Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: you welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. So around this time of year especially,
Speaker 1: I I really love to get into a little extra
Speaker 1: you know, Chinese culture, Chinese history. Uh. And then on
Speaker 1: this show, Chinese Invention, and we've covered various topics already
Speaker 1: in the show with strong Chinese roots, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking maybe this would be the time to discuss gunpowder
Speaker 1: and fireworks. But then, as is often the case when
Speaker 1: we're researching this show, I started looking up sources, started
Speaker 1: reading about the topics, and in the process discovered something
Speaker 1: even more exciting, more exciting than fireworks. Yes, and and
Speaker 1: I realized it may sound alarming, uh, that it is
Speaker 1: more exciting than fireworks, but it is. And it is
Speaker 1: the match stick. I thought you were gonna say, like
Speaker 1: quantum fireworks. No, no, the common matchstick. And uh. Indeed,
Speaker 1: when I told my wife about this topic for the week,
Speaker 1: her initial response was just to laugh and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's way more exciting than fireworks. I'm with you, man,
Speaker 1: I think she's wrong, and you're right. Well, here's the
Speaker 1: thing I'm not gonna argue that fireworks are not exciting,
Speaker 1: because fireworks are tremendous. Everybody loves fireworks, except for those
Speaker 1: I guess who are frightened by them and dogs. Dogs
Speaker 1: don't love fireworks. But anyway, humans tend to love fireworks.
Speaker 1: And we'll probably come back to fireworks and gunpowder in
Speaker 1: the future. But the modern matchtick is indeed amazing, and
Speaker 1: but you just might need to see it again with
Speaker 1: fresh eyes to try and see it through the eyes
Speaker 1: of a child. Yeah, why do they need to tell
Speaker 1: children not to play with matches because they're resist Because
Speaker 1: they're awesome. They're like really fun to play with. They
Speaker 1: are I mean, granted, yes they are. They are potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous as well, but but you just think of the
Speaker 1: experience of it. Here's this wooden stick, you know, generally
Speaker 1: tipped with like a reddish coating. Uh, you get it
Speaker 1: out of this cool little box. Even the match box
Speaker 1: was always interesting because it's like this doll sized casket
Speaker 1: or a bug sized casket. Right, it feels archaic somehow,
Speaker 1: It's like something out of Indiana Jones. It slides open
Speaker 1: as if it should have some kind of artifact of
Speaker 1: significance inside. Yeah, and then you pull out the match,
Speaker 1: you strike it across the pad and then it ignites
Speaker 1: a brilliant spark. That sound gets the endorphins rushing through me.
Speaker 1: It does it just something exciting, calming, comforting. Uh that
Speaker 1: I don't realize I'm really making myself sound like a pyromaniac.
Speaker 1: I'm not somebody who burns down buildings. Well, I think
Speaker 1: of also the cinematic uses of of the match striking
Speaker 1: in the darkness, flaring up and then coming back down
Speaker 1: to a nice small Uh you know, little little doll
Speaker 1: up of flame used a great effect in a lot
Speaker 1: of horror movies. Yeah, I think it was. It was
Speaker 1: it the Conjuring that had a really creepy match lighting
Speaker 1: in the dark scene. Oh, I mean, I feel like it.
Speaker 1: It shows up in just a lot of different shows.
Speaker 1: Any It's often a sense of mystery, a sense of
Speaker 1: you know, of of discovery. Sometimes there's a jump scare
Speaker 1: in there, but a lot of times it is just
Speaker 1: it sums up the idea of of using human technology,
Speaker 1: human fire technology to conquer the darkness, but also like
Speaker 1: really driving home how potent the darkness is. Because there's
Speaker 1: that flare there, then it's reduced and then eventually, especially
Speaker 1: if it's a horror film, Uh, the flame of the
Speaker 1: match is going to reach the fingertips and the hero
Speaker 1: or heroine will go ah, and then then it'll be
Speaker 1: dark again, right, But the light from the match in
Speaker 1: the darkness is almost kind of like a little bubble
Speaker 1: of air at the bottom of the ocean, you know.
Speaker 1: It's the it's this tiny, uh, little lifeline. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's just with that one little spark, it's enough to
Speaker 1: bring an oven then to full life, to to light
Speaker 1: a lantern, to to bring your hot water heater back online,
Speaker 1: to to to save lives through a camp fire on
Speaker 1: a on a you know, on a winter day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fire bootstrapping, Yeah, I mean it can also again, it
Speaker 1: can prove massively destruction if it is misused. But but
Speaker 1: they're the match stick itself is is a fascinating artifact,
Speaker 1: a fascinating invention I think to focus on in discussion
Speaker 1: of fire technology in general. So this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a multi part exploration of fire technology and the invention
Speaker 1: of the match. And I think today we're gonna be
Speaker 1: focusing primarily on the early side of this, like what
Speaker 1: came before matches and things that might have been called matches,
Speaker 1: but that are not exactly like the matches we think
Speaker 1: of today. Right, We will not actually get to the
Speaker 1: modern chemical match or the safety match in this episode,
Speaker 1: but we're going to cover a lot of ground really
Speaker 1: just coming to terms with humanities conquest of fire. So
Speaker 1: to stay the obvious, fire is not a human invention,
Speaker 1: I could I suppose you could consider a discovery though,
Speaker 1: because it does occur naturally in the world that humans
Speaker 1: evolved to thrive in. But it's it's not even really
Speaker 1: a human discovery. It's more of a pre human discovery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's evidence of non human animals in some ways interacting
Speaker 1: with fire. We've talked on the stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind before about the evidence of like Australian birds of
Speaker 1: prey or at least by by many anecdotes, sometimes using
Speaker 1: wildfires in order to help catch prey. Uh. And if so,
Speaker 1: if those stories are true, that's like in birds even
Speaker 1: but clearly in many of the higher primates that were
Speaker 1: related to there's a kind of Uh, there's a kind
Speaker 1: of like awareness of fire and a kind of regard
Speaker 1: for it that borders on interaction and use. Right, And
Speaker 1: in some of the the prehistoric examples will be touching
Speaker 1: on will not even be examples of Homo sapiens using fire,
Speaker 1: but but other of our of our kin yea, our
Speaker 1: hominide relatives. Yes. So we've talked about fire before on
Speaker 1: our other podcasts, stuff to blow your mind. We had
Speaker 1: a wonderful I think, pair of episodes with the title
Speaker 1: A World Without Fire. Uh. In the in that we
Speaker 1: touched on on the three basics that you need in
Speaker 1: order to have fire itself. You're gonna need heat, you're
Speaker 1: going to need fuel, and you're going to need oxygen.
Speaker 1: And so the resulting fire isn't so much a thing
Speaker 1: as it is an event the rapid combustion manifested in light,
Speaker 1: flame and heat. Yeah. Sometimes people like to ask, like
Speaker 1: what is fire made of? You know, is it like
Speaker 1: is it like a gas? Is it a solid? Uh?
