ANSWERS: 2
  • "People in Shanxi, now the largest coal production base in China, have been burning coal as fuel for 10,000 years, since the Neolithic Era" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Early_use Coal wasn't really in widespread use, however, until 18th Century Britain, with the invention of the Steam Engine.
  • The use of 'fossil oil' or petroleum goes back to the early or Paleo stone age about 2 1/2 million years in the Old World. 'Stone age' is not really a 'when' but more of a cultural level 'when/where' as there are still in a few areas a few people today who live, except for outside influences, barely above a stone age level. So N E way, about 2 mill years ago folks didn't have drilling rigs but there was some petroleum on the surface, mostly thick gooey oil, usually called tar, sometimes in deep pools or pits like the famous La Brea Pits in California. Since there is ample evidence that predatory animals attacked other animals stuck in the tar, sometimes getting stuck themselves, it is logical to assume that early humans also took advantage of the trapped animals. So mebbee that was the first use, perhaps by even pre-stone age people. There are relics from slightly later times, 1 1/2 to 2 mill yrs ago of actual use of petroleum. Folks used the sticky tar because it was sticky, they used it to glue ornaments on various stuff, clothes, what may well be just plain decorative items. Mostly they used it as a protecterant and sealant, waterproofer etc. They smeared it on the outside of baskets to keep water in, on the outside of clothes, tents, boats to keep water out. They also used it as a preservative, especially in human burials, they'd smear it all over the body. ( Later the Egyptians and others also used some petroleum in their mummification process.) They may have used the tar on torches or other sources of heat and light, not a lot of evidence of that, after all it burned up. At a later time, people in what is now Central and Central Eastern New Mexico, at what was basically a technologically stone age level used petroleum without really knowing they were. They made buildings of adobe (sun dried brick) and rammed earth ( ya build two temporary walls and dump dirt in and pack it hard, add more dirt and pack that.) It turns out that a lot of the earth in that area had some oil mixed in with it, the folks who just happened to use that soil wound up having homes that lasted longer. Folks also used, and still do, oil as a tonic or medicine ( maybe under the theory that, if it tastes bad, it must be good for you.) It was and is used as a salve for scrapes, wounds and such (Vasolene Petroleum Jelly! Get it at Ogg's Drug Cave in the convenient tar covered basket.) Some folks smear it all over their selves to prevent insect bites. Perhaps that is the origin of tarring and feathering someone, like that Ogg, whose medicines never worked.

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