[Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta. Re: Char and compost ( was Char made made under pressurized conditions? )

[Greg and April]

You pose some very interesting possibilities.

OTOH, I also see some possable flaws.

I'll interspaced my comments between the ************** .


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Chisholm" <kchisholm at ca.inter.net>
To: "Saibhaskar Nakka" <saibhaskarnakka at gmail.com>
Cc: "Greg and April" <gregandapril at earthlink.net>; 
<terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>; <arclein at yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 9:29
Subject: The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta. Re: [Terrapreta] Char 
and compost ( was Char made made under pressurized conditions? )


> Dear Dr Reddy
>
> I would pose for your consideration the following:
> * The pottery chards in Brazilian Terra Preta come from containers that 
> were used to store urine. *
>
> This would make great sense,  for the following reasons:
>
>
>
> 1: People find odors from decomposition of urine and feces unpleasant, and 
> will go to great lengths to dispose of these wastes at some distance from 
> their living quarters.

*********************

Yes and no.

Alot of it depends on the culture.    Take Midievil Europe, while they 
commonly used a chamber pot, while inside, they quite often just dumped it 
out the nearest window into the street.    Garderobe ( 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garderobe ) were simple closets that quite 
often let the waste out of the castle walls into piles that were sometimes 
big enough, that permited entry into the castle through the garterobe - a 
few castles were lost this way.

**********************

>
> 2: In a Primitive Society, in the tropics, people would not want to go 
> outside after dark to urinate and defecate, simply because of the presence 
> of poisonous snakes, poisonous insects, and harmful animals.

**********************

That is assuming that they were primitives.    Reading the book 1491, and 
looking at the level of culture necessary to raise the cities found in 
Central and South America, one has to believe that they had a fairly 
sophisticated level of culture.    While it is true that a in small village 
of 3-4 families, there might be some hesitancy to venture out after dark, in 
anything larger, animals tend to stay away from man and the closer you get 
the center of town, the less likely you are to find these mysteries of the 
dark.    Please remember that we have documentation that ancient cultures of 
South and Central America, were completely aware of the night sky - thus 
they had to be out after dark.

The belief that they were primitives also tends to go against the reasoning 
of #1, as only a culture that has advanced enough will understand, that 
there is something wrong with keeping human waste near by ( even enough to a 
level of making human waste a taboo ).

*****************************

>
> 3: They had the technology to make pottery jars and containers.
>
> 4: It would be very simple and convenient to use some of these pottery 
> containers as "Chamber Pots" for use inside the home at night.
>

******************************

I believe that #3 and #4 also argues against the belief that they were 
primitives that were scared of the dark and what might be in it.    Chamber 
pots are a convenience against going down to the local slop hole/latrine. 
You have to be reasionably rich in order to keep buying ceramic pots that 
soone or later was going to break.

******************************

> 5: It would be very logical and convenient to have a larger pottery 
> container outside the home for daily emptying of Chamber Pots into a 
> ""Slop Pail" or larger pottery equivalent, such as a "Slop Pot.".

********************************

Such a pot, means that they had to be able to afford one - and that would 
require a greater expense and even higher level of technology to make it, 
than the small pots.

********************************


>
> 6: It would be very logical for the Home Owner to periodically empty the 
> Slop Jar at some distance from the home.

*********************************

By what means?    If it is much larger than the slop pots, it would require 
several people to move it, when full, and that means it has to be thicker / 
stronger in order to withstand not only the weight of the slop, but the 
stress of moving all that weight .

*********************************

>
> 7: After one or two growing seasons, it would be very obvious that "the 
> grass was greener" and "things grew better" where Slop Jars had been 
> previously emptied.
>
> 8: Primitive people would see immediate benefit from having disposed of 
> their body wastes at a distance from their Homes, such immediate benefits 
> the lack of flies, insects,  and unpleasant odors.

*************************

I have to completely disagree with #7 and #8.

Remember we are talking about places that has a fairly long rainy season and 
the river(s) flood most everything that isn't above the high water mark ( 
were the people lived ).    Given the soil conditions, all the rain, and the 
flooding, the waste would be washed away in the first year - except where 
unusual conditions applied ( like if it was dumped above the high water 
mark - I will of this further below ).

***************************

>
> 9: Porous pottery jars would be an excellent container for such body 
> wastes, in that the evaporation by the leakage water would tend to cool 
> the jars, extending the time the wastes could be stored before they became 
> particularily offensive.

****************************

This would apply only in the dry season - in the months of the rainy season, 
and immediately after when the humidity is fairly high little to no 
evaporation would take place.

