There's a lot of sophistication in "primitive" agriculture. Humans have always been as intelligent and ambitious as they are today; they just didn't always have today's tools.
Yams always make me think of Gone with the Wind. The climax of Act III (not labeled as such, but stories are stories) is Scarlett O'Hara at her family's plantation. Yankee soldiers have come through and taken every scrap of food, but they didn't recognize the yams as food, because it's a Southern thing (yams in the South came over from Africa with the slave trade). So after they leave, she goes outside, digs up a yam with her bare hands, and starts eating it raw. And then she gives this amazing speech... (edited for book-quoted text)
"As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
And that's the Scarlett O'Hara of the rest of the book/movie, the relentlessly resourceful one who will never allow herself to be victimized by anything or anyone.
Does anyone have an idea when these procedures by humans could have been done? The techniques this guy used could have been done 7000bc? (Super recent) They look advanced requiring: passed down knowledge, seasons knowledge, plant knowledge, fire creation, pot making etc. Doing this would have also created villages since you need to stick around to tend plots of land - which would have invited attacks from other tribes.
The earliest clear evidence of the cultivation of crops is about 11,000 years old. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A culture of the Levant lived in small mud-brick huts and had purpose-built granaries.
Analysis of stone tools suggests that a wide range starchy foods were being systematically gathered and prepared for much of the Middle Stone Age (~280,000 BP to ~25,000 BP) although it is unclear whether these foods were being actively cultivated.
I haven't read the book, but reading this excerpt now, and given my Indian context of vegetables, this initially comes across as masochism. What we call "yam" in India has the full name "elephant foot yam", and is full of calcium oxalate crystals that will seriously hurt the mouth. We boil the vegetable quite aggressively to destroy the crystals.
In the US a yam is just what people call certain larger varieties of sweet potatoes, and are unrelated to true yams. Having had both, I can feel where you’re coming from!
A friend of mine linked me your comment, expressing disapproval. He said it "reads like some fever dream", and that hacker news is "supposed to be all software engineery". I don't see what the fuss is, but my experience with sites like this is mostly confined to reddit where 97% of comments are twaddle.
I'm guessing maybe the issue is that yam can refer to sweet potatoes as well as tubers from unrelated species. Did she have a sweet potato or some other tuber in Gone With the Wind?
I'm basing it off a recent reading of The Cooking Gene, by Michael Twitty, which is ostensibly a history of African-American cooking in the South, but is in practice a very deep and well-researched history of the slave trade, by way of its food.
Doing a little more checking on what Twitty has to say (he's the authoritative source as far as I'm concerned), it looks like both interpretations are true:
"The yams of West Africa are not sweet potatoes, however sweet potatoes did fit well into cultures already used to relying on root crops. When Africans encounter sweet potatoes as enslaved people they utilized them in ways similar to tropical yams. Later, African varieties of sweet potato, like the Dahomey sweet potato, cross the Atlantic ocean and come to America."
edit: One thing you learn from reading Twitty and other modern voices on the subject is just how extensively whitewashed even "scientific" history can be, and how much African contribution gets erased.
Humans have always had the same/similar capacity for intelligence, but the modern world creates people with IQs significantly higher than the median would have been only 150 years ago.
Because IQ is a measure of abstract analytical and pattern-matching intelligence, our economic shift towards more analytical/intelligence-driven work causes us to practice those skills more. I could say that FQ (factory-production quotient) has decreased over the last 150 years, but that doesn't mean that people are more or less intelligent, only that they practice different things.
It's interesting how this simple truth is not obvious to most people, and we somehow think that people with skills or knowledge have some special quality we don't, when really they're just experienced.
I think, if I'm practicing the principle of charity, the GP meant the difference in nutrition and sanitation standards, i.e. general health, rather than some sort of "now is the pinnacle of humanity" sense.
Is IQ still considered important? I've not seen it around other than people bragging online about having a high IQ, which they take to mean they are very smart (when usually they're not, more like, average).
Also I disagree partially, I do think the modern world creates smarter and/or more educated people, but that's thanks to education. Lots of education. And access to information of course.
> Also I disagree partially, I do think the modern world creates smarter and/or more educated people, but that's thanks to education. Lots of education. And access to information of course.
That's what the person you're replying to said ...
A tip: turn on captions. The creator somewhat famously doesn't talk, but does provide really informative captions for each step of the build/experiment process.
Related: if you like this and want more I recently read a book series called Bonesetter that has a protagonist who lives in primitive times and it tells the story of a person kicked from their tribe, but who prospers by building Primitive Technology type inventions.
Would also recommend. I watched nearly all of these videos without captions when I first came across the channel before I realized there were captions.
It's fun to "play along at home" and try to figure out why he's doing something without the captions.
My guesses from the title were, in order: 1) A new JavaScript framework; 2) something to do with code quality; and 3) a new build system. Probably all related.