Speaker 1: Sometimes people assume it's some kind of plasma fire. Fire
Speaker 1: is a mixture of things going on. So it's like
Speaker 1: a rapid release of gases that are happening at high
Speaker 1: heat and chemical reactions going on in the air. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And really, I think one thing that that is going
Speaker 1: to be neat to ruminate on is we discuss the
Speaker 1: especially these early technologies, is that it is largely through
Speaker 1: fire manipulation in a nations and inventions that we reach
Speaker 1: these points where we can treat fire like a thing
Speaker 1: rather than an event. Like it is a management of
Speaker 1: the event that makes it into a thing or a
Speaker 1: seeming thing that is tangible. Yeah, it makes a verb
Speaker 1: into a noun. It makes makes an event into a substance. Now,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, this trifecta of ingredients necessary for fire, we're
Speaker 1: not always in place on Earth, not at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something we discussed in that World Without Fire episode.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's kind of what the title is
Speaker 1: getting at. Heat was, you know, certainly always a thing
Speaker 1: here on Earth, but it wasn't until five and forty
Speaker 1: million years ago, the beginning of the Paleozoic era, that
Speaker 1: photosynthetic organisms terraformed the planet's atmosphere into an oxygenated balance
Speaker 1: capable of providing that necessary second ingredient of oxygen. Right, so,
Speaker 1: previously on Earth there would have been a lot of
Speaker 1: like oxygen compounds, but not just like tons of free
Speaker 1: oxygen in the atmosphere. And then there's that third ingredient
Speaker 1: of fuel. And it was indeed the last ingredient really
Speaker 1: to become available here, because what do you need to have,
Speaker 1: like proper fuel, what do we think of its fuel
Speaker 1: for a fire terrestrial plant matter, and that was scarce
Speaker 1: in you know, the early ages of the planet. The
Speaker 1: earliest evidence of charred vegetation dates back to a mere
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty million years ago. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: remember talking about this in that episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blew your mind. But it's a weird thing to think
Speaker 1: that in addition to being the water planet, you know,
Speaker 1: Earth is the planet with liquid water and like the burning,
Speaker 1: hot or frozen other terrestrial worlds we could find, but
Speaker 1: Earth is also the fire planet. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I'm correct in saying that, except for maybe in some
Speaker 1: very weird momentary exceptions, there's nowhere else in the Solar
Speaker 1: System that can support fire. The oxygen and the fuel
Speaker 1: are not present. So eventually humans and human ancestors came along,
Speaker 1: and they would have definitely by that point they would
Speaker 1: have encountered periodic examples of fire, of wild fire um
Speaker 1: and this would be the result of generally lightning strikes
Speaker 1: or I think that the prime candidate. But also you
Speaker 1: would have seen fire occasionally from things like volcanic activity,
Speaker 1: falling rocks that managed to spark correctly to create a spark,
Speaker 1: much like flint and steel as we'll we'll get into
Speaker 1: flint and steel in a bed here um and uh.
Speaker 1: And then also there's the spontaneous combustion of organic materials.
Speaker 1: But lightning would have been the big one. Now, certainly
Speaker 1: at this point many many animals had already learned to
Speaker 1: game fire and overcome it. Organtic entities cannot endure fire, really,
Speaker 1: but the many have involved to survive it and even
Speaker 1: depend on wildfire cycles. We see this in plants especially,
Speaker 1: but early Homo species members of the Homo genus, which
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens are are a member of. UH, they would
Speaker 1: have found this sparkling brilliance uh, you know, the result
Speaker 1: of a lightning strike on some dry wood for example,
Speaker 1: a resulting moving spread of wildfire or something. Uh. They
Speaker 1: would have realized that it offered a number of vital properties,
Speaker 1: most obviously heat and light, but over time it would
Speaker 1: prove valuable for a number of secondary purposes as well,
Speaker 1: such as protection, tool tempering, plant selection, cooking, vegetation clearing, hunting, pottery,
Speaker 1: food preservation, and pest control. But at a very basic level.
Speaker 1: It brought light into the darkness and heat into the cold.
Speaker 1: It allowed these wandering diurnal omnivores to thrive and otherwise
Speaker 1: limiting times and places. For example, it enabled early humans
Speaker 1: and Neanderthals to inhabit cold weather regions and endure the
Speaker 1: ice age. I mean, when you think about it, fire
Speaker 1: is absolutely necessary for human civilization. It's the thing that
Speaker 1: makes so many other layers of technology possible. You couldn't
Speaker 1: have it without fire. Yeah, you certainly couldn't have metal working,
Speaker 1: you know, culinary advancements or any of this stuff. It
Speaker 1: is really hard to overstate the importance of of our ancestors,
Speaker 1: uh mastery of fire. On the technological ladder, it is
Speaker 1: uh what probably like wrung number two maybe wrung number
Speaker 1: one is tool uh manufacturing to tool construction. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so you can you can make stone tools
Speaker 1: without fire. You know, you can chip stone tools and
Speaker 1: you can like wrap them together with vines and things
Speaker 1: like that. But what are the ways that we primarily
Speaker 1: characterize technology stages after that? I mean the big ones
Speaker 1: are like what types of metal working humans are capable of?
Speaker 1: All totally dependent on fire? All you know, basically all
Speaker 1: chemistry is dependent on fire. Yeah, I mean I always
Speaker 1: come back again to the example of the hot water
Speaker 1: heater in my house. Like my house, Uh, a lot
Speaker 1: of what goes on there depends on this tiny fire
Speaker 1: that is maintained by a machine, the pilot light in there.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like it's like a little a little
Speaker 1: fire demon that lives in my house. Always makes me
Speaker 1: think of the mus Hockey films House Moving Castle with
Speaker 1: the fire demon that lives in the hearth, which is
Speaker 1: ultimately uh yeah, this is a good one to come
Speaker 1: back to in this episode because that sums up a
Speaker 1: lot about the nature of fire, the precious nature of fire.
Speaker 1: So we know that fire occurs naturally, but this must
Speaker 1: make you wonder, Okay, so there must there was a
Speaker 1: period that was a gap between humans just encountering natural
Speaker 1: fires and reacting to them versus humans making their own
Speaker 1: fire out of nothing. Uh So, like, what do we
Speaker 1: have in between? Well, the first step is just possession
Speaker 1: of the fire, not having the ability to recreate it,
Speaker 1: but figuring out how to keep it once it isn't
Speaker 1: been encountered in the wild, you know, bringing back this
Speaker 1: precious thing and cultivating it so how far back does
Speaker 1: this go in our history? Well, according to the seventy
Speaker 1: Great Inventions of the Ancient World by Brian in Fagin
Speaker 1: uh And in this case the entry is also also
Speaker 1: features work by the contributor Stephen uh Mythin Uh. They
Speaker 1: point out that finding evidence of prehistoric camp fires is
Speaker 1: difficult because they in many cases leave no trace that
Speaker 1: we can find today, and we have to avoid mistaking
Speaker 1: naturally occurring fires for fires created or maintained by humans.
