An unusual charcoal kiln burning in Nine Miles, Bull Bay, St. Andrew. - PHOTOS BY SHELLY-ANN THOMPSON
CHARCOAL IS a kind of half-burnt wood. People use it for fires because it burns hotter and cleaner than wood - less smoky and more slowly. The making of charcoal has been done since about 4000 BC in both China and West Asia. It was done generally by piling-up wood and covering it with dampened dirt, and then lighting the wood on fire, so that it burned very slowly without much oxygen. The best charcoal comes from burning hard wood like oak or beech. The result is mainly carbon, like coal.
Cultural expert Amina Blackwood-Meeks says that charcoal has been with Jamaicans for decades. "What we consider low tech today was high tech back then. So high tech was to cook on coal," she says.
DIFFICULT TO DO
Ms. Blackwood-Meeks notes that charcoal making is absolutely difficult to do, as most importantly one has to know the correct temperature to make sure that it does not turn to ashes.
"There is an emotional and physical attachment to the merits of coal and whether we believe it or not we should respect those beliefs."
Charcoal burning is probably the oldest chemical process known to man. Charcoal burning has been practised primarily for use in smelting metal. Without it the Bronze Age and Iron Age simply would not have happened.
USES
Ancient Egyptians used pyroligneous acid to embalm Egyptian Mummies. Romans used vast quantities of charcoal to make weapons. Huge amounts of furnace slag were used in building Roman roads. In Mediaeval times, charcoal burners were sometimes imprisoned for 'Burning the King's Vert'. That is, burning wood in the royal hunting forests without permission.
Historically the massive production of charcoal has been a major cause of deforestation, especially in Central Europe, but to a lesser extent even before, as in Stuart, England. The increasing scarcity of easily harvested wood was a major factor for the switch to the fossil equivalents, mainly coal and brown coal for industrial use.
- Additional source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal; http://www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk/projects/charcoal/history.htm; http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/environment/charcoal.htm.