What a great idea, to feature this fellow's Primitive Technology blog (and his outstanding Youtube channel) here on a high tech news site.
Fire making, clay pots, mud huts, stone axes, rope, hunting weapons -- these are what kept people alive for eons, and ironically in our modern high tech era, many if not most of these skills are largely forgotten by all but a few remaining primitive tribes and archivists like him.
These videos are worth watching not just to celebrate these high achievements but also to disseminate and preserve the knowledge. Should you find yourself stranded in a forest hundreds of miles from civilization, you may indeed need to build a friction fire, knap a stone knife, weave some cordage, rough up a shelter, and hunt for food.
As a "primitive survival skills" fan (I'm a viewer, not a doer) I have learned so much that I feel a certain confidence that were I to somehow fall off civilization's ship, and be forced to fend for myself, or to help a group of stranded individuals to survive, we would somehow make it.
I think it is interesting to reflect on the idea that high technology builds on top of primitive technology. Just as he uses past tools to make more complex tools, every human era of technology builds upon the last. You could say primitive stone tools are in the recipe for developing an ICBM or a semiconductor if you go back far enough.
I've followed this channel for a few years. It's fun to watch his whole series from the beginning, because he builds on what he made in previous videos. Like one video will show how to make a kiln and the next will be pottery in the kiln.
There was one video where in the same video he went from some very basic tool to an advanced version of that tool, using each iteration to build the next. I think it might have been a drill but I can't recall.
I definitely agree. I think this is the video you mentioned. I have watched it myself many times as well. "Primitive Technology: Cord drill and Pump drill" > https://youtu.be/ZEl-Y1NvBVI
It was so exciting when he finally built up to smelting bog iron. He only got a little amount, so not sure you could say he hit iron age technology, but it was cool to see that potential with such simple clay and fire.
I stumbled on his videos a couple of months ago. Sadly, I only realized yesterday that there were captions that described his process, but watching it without isn't too bad either. He does things in a very evident manner and it's pretty relaxing just watching him do his thing.
There's another channel called kiwami japan about a guy who mostly is making knives out of things or other silly metal crafts. He also doesn't talk in most of them. I think the sound of banging wood or polishing metal is just very relaxing.
He does do (hardcoded) captions though. But yeah, most of that is seemingly inefficient home crafts, e.g. using hand drills and saws and lots of fast-forward sharpening.
Yes, I think that is the main reason people enjoy his videos. I remember him stating somewhere, that he wanted to make this type of videos, because when he watches instructional videos, he always skips to the part where things are shown (and there is no talking).
Agreed. Very refreshing that he's not engaging in that parasocial stuff that most Youtubers do. He let's his videos do the talking. And none of that "don't forget to like, subscribe, and write a question or comment below" mantra that everyone else nags about. Drives me crazy.
Just when we finally got rid of the useless "Press Escape to exit fullscreen" nag...
Man I love that Patreon exists. Just by the collective weight of $1-2 donations, this guy can support himself just by making these videos. $6k per video isn't amazing, but it ain't too shabby either.
Yeah, there is an awful lot of really fantastic content produced on YouTube now.
It's getting to the point where there is so much quality that discovery of it all is getting hard.
In the spirit of your answer, I would say these other channels are also outstanding in their categories:
Any of Brady Haran's (Numberphile/Sixty Symbols/Objectivity etc)
Fully Charged Show (electric vehicles/renewable energy)
Nick Carver (film photography)
Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics (watch a few to grok the style)
Kevin Mullins (Fuji users photography and more)
Explaining Computers (hard to categorise, that's why it's good)
There are many many many more but I think most of those are really widely known, perhaps some of the above aren't quite as widely watched and they're very worth it.
It wasn't until I cared to look that I found that there's an entire cottage industry of people making similar videos. I wish there was time to watch them all.
Oh yay, someone posted this! I’ve been a subscriber to the primitive technology channel for quite some time. The things this guy makes are truly awesome. I put his videos sometime for my kids because they’re actual worthwhile to talk to them about what he’s doing.
I often think of perception of time when I watch him work. Tens of thousands of years ago, when humans worked like this, their concept of time was completely different than ours. I’ve read comments by the guy that says some of these projects have taken many weeks. With our instant gratification culture, it’s good to reflect on his achievements and timescales.
I’ve also practiced making fire with hand drill and it’s hard. But when it works, it’s awesome. A primal connection to the past.
I recommend watching the video on how he makes lime. Really good stuff.
Interesting, the enclosure need only be big enough to cover the tubers themselves.
> ...conventional farming practice of clearing trees to make fields. Instead the yam vine uses the trees as scaffolding to climb on, allowing it to reach the light in the forest canopy.
The vines would have to climb a long way, depending on tree height.