Speaker 1: Now one and an author here that we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back to again and again is Jamie Whisniac, who wrote
Speaker 1: an excellent paper Matches the Manufacturer Fire in two thousand
Speaker 1: five for the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology. And in
Speaker 1: that Whisneyac mentions that archaeological evidence suggests that the controlled
Speaker 1: use of fire may date back five hundred thousand years
Speaker 1: and this evidence would would be from Beaches Pit in Norfolk, England.
Speaker 1: Uh And the the evidence here, according to Fagan and Mythan,
Speaker 1: is based on the fact that it shows, in addition
Speaker 1: to other signs of habitation, areas of heavily burnt soil,
Speaker 1: too intense and local lies to be natural. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you imagine like fires occur in nature. Sometimes there's lightning
Speaker 1: and a forest catches fire, but the fire kind of
Speaker 1: like sweeps through and moves on once most of the
Speaker 1: fuel is used up. In a naturally occurring setting, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect to have a fire burning in exactly the
Speaker 1: same one spot for a long period of time, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: something unnatural is happening here. If if there seems to
Speaker 1: be a fire here, and let's say every day for
Speaker 1: a week, that's that's suspect every day for a month,
Speaker 1: or just even periodically over the course of years. And
Speaker 1: yet Fagan and Mythan point to another older example, and
Speaker 1: I believe as of this recording, it is still the
Speaker 1: oldest example that is that is presented form a unnatural
Speaker 1: fire on this planet, and that is a one point
Speaker 1: six million year old site in Kenya. This was discovered
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, which is the same year as
Speaker 1: whisney next paper. But I'm guessing that's the reason that
Speaker 1: he does not mentioned that in his work. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's probably, you know, given the overlap and or gap
Speaker 1: there between those publications, he may have missed that. But this,
Speaker 1: this finding is one point six million old year old
Speaker 1: site in Kenya, it's based on experimental studies that show
Speaker 1: that a regularly maintained camp fire will do two things.
Speaker 1: It will oxidize soil to depths of up to six
Speaker 1: inches or fifteen centimeters, and the magnetic properties of the
Speaker 1: underlying soil may be altered, resulting in a in a
Speaker 1: different magnetic property orientation compared to sites of natural fire
Speaker 1: or sites where there is no burning at all and
Speaker 1: uh And to be specific, this is referred to as
Speaker 1: the f x J J twenty site in kuby Fa, Kenya. Okay.
Speaker 1: So if this is correct, it looks like up to
Speaker 1: one point six million years ago, some kind of human
Speaker 1: ancestor had captured fire from some source and had made
Speaker 1: a fire pit that they were able to maintain for
Speaker 1: long periods of time, right, I think specifically it's thought
Speaker 1: that this would have been astro Lepithecus robust us and
Speaker 1: or Homo erectus. But again, just because you have it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you can of course fully utilize it, and
Speaker 1: it definitely doesn't mean that you can create it yourself.
Speaker 1: Just in terms of hosting the fire. Distinctive hearths within
Speaker 1: caves don't show up till apparently sixty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and the use of fire to manage landscape pops up
Speaker 1: roughly nine thousand in Europe. But of course, once you
Speaker 1: have a fire, what are people going to do with it?
Speaker 1: They're going to tinker with it, They're going to poke
Speaker 1: it with sticks. We still can't resist the temptation to
Speaker 1: to poke around in a fire and experiment with its
Speaker 1: properties and its power and its heat. Of course, and uh,
Speaker 1: there's actually a wonderful line. This is from the Greek
Speaker 1: writer Ascalis, who described fire as quote a teacher in
Speaker 1: every skill, and a means too mighty ends. And ultimately
Speaker 1: this is why the gift or theft of fire from
Speaker 1: the gods factors into various myth cycles, right from that
Speaker 1: of Prometheus in the Greek tradition to the mythic fire
Speaker 1: driller in Chinese mythology. I was also reading of one.
Speaker 1: This is a Lakota myth in which coyote steals the
Speaker 1: fire from a trio of witches and to escape them. Uh,
Speaker 1: the fire has passed from animal to animal as the
Speaker 1: witches chase after them, um, until an old frog is
Speaker 1: cornered by the witches and spits the burning brand into
Speaker 1: a stump and the stump swallows it. Uh, And of
Speaker 1: course one can't help. But think of you know, the
Speaker 1: places you might keep a fire, you might grow a
Speaker 1: fire and new such as an old stump. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's a tradition for keeping a
Speaker 1: fire is putting it inside a hollowed out tree. Yeah. That,
Speaker 1: by the way, That details from Mark Warren on medicine
Speaker 1: bow a dot net. But but certainly you find other
Speaker 1: tales of of fire origins against thefts from the gods,
Speaker 1: gifts of the gods and the Titans, and various myth
Speaker 1: cycles around the world. Even in the ancient world. It's
Speaker 1: clearly recognized as something that is transformative of the human
Speaker 1: kind's roll on the earth. It's like that, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a gift from the gods or something stolen
Speaker 1: from the gods, it's a thing that marks a transition
Speaker 1: point for what humans are and what they're capable of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fire change the world. But it is one thing to again,
Speaker 1: to wield captured fire, another thing entirely to generate it yourself.
Speaker 1: And his Whisney Act points out quote the step from
Speaker 1: the control of fire to its manufacture required hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of years and that is that is awe inspiring
Speaker 1: to think about that there's this this long period of
Speaker 1: time in which fire remains this thing that may be captured,
Speaker 1: then may be cultivated, but the means of producing it
Speaker 1: are are not known to the individuals who use it
Speaker 1: think about I don't know. I mean, it's hard not
Speaker 1: to start imagining the kinds of mythology that would give
Speaker 1: rise to, you know, the idea that there is like
Speaker 1: almost this living thing, this substance kept among you that
Speaker 1: must always be fed or else your your livelihood is gone.
