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How did primative people put away wood for the winter?
Mesophilic:
We're getting an amazing amount of snow for our area, and I'm getting a bit of cabin fever. My wood burning stove is down for a maintenance issue (leaking creosote out of the outermost layer of double walled chimney, but that's a story for a different day).
Anyway, I'm pondering fire, and how much I want one right now as the snow falls. That got me thinking...how did stone age people store up significant amounts of winter fuel?
Was it mostly deadfall? Did they actually chop down and split wood from trees with stone axes? Did the plains Indians gather a cord of buffalo dung for each teepee?
DC:
That's always made me wonder. Without a saw, cutting wood becomes very labour intensive. Depending on how much wood they used they could deplete a area of deadfalls pretty quick. Maybe they didn't use much more in the winter. Maybe they just dressed warmer and sucked it up.
EdwardS:
Most of the time they didn't heat large spaces, and hides to insulate helped as well. Smaller, better insulated spaces take less wood to heat.
Hawkdancer:
Make small fire, get close! According to Laubin, the tipi was insulated with grass stuffed between the liner and the shin, and sometimes the liner was pulled in , an Ozan was put up over the bed lots of hair on hides were put on the floor and hung around the liner. And the smoke flaps were closed. We kept our tipi relatively warm with just a fire when temps were in the 20's, Also the nomadic tribes usually broke down to much smaller winter bands. The more permanent bands apparently put up wood all summer.
Hawkdancer
Mesophilic:
Hawkdancer, is there further reading on this? I've pretty much got nothing to do and all day to do it so I wouldn't mind reading a good book or a cool website.
BTW, at my place in the mountains of N. New Mexico we ended up with over 3 feet of snow, drifts up to 5 feet. This is an interesting situation for this desert rat family from the lower elevations of the Arizona desert.
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