[Terrapreta] Fwd: Fwd: Global Carbon Cycle

[Kevin Chisholm]

Dear Lou and Code

I think it is a big mistake to attribute to the Ancient Peoples more 
knowledge and intelligence than that for there is evidence to support.

If all they had was hammer and nail, and I assume they had nuts and 
bolts, I will get wrong answers.

I would suggest that we do not need advanced technology or computers or 
Scanning Electron Microscopes and all the neat stuff that gets people 
PhD's, to figure out how to make Terra Preta work. I would suggest that 
we work with the resources they had at their disposal. They had char, 
they had pottery, they had domestic waste, they had animal manure. They 
had pee and poo. They had slaughtering wastes. They had vegetative wastes.

I can imagine a Meeting of some of the Village Elders at a local 
watering hole...

"Hey, Xipadu, remember when I told you that I dumped that black stuff 
from my smudge pot on top of the big turd I laid beside the path to my 
house, and noticed there were no flies or smell coming from it? Well, 
guess what!! I put some in a clay pot, dropped a few corn seeds in it, 
and they grew like mad!! Then I noticed wherever in my back yard that I 
had put black stuff on turds to hide the smell, and keep the kids from 
walking in it, the grass was really green. What do you think? Should we 
poo on our plants to make them grow better?

"Hey Qixca, you might be onto something there! At least, the kids 
wouldn't have an occasional accident and track poo into the house. They 
never go near the plants. Perhaps you should put some black stuff on the 
poo so the the plants don't fall over with the smell? You make the 
foulest poo in the Village. What do you think, Xpala?"

"Well, I am not sure. Lets go see the Shaman, and see what he says. We 
wouldn't want to make a mistake, would we? Remember when I dumped the 
python guts near the Squash without the Shaman's Approval, and the very 
next day, the Mother-in-Law died? On second thought, go for it!!"

"Hey Xpala!! How be if I put a pottery shard on each poo pile to ward 
off the evil spirits?"

"That would work. What a neat way to cover your ass, so to speak."

The rest is probably history... ;-)

Can anyone think of ANY resource they were lacking in order to develop a 
  "Great Growing System?"

"Merely because a cow does not understand the workings of her 4th 
stomach is no reason why she should not eat grass."

Best wishes,

Kevin





code suidae wrote:
> On 6/4/07, lou gold <lou.gold at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Code,
>>
>> We have vastly greater technology than the original inventors of TP, 
>> it is
>> > likely that we can determine (eventually) why it works so well and 
>> how we
>> > can produce something similar, tailored for whatever environment is
>> > necessary, without necessarily using only one sort of feedstock.
>> >
>>
>> Well, yup, we have vastly greater INDUSTRIAL technologies than the
>> original inventors of TP who might have had vastly greater ECOSYSTEM
>> technologies, enough greater to figure out some stuff that remains as
>> mystery to us today.
>>
> 
> I agree, though I'd say it differently: Our biotechnology capacity is
> undeniably superior (from basic selective breeding techniques to genetic
> engineering). What we lack is the domain knowledge necessary to apply the
> technology we have, or even to fully understand the scope of the 
> problem, to
> achieve the ecosystem management we believe is necessary. Fortunately, our
> command of investigative tools and availability of existing TP might 
> help to
> give us a head start. Unfortunately I think we lack the social engineering
> tools necessary to effect a quick change in modern lifestyles that would
> alleviate much of the problem.
> 
> I think we need to be more humble in our assessment of past civilizations
>>
> 
> Absolutely. I marvel at not only at what durable evidence has been left
> behind, but at what I can only image has been lost. A few months ago I
> watched a documentary about a primitive South American tribe. At one point
> they documented the local shaman preparing a poultice to treat an infected
> leg wound. He collected a number of herbs and prepared them in the
> prescribed manner and then applied them with liberal hand-waving and
> ceremony. When queried later he freely acknowledged that much of the 
> process
> was superstition, but that in his society superstition was a strong
> motivator. It was important not only that he get that right herbs, but that
> the patient believed in the power of the shaman and the cure.
> 
> Coming from a western background where ceremony is often considered little
> more than window dressing (a curious expression, that, considering how
> essential literal window dressing is), it was interesting to me how plainly
> the shaman, without what we would consider formal education, recognized the
> different functional and psychological aspects of his tools. This 
> reinforced
> my impression that while ancient peoples were low-tech, they certainly were
> not no-tech and had effective techniques for maintaining and applying deep
> knowledge of their environment, both natural and societal.
> 
> It also increases my appreciation for the marvels we've achieved to date, I
> hope the thoughtless pleasure seeking so endemic to many of our cultures
> today won't end up spoiling the whole deal. It would be a shame to come so
> far at such a great cost in human and animal suffering and environmental
> destruction only to have it all slip away.
> 
> DOK
> 
> 
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