Speaker 1: Right And again, thinking back on the fact that we're
Speaker 1: talking about ancient peoples that that typically did not stay
Speaker 1: in one spot for extended periods of time. They would
Speaker 1: move around, and therefore you had to, you know, in
Speaker 1: the words of Corman McCarthy, keep carrying the fire. You
Speaker 1: would literally have to bring some active portion of the
Speaker 1: fire with you. Uh So, perhaps you have like a
Speaker 1: main camp fire, a main camp that that you're that's
Speaker 1: your base fire, but you still need to bring some
Speaker 1: of it with you. If you're hoping to build another
Speaker 1: camp over here, or if you're packing up entirely, you
Speaker 1: have to bring some glowing ember of that with you
Speaker 1: and keep it vital until you can feed a new fire,
Speaker 1: otherwise it will go out. And then when and where
Speaker 1: will you acquire a new one? You'll have to get
Speaker 1: one from other beings that are cultivating fire, or just
Speaker 1: you know, wait in how you can find a wildfire
Speaker 1: to steal from. If you wait until you find a wildfire,
Speaker 1: I mean, you might be waiting past the end of
Speaker 1: your life, right And then also I mean to to
Speaker 1: you know, to stay the obvious too, like wildfires are
Speaker 1: inherently dangerous, so you know that is that's very much
Speaker 1: like stealing the meat from the lion. There. All right,
Speaker 1: we should take a break, but when we come back
Speaker 1: we will talk more about technology for carrying the fire.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So we've been talking about this
Speaker 1: long period of human prehistory where humans clearly had control
Speaker 1: of fire in some way, but we did not have
Speaker 1: the means to manufacture fire from nothing. So if a
Speaker 1: fire goes out, you are out of luck. We do
Speaker 1: not have the technology to make a new fire from
Speaker 1: from no previously existing fire. So you might have something
Speaker 1: burning that you've managed to acquire at some point, your
Speaker 1: ancestors managed to wire at some point from a forest
Speaker 1: fire or a lightning strike or whatever. And and now
Speaker 1: you've just got to keep this fire fed because it's
Speaker 1: it's your livelihood, it's how you survive. But let's say
Speaker 1: you needed to move from one place to another, how
Speaker 1: do you do that? Like, how do you make sure
Speaker 1: that you can always keep the fire burning when you're
Speaker 1: on the go? Yeah, and and again we come back
Speaker 1: to the idea that management of fire is is a
Speaker 1: means of turning an event into something that is at
Speaker 1: least mostly tangible that then can be transported. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was looking around on this looking for, you know,
Speaker 1: some some ideas about how this was carried out, and
Speaker 1: I ran across some writings by Walter Hoe, who was
Speaker 1: a Smithsonian ethnologist of the early twentieth century, writing in
Speaker 1: Fire as an Agent in Human Culture, Issue one thirty nine,
Speaker 1: and he explored this very topic and provided some potential
Speaker 1: answers based on um known examples of fire preservation from
Speaker 1: generally from existing or very recent societies. So these examples
Speaker 1: would have been among societies that did have the means
Speaker 1: to manufacture fire again if they lost it. But even
Speaker 1: if you have those means, sometimes keeping a fire going
Speaker 1: can be advantageous, right, can be easier than trying to
Speaker 1: laboriously strike a new fire maybe when conditions are bad, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh And indeed, he points out that keeping a
Speaker 1: fire going like this and the necessity of keeping a
Speaker 1: fire going was probably the beginning of the quote enormous
Speaker 1: fuel industries of the day. Uh so so yeah, you
Speaker 1: just imagining that these people just having to continually feed it.
Speaker 1: Just it's it's this thing that will never it's hunger
Speaker 1: will never stop. If it's hunger. Uh, It's hunger dies
Speaker 1: when it dies. And when it dies, especially if you're
Speaker 1: in a northern climate or in the middle of winter. Uh,
Speaker 1: that may be the death of your people as well.
Speaker 1: So he the author looked to several examples of fire
Speaker 1: preservation in more recent societies, and these are a few
Speaker 1: that I think shed some interesting light. One he points
Speaker 1: to the Andaman Islands. This is in the Bay of Bengal,
Speaker 1: where they hollow out a tree trunk and set it
Speaker 1: on fire and the fire remains under accumulated ashes. He
Speaker 1: also says writes that the Cherokee would bury fire in
Speaker 1: the ground in a fire cash and this was also
Speaker 1: practiced by other groups of native people's in the America's
Speaker 1: as well. And this is definitely an example though where um,
Speaker 1: they certainly had fire creation technology, they could make fire themselves.
Speaker 1: But uh, this is likely more about preventing the necessity
Speaker 1: of a drawn out a flint and pyrites method of
Speaker 1: striking a spark getting the spark going. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and it reveals possible ways of carrying the fire in
Speaker 1: the days before such techniques as well. Okay, but those
Speaker 1: would have been mainly about preserving fire in place. What
Speaker 1: about transporting fire from one place to another? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is a this is trickier than, uh than I
Speaker 1: think some of this might think, because you basically have
Speaker 1: to ensure that it is it is going, it is
Speaker 1: still burning. They're still burning there the heat uh, and
Speaker 1: or the flame is maintained, but you have to ensure
Speaker 1: that it's burning in a slow combustion fuel because again,
Speaker 1: it is hungry. You can almost need the fire to
Speaker 1: be in a state of kind of suspended animation but
Speaker 1: not dead. So some of the ones that he points
Speaker 1: to hear the Montabut Islands method, in which a soft
Speaker 1: husk material from a ripe coconut is placed in a
Speaker 1: coconut shell with a red hot ember and here he
Speaker 1: writes it will smolder for three to four days and
Speaker 1: can be brought on voyages across the water for fires
Speaker 1: in any place that they land. Uh the Osagy I
Speaker 1: was just trying to imagine trying to take fire with
Speaker 1: you on a wooden boat. Yeah. He also points to
Speaker 1: the Osagy tribes people of North America, who used a
Speaker 1: fungus tinder tinder for anyone is in tinder box, this
Speaker 1: is of course the uh you know the flammable material
Speaker 1: you know, like a fine material. Uh that you know
Speaker 1: that you can then catch fire with the spark that
Speaker 1: will come back again. And something one talked about in
Speaker 1: a minute. Oh yes, absolutely, now the uh this tinder
Speaker 1: would be from inside of a hollow tree, placed between
Speaker 1: two muscle shells and bound with cords. Again, it'll last
Speaker 1: several days like this. And he also pointed to contemporary
Speaker 1: fisherman of Cape Finistere off the coast of Spain, who
Speaker 1: would use a fire horn. This would be like a
Speaker 1: cow horn in which decayed would or fungus is placed
Speaker 1: for tinder and one end of the horn is stoppard.
