[Terrapreta] Earthen Kiln Conjecture

[Robert Klein]

You are right of course. What i did take seriously was that the time requirement was very serious and it would require a major pay off for it to be encouraged.  The  Indians in the north west  here dropped trees with the use of a wonderful back adze that may never have been replicated elsewhere and should have been efficient enough to take a tree down quickly.

It is still a tall order to generate the many necessary tons of biomass this way.  It was apparently pretty tough with steel tools also if the descriptions of charcoal making mean much.  It is also no walk in the park with chainsaws and hauling equipment to pull together the tonnage needed.

The earthen Kiln has the immediate advantage of simply redirecting the workload already necessary for corn.  There is little new investment, whereas cutting wood and producing char(coal) is a massive new investment.

----- Original Message ----
From: Kurt Treutlein <rukurt at westnet.com.au>
To: terra pretta group <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 12:01:18 AM
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Earthen Kiln Conjecture

Robert Klein wrote:
> I never took seriously the argument that the Indians ever felled trees.  That needs a steel axe.  Before the steel axe, the tree was killed by girdling the tree and allowing it to collapse which is a very quick process in the rain forest.  The labor aspect was obviously incredible.
>   
Rubbish!!!
The New Guinea people also did not have steel tools untill the coming of 
the whiteman. They felled tree with stone implements, usually rather 
like adzes, with ground blades made of a particularly tough rock, 
imported from many days walk away. I've seen two men fell a tree, 
somewhat thicker than thigh size in an afternoon. Mainly by a process of 
pounding the wood to fibrous matchsticks. Hard work it's true, but quite 
possible. They similarly felled and prepared kwila ( very hard timber) 
house posts, often muchly carved, using stone tools. They carved large 
(50foot) long canoes from red cedar wood, they made large wooden drums 
from hardwood, all using stone adzes and fire where appropriate. Of 
course, they embraced steel axes and bushknives (machetes) and steel 
planeblades and chisels and knives with enthusiasm when they became 
available.

People need to stop armchairing this sort of endeavour, based on little 
or no actual experience.


Kurt
who spent nearly 20 years in New Guinea.

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