this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
158 points (95.9% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
4914 readers
191 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
Pitch/bitumen whatever you'd like to call it seals wood boats will enough we've been using it since the time Sumer.
It catches fire easily so pretty well anything that could be lit. Chinese records say oil itself was being used for lighting in the first century bce.