Lignite, for all you non-geology buffs out there, is a form of brown coal that’s been in use since paleolithic times. It often can be easily accessed without major mining, and some forms are made of (and closely resemble) fossilized wood, so if you were a Cro-Magnon of curious mind, you might think “It looks like wood, maybe it burns like wood…”
Digger
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*snort*
Grim Eyes is simply too brilliant!
If it weren’t for the fact that we’re different species, and we’d drive each other insane within a fortnight by being gallant at each other, I’d be hoping for a chance to step out with her. (Well, okay, there is the whole “she’s a drawing” thing as well… 😉
Or maybe you’d think “Hey, I’ll line my firepit with these brown rocks OH S**T, THAG! YOUR BOOTS ARE ON FIRE!!!”
Grimeyes has a point!
*Snort!* Grimeyes proves that a believer in magic can be a skeptic of another sort.
Dang, when they mentioned burning stones earlier i presumed it meant rock-crystal leases, also called burning lenses or burning stones. Still Lignite is cool, its on my lit of fun things people burnt before the Holocene. my fun list of thing people have burnt since the start of the Holocene is also cool. hazelnuts were very popular as a fool in the later western-European Mesolithic, and were collected in such huge numbers it looks like they may have been used for fuel (although the evidence is a little shaky, it could just be when roasting them for storage they occasionally caught fire).
to be honest, there’s not much people haven’t burnt at some point or another, rocks, plants, animal fat, fish (the candle fish, so oily to can kill one and then light it as soon as its cleaned and skinned), witches, oil… people are really good at burning stuff, a bit too good.
Well hey, when you get a new video game and you find out that item A can change the properties of every other item in the game, you’d start using it as often as possible, on as many things as possible. Same line of reasoning.
Love how Digger gets so cheerful about rocks.
what would we do with out bunnyrock? I think I’ve learned more about medieval geology in the last two days , than 5 yrs of history Chanel….
Dang it! Dung! Dung! how could i have left dried animal dung of any reasonably comprehensives list of major fuels utilized by man! In some parts on the world lacking trees and driftwood the entire reason cattle were introduced was so people would have some, ahem, secondary products to burn to keep warm! Look the Steeps for crying out loud! Why do you think the Steeps people were angry all the time? If bad weather killed their animals they not only lost all their food, they had nothing at all to burn (except other peoples cites). It’s no coincidence their invasions of China and Europe sink up perfectly with cold climatic sequences. End of the bronze age/early iron age, bad weather, Scythians arrive and scare the Greeks. Fall of Rome, terrible weather after volcanic eruption in Java fills upper atmosphere with dust, Huns arrive, driving Goths and Vandals before them. Little Ice Age starts in the 1100’s, the great Khan makes the 1200’s pretty bleeding memorable.
And i left out peat. Dad will kill me. I’m half Irish and i left peat out of a list of things burnt since the start of the Holocene. arrrrg arrrrg arrrg….
Well, BR, you also left out propane (and propane accessories), so it was assumed that your original list wasn’t comprehensive …
😉
And of course there was also naptha
That goes under ‘oil’. Also under ‘AIIEEE IT BURNS GET IT OFF JULIUS GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!’
That Thag’s one cool Cro-Magnon, what with boots ‘n’ all. Bet even Julius has only got sandals.
*Officially joins the BunnyRock fan club*
Darn. Until BunnyRock first mentioned the lenticular firestones, I thought Trader Manuel might have been talking about flints or even wombat-made firesteels, and even then entertained it as a possibility. Lignite is, although incredibly useful, surprisingly mundane. But they’re little brown stones! ^_^ (and the little brown stones go into the furnace like a battery…) Ha! Digger may be able to set up her forge and make the tools she said she could rig up, if they can find the right metals and scavenge enough food to last a week!
@JET73L. Dammit JET73L! I’ve got Zydrate anatomy stuck in my head now! What’s worse is I have the you-tube version were someone’s edited it to sync up with clips from the Lion King stuck in my head! There goes any useful stuff I had planned for this evening!