Speaker 1: And so a fisherman could you know you could have
Speaker 1: the ember in there, and the fisherman could then blow
Speaker 1: on one end to produce fire, to light a smoke,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now, on a fictional note, some of you
Speaker 1: may be fans of the book The Clan of a
Speaker 1: Cave Bear by Gene m Owl. Again, it's a fictional novel,
Speaker 1: but it's set in prehistoric times. I was talking to
Speaker 1: my wife a little bit about this, and she remembered
Speaker 1: there being passages dealing with the preservation of fire and
Speaker 1: bringing fire from one place to another, And so I
Speaker 1: looked it up and and in it the author described
Speaker 1: to Neanderthals using uh uh these kind of techniques for
Speaker 1: this reason, quote, it was easier to take a coal
Speaker 1: from one camp fire and keep it alive to start
Speaker 1: the next one than to try to start a new
Speaker 1: fire each evening with possibly inadequate materials. And then on
Speaker 1: top of this, the author presents some some supernatural ideas
Speaker 1: that the tribe engages in the idea that this fire
Speaker 1: then is connected to the home fire from which the
Speaker 1: coal was taken, and that care of the coal in
Speaker 1: transit is trusted to a senior member of the tribe
Speaker 1: for its its death would be a dire omen and
Speaker 1: a sign that the gods had abandoned them. The fact
Speaker 1: that the coal comes from a previous fire, it allows
Speaker 1: you to create kind of a genealogy of fires. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again this is a this is an older fictional
Speaker 1: presentation of how Neanderthals might or might not have engaged
Speaker 1: with fire. But it's still I think it's it's still
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Okay, but we know that at some point
Speaker 1: humans come out of this period where you're just at
Speaker 1: the mercy of maintaining fires found in nature. At some
Speaker 1: point are historic ancestors, I guess in the Stone Age,
Speaker 1: at some point came up with means of creating fires
Speaker 1: that didn't previously exist, right, And one of the big
Speaker 1: ways of doing it was, of course friction. I already
Speaker 1: mentioned the Chinese myth of the fire driller, and this
Speaker 1: is a reference to the bow fire drill, which is
Speaker 1: a means of creating friction. I mean, you could ultimately
Speaker 1: do the get some version of this by just taking
Speaker 1: like a stick, rubbing, rubbing it between your palms and
Speaker 1: having the end of the stick rub into you know,
Speaker 1: another piece of wood, and then you would be able
Speaker 1: to produce heat via friction. Right. Yeah, So the idea
Speaker 1: there is that. Yeah, the friction generated, their heats up
Speaker 1: the substances. If he gets it up to the ignition
Speaker 1: point and there's enough access to oxygen around it, then
Speaker 1: it will catch fire. But obviously, I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to do this, this is not easy, right,
Speaker 1: This is an arduous, difficult task. Yes, it's sometimes it
Speaker 1: looks easy in films, but I don't know that's certainly
Speaker 1: in some films that really I think kind of drive
Speaker 1: home the tedious nature of using a fire drill to
Speaker 1: start a blaze. Um, because you're gonna get that You're
Speaker 1: you're creating the heat via the friction, and then you
Speaker 1: need to transfer that heat into some tinder and then
Speaker 1: build from there. Right. Because another thing is, if you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to like light a large piece of wood
Speaker 1: on fire, it doesn't easily catch fire. It's much easier
Speaker 1: to uh start a fire in what we mentioned earlier, tender,
Speaker 1: little tiny pieces of flammable material, which, for multiple material
Speaker 1: reasons catch fire easier. One just being that they're you know,
Speaker 1: by being smaller, they're more surrounded by oxygen and all that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the technology the fire drill pops up in various places.
Speaker 1: For instance, you'll find it in ancient Egypt for sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of the belongings found among au in the
Speaker 1: tomb of Tuton Common. This would have been the fourteenth
Speaker 1: century b C. But it apparently goes back at least
Speaker 1: before the Indus Valley civilization to the Marigar civilization that
Speaker 1: existed between the fourth and fifth millennium BC. You're talking
Speaker 1: about the bow drill there. So the invention of friction
Speaker 1: based fire creation is ultimately lost to history, but it's
Speaker 1: often speculated that in the case of the bow example,
Speaker 1: this is something that would have come up via would work,
Speaker 1: especially creating like a primitive drill to aided by a bow. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: like people would have gradually realized, oh, the same sort
Speaker 1: of heat that we desire from a fire, I'm producing
Speaker 1: heat when the sticks rubbed together. Um, perhaps should we
Speaker 1: should explore that more? And then you know, experimentation. After
Speaker 1: an experimentation, you can finally get to some sort of
Speaker 1: fire drill method that works. And then there is a
Speaker 1: there's another method. There is a percussion method of generating
Speaker 1: a spark and this nowadays we think of this as
Speaker 1: flint and steel. In older days, this would have been
Speaker 1: pyrite and flint, which would have done this same thing.
Speaker 1: So how exactly does this work? All? Right? So, the
Speaker 1: basic idea is that rather than pure friction, the hard
Speaker 1: flint edge shaves off a particle of the steel or
Speaker 1: pyrite that exposes iron, which reacts with oxygen from the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So and flint and pyrite is just a slower version
Speaker 1: of what happens with flint and steel. But what it
Speaker 1: will end up looking like is striking two pieces of
Speaker 1: rock together and creating a little spark um and you
Speaker 1: would be trying to shoot that spark into some tinder
Speaker 1: that you had gathered. Yes, yeah again once you all
Speaker 1: you're creating is like the initial the initial spark, and
Speaker 1: you need tinder then to get that going, turn that
Speaker 1: into a proper flame, and then build from there a fire,
Speaker 1: A true fire is truly built piece of fuel by
Speaker 1: piece of fuel, gradually from the small to the large. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the you have the tinder, and then you have
Speaker 1: the kindling, and then finally you have the fuel the firewood. Now,
Speaker 1: the tinder box, for instance, is a long, very used
Speaker 1: variation of this. It consisted of flint, fire, steel, and tinder,
Speaker 1: which against slow burning fuel to catch the spark and
Speaker 1: produce a flame that could then be transferred somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But in either case you produce the heat or the
Speaker 1: spark and then you use that to get dry leaves
Speaker 1: or fun guy going, and this could serve as the
Speaker 1: beginnings of a proper fire. So this ties into something
Speaker 1: that we've talked about on the show before. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite figures from prehistory, Otsy the Iceman so Otsy,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar, is a natural mummy from Neolithic Europe,
Speaker 1: roughly from the late fourth millennium b C, who was
Speaker 1: found preserved and partially frozen in a glacier in the
Speaker 1: Italian Alps in the year nine uh. And Otsy is
Speaker 1: such an absolutely fascinating historical find because the more we
Speaker 1: learn about him, the more thrilling mysteries accumulate, like how
Speaker 1: did this Stone age man end up so high up
Speaker 1: in the mountains where, I mean, he's way way up
Speaker 1: there where there's like not much of a reason to
Speaker 1: be up that high, What was he doing there? How
Speaker 1: did he die? And in answer to the last question,
Speaker 1: more recent analyzes of his body, including cat scans, have
Speaker 1: shown injuries indicating he was very likely killed by homicide,
Speaker 1: with like an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder and some
Speaker 1: broken bones, I think. And then when you start examining
Speaker 1: his possessions, things get even more interesting, Like he has
Speaker 1: a rare and special kind of ax that indicates that
Speaker 1: he may have been some kind of you know, leader figure,
Speaker 1: high status individual to have a metal ax like he did.
Speaker 1: I think it was a copper axe. But also at
Speaker 1: the same time, he has in his possession some kind
Speaker 1: of half finished, half constructed, makeshift or damaged weapons and tools,
Speaker 1: And the mind just starts racing to fill in the
Speaker 1: possible scenarios that drove this guy up onto the glacier
Speaker 1: in what appears to be hasty preparation for battle maybe
Speaker 1: and whatever ultimately killed him. I mean, we just don't know.
