The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization

When I apprenticed myself to an arborist in 1974 and became a “licensed tree expert” by examination in 1975, I soon found that many of the things I’d learned had to be unlearned as some industry standard practices were based on old wives’ tales rather than science.Roland Ennos has eliminated myths left and right like the swordsman Rob Roy while expanding knowledge of the role of wood in the development of technology.One small correction to page 130 on the crosscut saw which did not gain popularity in the American woods until metallurgy improved during the Civil War and the teeth would hold their set. The way a properly sharpened and set crosscut actually worked left no sawdust. The pegs (teeth) cut slits in a log firming the outside edges of the kerf and the rakers (planes) planed shavings between the two slits.A young couple could take this book and a dictionary after a Holocaust and restart technology and civilization with a stick and a stone.

This book explores a topic that, as the author notes, has received little attention in analyses of evolutionary or recent human history. It is a worthy effort and hopefully it will increase readers’ awareness of the importance of forests and forest products. However, I was disappointed in the book for several reasons, and I found it difficult to get through. I found the early chapters on human evolution very speculative. The author’s hypotheses may be interesting but I found much of what he said unconvincing. The later chapters discuss the historical uses of wood from archeological artifacts through to present day. Throughout, the author employs highly specialized and technical terms in describing tools, industrial processes and building methods. I could never have gotten through these without resorting to Google for explanations and diagrams. The lack of labeled diagrams and photographs is, in my opinion, a fatal flaw of the book. There are a few photographs at the end of the book, but these are never referred to in the text and I did not discover them until I had finished the text. I read the Kindle version. Perhaps the photographs are integrated in the text of the paper editions. There are also a very few actual diagrams in the early chapters, but not nearly enough. I am glad that I persisted and read the entire book, as I appreciated the author’s perspective and I did learn a lot. However, it was a tough slog.

This is a very interesting book which covers many aspects of wood beyond my expectations. The author is knowledgeable about archeology and has a substantial section on the evolution of humans as they migrated from trees to savannah and from hair covered apes to naked apes. The book continues through pre history to cover the need for wooden implements in the age of simple stone tools and discusses the implications of the advance into the bronze age where the bronze tools allow the creation of more advanced wooden implements. The use of wooden embers to create the advance of pottery and to eventually allow bronze and then iron smelting is also discussed.The author has ruminations on the creation of the first wheels and mentions the first archeologically verified wheels and their date. The invention and date of the appearance of bow and arrows are also discussed. In more modern times the creation of paper and various developments in ship construction from the dugout canoe to the planked ships of the British Navy are covered.The author did a doctoral thesis on insect biomechanics and hence you will find many discussions of mechanical properties of wood in various forms and the differentiation of properties of various types of trees. He even gets into the way in which climate and land richness impacted civilization settlement patterns in history.Its a very interesting book and far more wide ranging than I expected, lots of unexpected material. The only small criticism I would have is that I wish he had included some more diagrams to help explain some of his points as I sometimes had trouble visualizing his descriptions.

This is an interesting and informative little book which illustrates the symbiotic role of trees and wood in the history of bringing about human civilization.Wood as an objective biological reality in its own right becomes wood as an active participant in the evolution of our tree-hugging simian line, wood as provider of fire, of weapons, tools, furniture, homes, ships, fortresses and cities, wood as the original stepping stone in our accession to ever more versatile and varied energies and elements - wood fire begets not just ash but charcoal, which in turn leads to metallurgies - copper, tin, bronze, iron - and heretofore unimagined new technologies, trade routes, migrations and wars.It also appears that proliferation of tree growth can lead to global cooling - the dramatic population declines which occurred in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as the great die-off of the Indians in the century following Columbus’ voyage to The New World resulted in the re-emergence of forest in areas which had been farmland prior to the die-offs, and the resultant sequestration of huge quantities of carbon back into the earth by the resurgent forests caused eras of pronounced temperature decline in many parts of the world (Reference pp. 260-261).This book will give you a new appreciation for trees, and possibly for woodworking as well.

When the author stuck to the subject of wood and how that has shaped our history, economies and societies, it's quite interesting, and well written. However, he wanders into sidebars about how science and history have ignored the role of wood, focusing instead on the sexier bronze, iron, etc. So what! He makes a number of unsubstantiated claims. I guess, so we'll feel sorry for wood. Distracting!

Brilliantly written, packed with fascinating detail. Highly recommended. Only niggle is that it could so easily have included more pictures and illustrations.

Fascinating book - revelatory analysis !

The book demonstrates how intimate is our evolutionary process with the most extraordinary material ever: Wood. Everyone should read this book to understand where are we going and what we should do!

A very penetrating study on the uses of wood.