[Terrapreta] Old native earth ovens.

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Max,

... They boiled food in these by adding hot stones to the water, with no damage to the wooden pots.


Maybe the temperature inside the wooden bowls filled with soup is maintained at the boiling temperature of the soup?

The Terra Preta found in the Amazon River basin was on a very large scale.  They had to actively and continuously be producing charcoal for many many years, perhaps centuries to have covered the area and the depths they covered with TP soils there, I think.  What these Tolais people may have been similar, but I suspect making Amazon style TP soils would take quite a long time.  Its just a thought though.  Maybe the effect could be made to happen overnight or in a single growing season with one application of the "right stuff", too.  Who knows?

One time some one mentioned that the only hard stone like anything that can be found in the Amazon River basin is fired clay.  And, fired clay does not wash way like the clay mud does.  I'm thinking that keeping precious charcoal and garden soil from washing away in the almost daily rains of the Amazon rainforest was pretty important.  They built dike and swales, too, it seems.  So, I kind of thought that the fired clay in the TP soils was there just to keep it from washing away.

Regards,

SKB

Kurt
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