Speaker 1: But I think in the last couple of years there
Speaker 1: was somebody who made a prehistoric action movie imagining the
Speaker 1: last days of Otsy. I haven't seen it yet, but
Speaker 1: I was interested in the idea. But anyway, whatever happened
Speaker 1: to him, he came up in a previous episode of
Speaker 1: Invention because it was the episode on chewing Gum, and
Speaker 1: we discovered that Oatsy had in his possession a lump
Speaker 1: of birch bark tar, and it's been hypothesized that he
Speaker 1: might have used this tar as a kind of primitive
Speaker 1: chewing gum. But anyway, so we mentioned Otsy's tools and belongings,
Speaker 1: and one of the other things found on the iceman's
Speaker 1: belt was a Neolithic fire making kid and it's very
Speaker 1: much along the lines we've just been discussing. So his
Speaker 1: kit included a bar shaped flint, probably used as a strikealite,
Speaker 1: as well as particles of pyrite. I think from what
Speaker 1: I've read, he did not actually have a large piece
Speaker 1: of pyrite with him, but in this leather pouch where
Speaker 1: he had his flint there were particles of pyrite, indicating
Speaker 1: he maybe at some point had pyrite in there for
Speaker 1: striking off the sparks. He also had a small amount
Speaker 1: with him of a kind of fluffy fungus which was
Speaker 1: probably used as tinder according to the author's Dick Stapard
Speaker 1: and like a Yo Johansson in their paper Flint and
Speaker 1: Pyrite Making Fire in the Stone Age and the Journal Antiquity,
Speaker 1: this fungus was probably Foamy's fomentarius, which is also known
Speaker 1: as tinder fungus. And it's this fungus that produces a
Speaker 1: fruiting body which grows in a shape somewhat like a
Speaker 1: horse's hoof off the side of a tree trunk. And
Speaker 1: it has widely been used as soft organic material to
Speaker 1: service tinder or kindling for a fire. But that's not
Speaker 1: all because, as we discussed already, even if you had
Speaker 1: the means to strike a friction fire, the task would
Speaker 1: often take a lot of time or be difficult under
Speaker 1: unfavorable environmental conditions, say if it was cold and wet outside,
Speaker 1: or maybe if you were on a glacier. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Oatsy had another option to carry the fire. Uh to
Speaker 1: quote from an enumeration of Otzi's belongings from the South
Speaker 1: Tirol Museum of Archaeology, which is where that's the museum
Speaker 1: where Otsi is now kept, oats had quote to birch
Speaker 1: bark containers cylindrical pots measuring fifteen to eighteen centimeters in
Speaker 1: diameter and approximately twenty centimeters high. They were found near
Speaker 1: the mummy. They were made from a single piece of
Speaker 1: bark and stitched together with lime tree bast The round
Speaker 1: piece of birch bark, which served as the base, was
Speaker 1: also stitched on. The interior of one of the vessels
Speaker 1: was blackened and contained freshly picked Norway maple leaves and
Speaker 1: charcoal fragments. It is assumed that Otsy wrapped charcoal embers
Speaker 1: in the leaves and carried them in the birch bark container.
Speaker 1: In this way, the embers could be kept for several
Speaker 1: hours and fanned into fire in a few seconds. So
Speaker 1: he had a fire making hack obviously, you know, he
Speaker 1: had the flint and at some point had pyrite. Uh,
Speaker 1: So he could strike a fire if he needed to.
Speaker 1: But that's hard work. It's not always gonna is gonna
Speaker 1: be difficult to do, especially it's gonna be difficult to
Speaker 1: do quickly. Uh. And you you might imagine, given whatever
Speaker 1: kind of injuries and weapons situation was going on, he
Speaker 1: might have been in a in a hurry, maybe chasing
Speaker 1: people or being chased by people, or or who knows what.
Speaker 1: So he's got a number with him, and that's if
Speaker 1: he needs to start a fire immediately, he can just
Speaker 1: pull that out and have a fire in seconds. I
Speaker 1: hope all the dungeon masters out there listening to this,
Speaker 1: and we'll really put their players through the ring. Or
Speaker 1: the next time they go to make camp and they
Speaker 1: need a fire, don't just let him say and we
Speaker 1: make a fire and make them work for it. Ask
Speaker 1: them what what are they going to use to make
Speaker 1: the fire, what kind of fuel are they going to gather,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And then by the end of it, maybe
Speaker 1: you'll you'll enforce some some means of transporting embers from
Speaker 1: today's camp to the next if they really want that
Speaker 1: long rest. How much better is it in D and
Speaker 1: D to have a fire than a camp without a fire?
Speaker 1: Do you like special benefits? I mean, I guess it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna depend It's gonna depend on a number of factors.
Speaker 1: But also I think a lot of times it's gonna
Speaker 1: depend on what the tendon masters plotting. You know, like
Speaker 1: if you want to put them through environmental health, then yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to say that it's super cold and you've
Speaker 1: got to get that fire going and to stay warm,
Speaker 1: and then you can use it as an excuse to
Speaker 1: attract villains to the camp. I mean, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's so much to do, right because the camp fire
Speaker 1: is so pivotal to the human experience into human history
Speaker 1: and to our story making. Uh, there's so many things
Speaker 1: you can do it. I mean, i've I've I've heard
Speaker 1: it put forward that you know, just about any any
Speaker 1: tale that we tell is a story about camp fires,
Speaker 1: at least in a vague sense. So anyway, from all
Speaker 1: of this, you can tell why it's advantageous to reserve
Speaker 1: that precious hot coal rather than to go through all
Speaker 1: these steps every time you need to make a camp.
Speaker 1: But of course, another way to transfer fire from the
Speaker 1: home fire to other places touches on that again, that
Speaker 1: long time human pastime of just poking sticks around in
Speaker 1: a fire, Because truly, is there anything better? We all
Speaker 1: want to do it, we all need to do it.
Speaker 1: We find a good stick and we start prodding the
Speaker 1: hot embers until we've contracted the miracle flame onto the stick,
Speaker 1: and then you know, we've probably waved around at least
Speaker 1: a little bit. And by the way, speaking of of
Speaker 1: poking around in a fire with sticks, I want to
Speaker 1: come back to a second to fireworks, because this is
Speaker 1: apparently the genesis of fireworks as well, Because if you
Speaker 1: have ever thrown bamboo into a fire, you have probably
Speaker 1: observed what happens when the heat causes the they trapped
Speaker 1: air inside bamboo to rapidly expand, producing a popping sound.
Speaker 1: So fireworks are a chemical attempt to equal this amusement.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, But outside of fireworks and amusement,
Speaker 1: poking a stick into a fire is a good way
Speaker 1: to get a little bit of fire and move it
Speaker 1: somewhere else. But it's especially if you're in a hurry.
Speaker 1: Some sticks and twigs are gonna work better than others.
