Ancient people in China systematically mined and burned coal up to 3600 years ago

Long before coal fueled the Industrial Revolution, ancient societies around the world were already exploiting its power to smelt metal or heat water for toasty baths. Now, excavations at a Bronze Age site in northwestern China show people were burning coal on a large scale up to 3600 years ago, 1 millennium earlier than previously thought. The research, reported today in Science Advances , also traces where the coal came from and how a shortage of other fuel may have encouraged ancient people to turn to this new energy source. In the past, knowledge of ancient coal usage was “based on who actually writes things down,” says Shellen Wu, a historian at Lehigh University who was not involved in the research. It’s “very exciting” to be able to use archaeology to peer back into humankind’s fossil fuel usage, she says. Evidence such as fragments of low-quality coal in fireplaces suggests people have been sporadically burning coal since the late Paleolithic, more than 10,000 years ago. But the first reliable written records of the widespread use of coal don’t show up until about 2000 years ago, during China’s Han dynasty. Now, archaeologists excavating a large Bronze Age settlement known as Jirentaigoukou, in China’s modern-day Xinjiang Autonomous Region, have pushed that date back by many centuries. The site is surrounded on three sides by the towering Tianshan Mountains and lies near the Kashi River. This made it a natura...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news