibreglass — we still use more wood than any other material
  • how deforestation causing rapid erosion is mostly a myth
  • how deforestation has contributed to carbon dioxide emissions and affected the temperature of the planet — even before industrialization
  • how planting exotic trees has led to a proliferation of new diseases and pests
  • how being amongst trees and working with wood have psychological benefits
  • how planting trees in cities, sustainable forestry, and rewilding some areas will alleviate climate change

Assumptions can be difficult to overcome — like the assumption that stone tools were the essential invention of early humans. It’s called the Stone Age — but wood was even more significant.

It reminds you that our ancestors were very clever, and figured out how to do things without the advantage of knowing the science behind it.

This is an important book — you should definitely read it. It’s fascinating, and contains many things you haven’t thought about before.

One more quotation: “More than any other technology, it was plank ships that enabled the Mediterranean to become the crucible of civilization in the West. They could carry people and goods quickly and freely across a vast maritime region, accelerating material and intellectual progress and allowing large cities to be supplied.”

And one more quotation: “The crafts were all carried out far away from university towns, and by an uneducated social class that jealously guarded its trade secrets. The separation of crafts from the intellectual life of Europe was another way in which our dependence on wood held back material progress. Not until intellectuals were forced to live cheek by jowl with craftsmen and industrialists could these groups begin to learn from one another.”

This is the 1st book I’ve read by Ennos.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 29th, 2022 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Reviews of books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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