Speaker 1: Some choices are gonna burn too quickly. Others are going
Speaker 1: to be too resistant to burning. Fortunately, the human masters
Speaker 1: of fire new a thing or two about other substances,
Speaker 1: substances that they inevitably tested with fire as well. How
Speaker 1: will this burn? What happens when we put this into
Speaker 1: the camp fire? Certain substances ignited in the presence of
Speaker 1: a flame and therefore prove useful. So in this we
Speaker 1: finally reach the origins, the ancient, misty origins of the
Speaker 1: match stick uh, in the form of the sulfur match. Right,
Speaker 1: we're not to the friction match yet, but we are
Speaker 1: now to the chemical match. So maybe we should take
Speaker 1: a break and then we come back. We can discuss
Speaker 1: sulfur and matches. All right, we're back. So a sulfur
Speaker 1: match is as simple as it sounds. It is a
Speaker 1: tiny stick, really a splinter that has been dipped in
Speaker 1: sulfur uh and the sulfur ignites easily, and therefore it
Speaker 1: is it is essentially match without the striking ability. So
Speaker 1: in this I want to come back to what that
Speaker 1: quote from Walter Hoe earlier about campfires being the beginning
Speaker 1: of that enormous fuel industry, because one can easily imagine
Speaker 1: that this doesn't just mean the wholesale harvesting of wood
Speaker 1: in the surrounding area to to maintain a fire. Just
Speaker 1: think of how we adapt to the use of a
Speaker 1: home fireplace or a backyard grill. Do you make pains
Speaker 1: to keep some dry logs on hand for your fireplace? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you split them ahead of time? Do you make
Speaker 1: sure you have varied sizes on hand? Do you stockpile
Speaker 1: bits of kindling or tender to get it going? Do
Speaker 1: you have like you do you you point out that
Speaker 1: you know bits of cardboard that look useful and stick
Speaker 1: those aside for later, because that's that's part of the process. Here,
Speaker 1: I will say, of of all the hard labor i've
Speaker 1: I've ever tried out. I think one of the most
Speaker 1: fun was splitting firewood. I really enjoyed that. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that gets really into backbreaking work if you
Speaker 1: have to keep doing it over and over a lot,
Speaker 1: But just doing a little splitting of firewood I found
Speaker 1: to be extremely enjoyable. So they might maybe there's something
Speaker 1: primal in that, because when you're doing that, when you're
Speaker 1: splitting the wood, even you were you were manufacturing something,
Speaker 1: you know you are, you were making fuel. The logs
Speaker 1: of your fire are a product of human remaking, and
Speaker 1: we mainly think of fuel as a product of reduction,
Speaker 1: uh you know, taking the tree, chopping it up into
Speaker 1: pieces and picking up the splinters, et cetera, gathering of
Speaker 1: uh little sticks and whatnot. But the process can also
Speaker 1: involve the combination of elements. And so in this week
Speaker 1: come to the sulfur match, an early invention to aid
Speaker 1: in the transfer of fire from from the hearth, or
Speaker 1: from the campfire, or from even a candle to some
Speaker 1: other medium. And these were initially the early matches were
Speaker 1: simply it's just splinters with you know, nothing else on them,
Speaker 1: just a little stick that you could use. But it
Speaker 1: was found that you could dip the splinter or in say, sulfur,
Speaker 1: to create a splinter of kindling that ignites readily when
Speaker 1: touched to flame and then burns down the length of
Speaker 1: that splinter and allows you to you know, say move
Speaker 1: move a little fire from one part of the camp
Speaker 1: to the other, from one part of the home to
Speaker 1: the other. Yes. Uh, now we mentioned this earlier, but
Speaker 1: I just want to stress again so as not to
Speaker 1: have any confusion, that we're not talking about standalone friction
Speaker 1: strike matches here. Those wouldn't come until later. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about with these early sulfur matches would be things
Speaker 1: that are ignited by the heat of a pre existing
Speaker 1: flame or maybe maybe easily catch fire as a kind
Speaker 1: of chemically enhanced tinder. Yeah. I like to come back
Speaker 1: to the tinder box, the idea of getting the you know,
Speaker 1: getting the spark, getting the spark going just a little
Speaker 1: bit in the tinder, and then you could use a
Speaker 1: sulfur match to take it up to the next level
Speaker 1: and then transfer it uh somewhere else to burn, right,
Speaker 1: Because that's one thing that sulfur really helps with. It
Speaker 1: suddenly gets you a big burst of flame out of
Speaker 1: a little and shall heat. Yes, So again these are
Speaker 1: sticks dipped in sulfur Uh, and Wizniak writes that sulfur
Speaker 1: tip matches were already in use in China by the
Speaker 1: sixth century CE. According to Science and Civilization in China
Speaker 1: by Joseph Needham from nine two, this very much seems
Speaker 1: to be the case. He points as well to Thoulku's
Speaker 1: Records of the Unworldly and the Strange from the year
Speaker 1: nine fifty quote, if there occurs an emergency at night,
Speaker 1: it may take some time to make a light to
Speaker 1: light a lamp. But an ingenious man devised a system
Speaker 1: of impregnating little sticks of pine wood with sulfur and
Speaker 1: storing them for ready use. At the slightest touch of fire,
Speaker 1: they burst into flame. One gets a little flame like
Speaker 1: an ear of corn. This marvelous thing was formerly called
Speaker 1: a light bringing slave or yin kuang Nu, but afterwards,
Speaker 1: when it became an article of commerce, its name was
Speaker 1: changed to fire inch stick or wo shoon. And then
Speaker 1: he adds that in thirteen sixty six Uh, an author
Speaker 1: by the name of Thal Song wrote about the invention
Speaker 1: uh and mentioned that it was sometimes credited to the
Speaker 1: people of hang Chow where the writings where the writings
Speaker 1: of Marco Polo described its sale. This would have been
Speaker 1: in the UH thirdly fourteenth century. But to assume writes
Speaker 1: that it was actually the UH the invention of impoverished
Speaker 1: court ladies of the Northern Chi in five seventy seven
Speaker 1: during a conquest by the Empire of the Sioux. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: And I love that quote by Talkou, but I wonder
Speaker 1: what it what is being translated as ear of corn there,
Speaker 1: because I know tal Kou was not talking about Mayze, right,
Speaker 1: mays wouldn't have been in China at the time, right.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting point. You know, I think all kinds
Speaker 1: of grains used to just be called corn. So maybe
Speaker 1: that's just the idea that the flame, the resulting flame
Speaker 1: after the spark is like this tiny colonel of or
Speaker 1: this tiny seed, and it is very or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it is very much like a seed, right, because
Speaker 1: it may be planted somewhere else where it may grow.
Speaker 1: And of course the idea that it was originally called
Speaker 1: a light bringing slave is also interesting. Now Needham added
Speaker 1: that there's there's meanwhile, according to him, no positive evidence
Speaker 1: of sulfur matches showing up in Europe before thirty where
Speaker 1: they were then used up through the eighteenth century. Uh
Speaker 1: and and they were during this time a prime means
Speaker 1: of transferring the flame from a tinder box to another fuel.
Speaker 1: But I have to note that Whisney act Rites of
Speaker 1: the Romans using sulfur matches. He mentions first century Roman
Speaker 1: historian Plenty of the Elder's writings in the Natural History,
Speaker 1: and indeed, uh, Plenty mentions matches at least in the translation.
Speaker 1: And this would be the bow Stock and Riley trans
Speaker 1: Bostock and Riley translation. Uh. There there is mention of
Speaker 1: of sulfur certainly, and then sulfur matches. So he there's
Speaker 1: a big section here where he's going on and on
Speaker 1: about sulfury, writes that they're four kinds of sulfur. Quote
Speaker 1: the fourth kind is used in the preparation of matches
Speaker 1: more particularly unquote. Yeah, I wonder I don't have the
Speaker 1: Latin expertise to investigate this myself, but I wonder if
Speaker 1: this could be an issue with whatever Latin term both
Speaker 1: Stock and Riley are translating as the English word matches
Speaker 1: there because uh, I mean, I'm wondering if like this
Speaker 1: could be a misleading use of the English word matches
Speaker 1: because Plenty does not describe what he's talking about. He
Speaker 1: doesn't further explain anything. He just says, sulfur is used
Speaker 1: in the preparation of and then whatever this noun is,
Speaker 1: there's another now, and I know we'll come back to
Speaker 1: in a second sulfurata. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: the noun he uses in Latin. There, yeah, yeah, sulfur rata.