****************************

>
> 10: Once a pottery container had been used as a "Chamber Pot" or "Slop 
> Pot", it could never be used again for storage of food or consumables, 
> because of the unpleasant smell and salts that would be concentrated in 
> the pottery, because of evaporation.
>
> 11: In very small communities, people would be reasonably close to their 
> gardening area, and would likely dump their Slop Pots in their own fields.
>
> 12: In larger communities, where some people were not directly earning 
> their living as Farmers, they would have a problem disposing of their 
> daily wastes. It would be likely that some people would become "Slop Pot 
> Disposers."
>
> 13: The relatively weak Slop Pots would be subject to frequent breakage. 
> Breakage would be most likely during handling, but would be particularily 
> likely to be broken when being dumped. It would be a difficult and 
> unpleasant task to pick up the pottery shards for disposal elsewhere.
>
> 14: Initially, it would be likely that the large broken shards would be 
> picked up and disposed of elsewhere, simply to avoid future tillage 
> problems in teh fields. Because of absorbed "fertilizer salts and 
> micro-organisms", it would soon become noticed that "the grass was 
> greener" in areas where the pottery shards were disposed of.
>

*****************************

Again you run into the problem of the rainy season and flooding washing away 
the "salts".

*****************************

> 15 Much simpler for the Disposer would be to simply break the larger 
> shards into smaller shards that would not interfere with future tillage, 
> and leave then in the fields where they broke. It would be an easy job for 
> the Slop Disposer to sell the Farmer on the benefits of leaving the broken 
> shards in the field, as an "aid to growth."

******************************

That is an assumption based on another assumption.    The first is that they 
noticed that areas with slop pot pottery shards were greener than areas 
without slop pot pottery shards, before rain and possable flooding washed 
the nutrients away.

******************************

>
> 16: We are told that there were large Terra Preta fields and large 
> Communities located near them. Disposal of human wastes on the nearby 
> fields may have been the fundamental factor that enabled the Community to 
> grow to the larger size for two very important reasons: A: The first and 
> most obvious reason would be increased soil fertility and and abundant 
> food supply, for both local consumption and for trading. B: Perhaps even 
> more fundamentally important would be the the improved health and vigor of 
> the People of the community as a result of improved sanitation.
>
> 17:  With a demand for Slop Pots and Chamber Pots, due to relatively 
> frequent breakage, there would be an economic opportunity for Potters, to 
> make and fire the pots. It would seem to be natural for the Slop Haulers 
> to "vertically integrate" and establish their own Pottery Works.
>
> 18: It would thus seem that Terra Preta was one element in permitting the 
> development of a larger community. It would appear to be a secondary 
> element, in that teh sanitation benefit would permit a higher level of 
> primary health, and and bountiful harvests from fertilized fields would 
> permit sustenance of good health.

************************

That's a fairly large assumtion.    Have you watched The Secret of El 
Dorado? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76gAB5x0sjQ

In it there are fairly good indications that the mounds of Terra Mulato in 
the middle of open savana, is nothing more than the result of human 
habitation and building up land to a level above the high water mark with 
various dirt and trash of daily living, and I very strongly suspect that 
living conditions were very much like the living conditions in early 
Midievil Europe, where chamber pots were emptied where ever convenant, at 
least in the better parts of the bigger cities, there was open sewage lines 
( down the middle of the street ) to channel off the waste when it rained.

If anything, I believe that it was more an inadvertant thing going on, 
people going to the edge of the city mound to dump refuse of all kinds, 
making the mounds bigger and inadvertantly making the soil richer, since 
once they got so high, the water from the rains would tend to run off rather 
than soak in, and while floods would wash some away, at least some would 
stay.    In the movie, they show a open pit, showing the pottery shards, and 
one thing that struck , was that the pottery shards were in layers, not 
jumbled up, as would be the case if they were in a farmers field.

The action of a farmer ( at any point in history ) always jumbles up and 
mixes anything that is in the soil - in fact the last thing that a 
anthropologest wants to do is try and figure out what happened in a point in 
history, when it's a matter of dealing with farmers field ( and the longer 
it's under cultivation the worse it get's.

OTOH, throwing refuse ( like pottery shards ), into water ( espicaly slow 
moving water ), will have the very effect seen in the excavated pit in the 
show - in fact it would actuay have the side effect of catching sediment in 
moving waters.


