[Garry Denke (OP)]

German Stone Age Coalstone Hunter Campfires

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coal&oldid=172487181

An 120,000-year-old Stone Age coalstone hunting camp was discovered in 2005 by archaelogists in an opencast coalstone mine in Germany, its first known use being campfire cooking fuel for German hunters.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0%2C1518%2C464574%2C00.html

Are coalstone rocks used for cooking anymore?

Garry Denke

[JimBob]

In some places, yes. I know of people in the coal region in the American Appalachians who use it to heat their home, cook and for all other heat generation because it cost nothing. they just need to go out the back door, get it from the steep side of their land and burn it.

When I was a child in New England we used it to heat our home and cook. My father worked both before and after WW II at Brockton Ice and Coal Company as an accountant.

[Garry Denke (OP)]

In some places, yes. I know of people in the coal region in the American Appalachians who use it to heat their home, cook and for all other heat generation because it cost nothing. they just need to go out the back door, get it from the steep side of their land and burn it.

When I was a child in New England we used it to heat our home and cook. My father worked both before and after WW II at Brockton Ice and Coal Company as an accountant.

Coalstone rocks for heat as well as for cooking, why sure, I did not think of staying warm with these rocks. But why do New Englanders and American Appalachian people use coalstone rocks to cook, and to stay warm, instead of just using all of that wood there? I mean why would people who live in the woods use coalstone rocks instead of woods when the woods are right out their back door too?

Are they geologists preferring rocks instead of woods, or are there reasons they choose the coalstone rocks?

Garry Denke

[JimBob]

The woods are gone in much of New England. Coal is cheaper than heating oil but the heating oil is more efficient. Now, environmental regulations require clean burning fuels and unless the coal is hard coal, anthracite, which cost a lot, then you need to use something else besides coal.

It is the same in the Appalachians. People live in one spot for a hundred years or more and there are soon not many trees to be cut down. So if there is a coal seam and with a few hours work you can dig out enough coal for a week, that is what you use.

Wood just not a good source of heat over-all. On the scale of a single family home in a very rural area then it may be worth the trouble. But to produce power coal is the answer. America has more coal reserves than any other country in the world, including Russia. There will be a lot of coal burned after oil gets too expensive to use.

 

[Garry Denke (OP)]

Wood just not a good source of heat over-all. On the scale of a single family home in a very rural area then it may be worth the trouble. But to produce power coal is the answer. America has more coal reserves than any other country in the world, including Russia. There will be a lot of coal burned after oil gets too expensive to use.

New England is beautiful, JimBob



Thank you, Garry Denke

[Garry Denke (OP)]

400,000-year-old Stone Age coal mine

In 1995 the new image of early Stone Age ancestors as systematic hunters of large animals and coalstone rocks, rather than mere scavengers of small game and wood fuel, emerged from a discovery in Germany that was announced in the journal Nature. (1997)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v385/n6619/abs/385767a0.html

Braunkohle (Lignite)
Flammkohle (Flame coal)
Gasflammkohle (Gas flame coal)
Gaskohle (Gas coal)
Fettkohle (Fat coal)
Esskohle (Forge coal)
Magerkohle (Non baking coal)
Anthrazit (Anthracite)

Examining material excavated in an opencast coalstone mine near Hanover, archaeologists found 400,000-year-old wooden spears (3 complete), carving and mining tools, and the remains of more than 10 horses at the coalstone rocks hunting basecamp. (2007)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining

Garry Denke