Speaker 1: I ran across this. There's a there's a paper Sulfur
Speaker 1: for Broken Glass by H. J. Leon in Transactions and
Speaker 1: Proceedings of the American philip Logical Association, Volume seventy two.
Speaker 1: And this is from one but it it ruminates on
Speaker 1: the use of this word sulfurata in the writings of
Speaker 1: the first century Roman poet Marshal And in this use H. D.
Speaker 1: Leon believed that sulfurata clearly meant quote sulfur tipped pieces
Speaker 1: of wood to be used for lighting fires. In the
Speaker 1: this uh, this piece, he is he is extremely um
Speaker 1: confident that this is what is being described. But I
Speaker 1: love the other stuff that Plenty seems to be more
Speaker 1: interested in. Sulfur for right. Oh yeah, yeah. Most of
Speaker 1: what plenty is talking about are medicinal uses for sulfur
Speaker 1: one for instance, uh quote in addition to these several uses,
Speaker 1: sulfur is of remarkable virtue that if it is thrown
Speaker 1: upon the fire, it will at once detect by the
Speaker 1: smell whether or not a person is subject to epilepsy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know it also writes, sulfur has its
Speaker 1: place among other religious ceremonies, being used as a fumigation
Speaker 1: for purifying houses. Its virtues are also to be perceived
Speaker 1: in certain hot mineral waters. And there is no substance
Speaker 1: that ignites more readily a proof that there is in
Speaker 1: it a great affinity to fire. Well, he's right about
Speaker 1: that part. I would be very surprised if he's correct
Speaker 1: about the epilepsy thing right now. Now need him, I
Speaker 1: want to come back to him for a second. And
Speaker 1: he was clearly writing with a focus on on China.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. The curious thing is, though he cites
Speaker 1: Plenties writing several times in his book when discussing Chinese
Speaker 1: inventions and you know, comparing what was known and among
Speaker 1: the Romans such as you know, optics and burning glasses,
Speaker 1: glasses used to magnify light and create a fire. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why he doesn't mention the sulfur matches again,
Speaker 1: unless it's a translation issue, I'm not sure that I'll
Speaker 1: have to remain an open question for now. So at
Speaker 1: any rate, it would seem like we're looking at two
Speaker 1: possibilities here. One is that the sulfur match was a
Speaker 1: Chinese invention that made its way to Rome during the
Speaker 1: first century of its invention, and while there was little
Speaker 1: direct contact between China and Rome, there was trade through
Speaker 1: intermediary empires, so one can imagine a useful and simple
Speaker 1: technology like this could spread pretty quickly. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: even at that time. The other possibility, and I have
Speaker 1: to stress that I do not see anyone actually making
Speaker 1: this claim, would be that the sulfur match was independently
Speaker 1: invented in both regions, which is just, of course possible,
Speaker 1: because sure, because we're not talking about I mean, just
Speaker 1: that's just the nature of invention. If you've mentioned listen
Speaker 1: to our show, like that's that's almost always a possibility. Um. However,
Speaker 1: I I really didn't run across anybody arguing for that.
Speaker 1: It seems like the Chinese origin tends to be stressed
Speaker 1: and tends to be uh the one people point to
Speaker 1: and this Roman mention of matches. Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's curious. By the way, when I was looking
Speaker 1: into all this about, you know, what kind of contact
Speaker 1: was there between Rome and in China during the first
Speaker 1: century CE I, I I ran across an interesting hypothesis that
Speaker 1: was put forward by sinologist Homer H. Dubbs, who lived
Speaker 1: ninety nine. He'sn't known for translating Bongoose Book of Han,
Speaker 1: and he apparently speculated that Roman prisoners of war who
Speaker 1: were transferred to the eastern border of the Ptarthian Empire
Speaker 1: might later have actually clashed with Han troops, pointing to
Speaker 1: Chinese accounts of a hundred soldiers in what was described
Speaker 1: as fish scale Formation that fought at the Battle of
Speaker 1: Gigi in thirty six b C. Now, this is not
Speaker 1: proven and there's no modern evidence DNA or otherwise to
Speaker 1: back it up. Um. And then it also does not
Speaker 1: tie into the history of matches at all. But I
Speaker 1: found that to just be one of these sort of
Speaker 1: fascinating um hypotheses that come up. And also there's their
Speaker 1: movie right there. Um, this lost hundred Roman uh soldiers
Speaker 1: that wind up in China fighting a battle. I pay
Speaker 1: to see that. So the Parthian Empire would have been
Speaker 1: in between. That would be like roughly Persian territory. Yeah. Yeah, Basically,
Speaker 1: this would be one of the intermediary empires discussed, like generally,
Speaker 1: one of the regions through which things traveled and through
Speaker 1: which these two far flung empires would interact with each other. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, even if it was only and as a
Speaker 1: matter of trade. So here's the thing, though, if the
Speaker 1: Romans had sulfur matches and then the sulfur match really
Speaker 1: disappeared for hundreds and hundreds of years, that that just
Speaker 1: seems kind of hot hard to believe. Like, certainly there
Speaker 1: were technologies Roman technologies that were lost for for a
Speaker 1: long time, such as Romans cement so that we mentioned
Speaker 1: in our episodes on Roads, but it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: something like a sulfur match being forgotten after the fall
Speaker 1: of Rome. Yeah. I don't know that that's strange. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about availability of sulfur throughout throughout
Speaker 1: Europe in the Middle Ages. Was it scarce? I'm not
Speaker 1: sure At any rate, I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to cast bit any doubt on the Chinese origin
Speaker 1: of the sulfur match that does seem to be the
Speaker 1: origin of the invention. However, this is just the beginning
Speaker 1: of the story. There's there's still so much more that
Speaker 1: has to happen before this sulfur match, this sulfur tipped
Speaker 1: piece of kindling eventually transforms into the modern strike match,
Speaker 1: the modern safety match that we we know and take
Speaker 1: for granted today. I'm so excited to keep playing with
Speaker 1: matches all right. In the meantime, we would obviously love
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone out there, because everyone has an
Speaker 1: experience with matches with fire. With just the human mastery
Speaker 1: of fire, and hopefully just even so far, we've forced
Speaker 1: you to rethink how you how we use fire, how
Speaker 1: we depend on fire, and the role fire has played
Speaker 1: in human history and in the history of invention. If
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of this show,
Speaker 1: you can find them wherever you get your podcast. If
Speaker 1: you go to invention pod dot com, that will direct
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Speaker 1: make sure that you subscribe and make sure that you
Speaker 1: rate interview because that really helps out the show. And Hey,
Speaker 1: through good old fashioned human and our interaction, just tell
Speaker 1: people about the show. Uh, that is ultimately the best
Speaker 1: way that it spreads spread the fire. Yeah. Huge, thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our awesome audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention
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