*********************************

>
> 19: The Chinese are well known for their use of "night soil". 
> Archaelogical studies of Chinese Society would probably show up the 
> equivalent of "Chinese Terra Preta". Indeed, with historical migratory 
> patterns, it may very well have been that "Terra Preta" was invented in 
> China, and brought to "The New World" with migration of Asian People.  It 
> would be interesting indeed to trace back tom the origins of Fine Chinese 
> Pottery.

*******************************

At the time frame we are talking about, that in not likly at all - in fact 
it is highly unlikly, as someone would have had to get from the desolate 
west coast to the interior of the Amazon

*******************************

>
> 20: This seems to tie together many things of importance to a Society, but 
> it overlooks one ingredient in Terra Preta, that being char. Elemental 
> carbon can be created by pyrolysis, and this is called "char" or 
> "charcoal", but the essence of Terra Preta is not char or charcoal, but 
> rather "Black Carbon", BC.

*******************************

What basis do you have for that theory?

********************************

>
> 21: We know from bogs and swamps and lake bottoms that there is a 
> mechanism where organic vegetative matter can  make the  transition  from 
> "organic  carbon" to a "black carbon" that is not further consumable 
> readily by soil or  bog or lake bottom organisms.  Some significant 
> portion of the BC in Terra Preta Soils could very well have resulted from 
> heavy application of Slops, which then gave a "fertile base from which to 
> grow crops very successfully.

********************************

In the swampy situation you are talking about, the non-consumable carbon is 
usually in such a form, that you can recognize bit's of vegetative matter 
( as vegetative matter ), yet this is not true of Terra Preta carbonatious 
material.

*******************************

>
> 22: There would naturally be "profuse agricultural waste" from such 
> profuse growth. This could indeed be a disposal problem, and fire is a 
> very simple way of getting rid of bulky agricultural waste.

***************************

Thus producing charcoal ( even if it is inadvertantly ).

**************************

>
> 23: Additionally, we have the method suggested by Robert Kline for 
> disposing of Maize Stocks.
>
> 24: It would be a simple extension for the Amazonians to project that "if 
> some BC is good, then more is better". They could easily see that more 
> charcoal = more black soil. In effect, they were "doing the right thing 
> for the wrong reasons."
>

*******************************

That is some real far reaching.    Think about it, all they are doing is 
burning crop residue off, how much tonnage of crop residue is going to have 
to be burnt ( open burning ), in order to have a 1% increase, in the level 
of char in the soil, when we ( using what is specialized equipment to make 
char ) only get a 25-35% return in char from biomass?

The build up of char in the soil, is going to be so slow, that any 
substantual increase of char levels in the soil ( that would actualy make 
any noticable differance in the crop return ) would occure only over the 
course of generations - not from one season to the next.    No one would 
notice any differance from one season to the next.

I don't have the numbers handy, but little char is actualy produced with 
open burning, so tons and tons of biomass would have to be burnt, in order 
to get the level of char needed in just a few seasons, for anyone to notice 
that increasing the level of char, increases plant production.

*******************************


> 24: What they were doing by going to a bit of extra work by building the 
> "char mounds" described by Robert, was providing much more Cationic 
> Exchange Potential, save haven for soil micro-organisms, and the ability 
> to capture and store excess nutrients for future use. Too much Slops in a 
> given area would likely lead to "nutrient overload" condition.
>
> 25: The employment of Robert's Char Technology may have been a 
> "de-bottlenecking" step that allowed yields from Slop treated soils to 
> rise to an even higher level.
>
> 26: With "the benefit of 20-20 hindsight," we can see how TP could have 
> evolved to yield a superior agricultural system from its roots as a waste 
> disposal system.

**************************

Your right, it is with hindsight that we see that what happened, they did 
increase the fertility, but it is far from 20/20 hindsight - it's more like 
looking into muddy water.

If we actualy knew what it was they did, and why they did it, then it would 
be 20/20 hindsight - but for the same reasion that we continue to debate how 
Terra Preta became to be, is the same reasion hindsight is far from 20/20.

*****************************

>
> 27: An interesting but unrelated parallel ecosystem is that of Aquaponics, 
> where "fish water" is applied to plants, and the "stripped water" is sent 
> back to the fish pond. Originally, with Pond Aquaculture, and a lack of 
> water, there was a limit to fish loading because of ammonia and nitrate 
> buildup. Aquaculturists found that plants would remove teh ammonia from 
> teh fish water, enabling them to grow more fish with less "new water." 
> Then the Plant People ran with teh idea and started growing fish to get a 
> second paying crop, and free fertilizer for their plants.
>
> Does this all hang together for you? Do you see any logic gaps or problems 
> that would negate what is presented above?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Kevin
>
>