(Obviously unacceptable for "primitive technology", but) cooking in aluminium foil avoids loss to charring, and is reusable,
Aluminium is a common element. Refining it to a metal is a very difficult process (compared to other metals). It was so valuable that it was part of the showing off a young United States did for the Washington Monument. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.ht...
> Frishmuth proposed that the pyramid be made of aluminum at a quoted price of $75, and if he was unsuccessful in casting it in aluminum he would cast it in aluminum bronze and plate it with gold for a total cost of $50, or, if platinum-plated, for $75. Aluminum bronze was an alloy of 90 parts copper and 10 parts aluminum and was quite abundant on the commercial market in 1884. The principal manufacturer was the Cowles Brothers of Niagara Falls, New York, who used a patented thermal process employing an electric resistance furnace and a raw material containing aluminum oxide and copper. The aluminum produced was always combined with the copper and could not be separated from it.
> Roman historian Pliny the Elder recorded a story about a metal that was bright as silver but much lighter, which was presented to the Emperor Tiberius (reigned 14–37 CE), who had the discoverer killed in order to ensure the metal would not diminish the value of his gold and silver assets. Some sources suggest a possibility that this metal was aluminium; this claim has been disputed.
Made with electrolysis of a molten aluminum salt. Requires a lot of electricity. Back in the 1850s they made it with expensive chemical reactions and the french elite used to wear it as jewellery.
Aluminum forms very strong chemical bonds, so it's difficult to reduce it to its base form. Aluminum oxide is one of the most chemically stable materials there is. In WWII, being able to effectively refine aluminum (using lots of hydroelectric power in the Pacific Northwest) was one of the key economic factors that lead to an Allied victory.
For the entire commercial history of aluminum, it's been produced through molten-salt electrolysis (the Hall-Heroult process).
Paprika on a yam? Yeah, yams are unbelievably sweet when exposed to direct fire, like candy sweet. But I'm talking about the Garnet and Japanese varieties, this might just be a less cultivated specie he found locally and just went with it.
Like the other reply to this comment, I think you're referring to sweet potatoes. As an aside, you're right about baked/roasted sweet potatoes. Their GI when baked is in the mid 90s!
Indeed. He has two other (earlier) videos of him building gardens, one with cassava, which he says is a very high-output food source. He also notes "A person could potentially be nearly self-sufficient from a small plot of sweet potatoes." Presumably it should scale for a small group, since they could share the work.
False. Tribes in Papua New Guinea still grow food without industrial equipment, using technology that has changed little in the last tens of thousands of years.
No shit it doesn't scale to feed millions, but it scales in some way to feed more than one guy on youtube.
More to the point, the effort that went into making the enclosure was probably 2000+ calories--more than the yams inside. I think early horticulture is basically: Plant edible food with minimal fuss, and eat what comes up. If wild pigs show up, well, free protein.
the primitive tech blogger guy is not trying to live off the land. he just have a Survivor/Bigbrother kinda of tv show for survival nerds. he probably live off the proceeds of paracord bracelets and pocket knife banners :)
Depends on your criteria. If you only aim to feed a small group, it is significantly less cost to make a handful of enclosures than to clear a large amount of space for a field, even if the field is more efficient at scale.
The point is that "a handful of enclosures" would only provide a few meals for a small group but would take six months to produce them. The group needs to eat for the entire six months.
Let's say each enclosure produces three-days worth of yams in six months. To feed one person for a year you need 100 enclosures, and you need to stagger their planting so you can harvest them continously.
Each enclosure takes up about one square meter, so you need a line of them 100m long for each person in your group. You also need space to walk between them, so you need 3m for each two lines of enclosures. For a ten-person group, that's a 100m x 30m yam farm.
In my country, we grow yams pretty frequently in the villages and despite being low density, subsistence farming, people still clear land. It's basically impossible to live off the land by farming without clearing away trees.
You are mostly correct, and should not be downvoted.
However, the Irish of the 1800s lived off potatoes and cows butter SOLELY. Of course, they were extremely skinny because they had to stretch a 3 month harvest across 12 months. But they were not malnourished. There were irishmen living into their 100s at this time.
Of course there was a famous potato blight that killed the crop and starved most everyone to death. But I'm talking about nutrition, not epidemiology
Yams always make me think of Gone with the Wind. The climax of Act III (not labeled as such, but stories are stories) is Scarlett O'Hara at her family's plantation. Yankee soldiers have come through and taken every scrap of food, but they didn't recognize the yams as food, because it's a Southern thing (yams in the South came over from Africa with the slave trade). So after they leave, she goes outside, digs up a yam with her bare hands, and starts eating it raw. And then she gives this amazing speech... (edited for book-quoted text)
"As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
And that's the Scarlett O'Hara of the rest of the book/movie, the relentlessly resourceful one who will never allow herself to be victimized by anything or anyone.