this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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How did the the ancient hebrews know about shale oil?
It's the land of the dead but they did actually know about oil trapped in rock then, shale oil extraction specifically is first referenced in the 10th century by an Arab researcher.
That's a bit late for the Talmud. Other ancient sources do at least mention the ground oozing gross oil sometimes, although use was limited without distillation, which also originated with the Arabs.
That's just extraction from shale, we've been using ground seeps for most of human history. Sumerians were using oil and oil products and that's like around 1000 years before the talmud.
I didn't say no uses, the Natives near where I live liked to seal canoes that way, but without further processing crude oil isn't a particularly great fuel, for example.
What were the Arabs doing with it? At least in the European empires, lamps weren't a big use until after the whale oil era.