Perlin - A forest journey : the story of wood and civilization

ALSO BY JOHN PERLIN

A Golden Thread: Twenty-Five Hundred Years of Solar Architecture and Technology (with Ken Butti)

From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity

A FOREST JOURNEY

THE STORY OF WOOD AND CIVILIZATION

JOHN PERLIN

The Countryman Press

Woodstock, Vermont

Copyright 1989, 2005 by John Perlin

First Countryman Press paperback edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 0-88150-676-1

ISBN 978-1-581-57915-4 (e-book)

Cover design and illustration by Honi Werner Hatchet photo courtesy of Daren Cutsforth, Cutsforthknives.com

Text design by Margaret M. Wagner

Published by The Countryman Press P.O. Box 748 Woodstock, VT 05091

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10110

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

I WOULD like to thank the following people who generously shared their ideas and time to make the updated edition of A Forest Journey possible: Graeme Auld, graduate student, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; William Banzhaf, President, Sustainable Forestry Board; Clarke Binkley, Chief Investment Officer, Hancock Timber Resources Group and former Dean, School of Forestry, University of British Columbia; Bruce Cabarle, Director of the Global Forest Program, World Wildlife Fund-U.S.; Benjamin Cashroe, Associate Professor of Sustainable Forestry Policy and Director of the Program on Forest Certification, Yale University; Michael Conroy, Program Officer, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation; Amantino de Freitas, President, Brazilian Society for Silviculture; Andre de Freitas, Executive Secretary, Imaflora; William Dietrich, author and writer, Seattle Post-Intelligencer ; Richard Donovan, Chief Forester, SmartWood; Elizabeth Gordon, Program Director of the Yale Program on Forest Certification, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; Debbie Hammel, Senior Resource Specialist, Natural Resources Defense Council; Paul Hansen, Executive Director, The Izaak Walton League; Kate Haton, Consulting Forestry Specialist, Natural Resources Defense Council; Martin Hernandez; Paul Hirt, Professor of History, Arizona State University; John Heissenbuttel, Vice-President, Forestry Products, American Forest and Paper Association; Ray Hoffman, former advisor to former Seattle Mayor Paul Schell; Morgan Holen, Sustainable Forestry Specialist; Robert Hrubles, Vice-President, Scientific Certification Systems; Doug MacCleery, Assistant Director of Planning, United States Forest Service; Char Miller, Professor of History, Trinity University; Wade Mosby, Senior Vice-President, The Collins Company; Chad Oliver, Pinchot Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Director, Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry, Yale University; Amantino Ramos de Freitas, President, Brazilian Society for Silviculture; Barbara Ruth, Program Director for Global Institute for Sustainable Forestry, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University; V. Alaric Sample, President, Pinchot Institute for Forest Conservation; Walter Smith, Senior Technical Specialist, SmartWood; Michael Washburn, Vice-President, Forest Stewardship Council-USA.

I would like to thank the entire staff of the Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, for providing the resources that enabled my research. Jan and Luciano Corazza, my special editorial team, on whom I rely for coherent presentations, deserve particular credit for reading over and correcting the manuscript before it went to the copyeditor, Bill Bowers, who made sure that the manuscript was flawless. The wise advice of Kermit Hummel, Editorial Director of The Countryman Press, and the assistance of Jennifer Thompson and Clare Innes is much appreciated. Pesach Perlin, my teenage son, deserves recognition as well for his continual encouragement.

I would like everyone to know that this book has been printed on Forest Stewardship Councilcertified paper.

I dedicate the second edition to the memory of the late John Baldwin, whose yeoman work for a better world will always remain.

A lmost a decade ago, I co-authored a book, A Golden Thread , that covered the use of solar energy throughout history. In the course of this research I found that reliance on the sun for house and water heating occurred when people began to run short of wood. I soon discovered that wood was the principal fuel and building material of almost every society from the Bronze Age through the nineteenth century. Therefore, its abundance or scarcity must have shaped, in large part, I surmised, the culture, demographics, economy, internal and external politics, and technology of societies that existed during this time span. Having also discovered there existed no systematic or comprehensive study of the role forests have played in times past, I decided to write A Forest Journey.

To thoroughly cover a story that spans a period of five thousand years and five continents required the help of many people. I would like to thank the following individuals, who generously provided me with assistance in seeing the project through.

I thank Lieselotte Werner Fajardo for her translations of French, German, and Portuguese material, without which my book could never have been written. Lieselotte spent countless hours rendering these documents into a very readable English. No matter the workload, which at times was very heavy, Lieselotte always made time.

Without asking for any recompense, Jan Corazza spent many hours tightening up my manuscript before it went to the publisher. Her work brought order and discipline to my writing. Jans husband, Dr. Luciano Corazza, also worked on the manuscript, lending his keen eye to eliminate any inconsistencies that appeared. My editor at Norton, Iva Ashner, provided many valuable suggestions, as did Nortons manuscript editor, Debra Makay. I appreciate the time and energy they spent on my manuscript.

Selma Rubin generously helped with expenses. Her financial support allowed me to devote full time to the project. Without her generous help, I could never have completed the book.

The following scholars deserve my gratitude for the many hours they spent critiquing the chapters within their expertise: Mesopotamia, Dr. Piotr Steinkeller, Harvard University; Bronze Age Crete and Knossos, Dr. Jack Sasson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Mycenaean Greece, Dr. Thomas Palaima, University of Texas, Austin; Cyprus, Dr. Frank Koucky, College of Wooster; Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece, Drs. Frank Frost, Boromir Jordan, and Robert Renehan, University of California, Santa Barbara; Rome, Dr. Hal Drake, University of California, Santa Barbara; The Muslim Mediterranean, Dr. Juan Campo, University of California, Santa Barbara; England, Dr. Sears McGee, University of California, Santa Barbara; and the New England sections of America, Samuel Manning, author of New England Masts and the Kings Broad Arrow.