Where do oil come from?

[knasser]

Forgive the thread title - couldn't resist.

So I'm trying to make my fantasy setting authentic as much as possible and avidly adding as many period details as possible. It's a horribly inconsistent mish-mash of pseudo-17th nobility in places with Saxon-era peasantry in others. But I try to counter my mad enthusiasm for adding anything that pleases me by applying as much thought as possible to the details and thinking through the consequences.

Where did medieval people get oil? And pitch? Or did they? I can't imagine big, or even small, oil derricks pumping it up from the ground. So where did people used to get oil for lamps before that? Or are oil lamps a post-medieval thing and everybody used only candles? Similarly I have this vague recollection that medieval people used to use pitch on their doors and ships. Where did they get that from if not from oil? And I guess final medieval lore question, did medieval people mine coal and burn it? Or is that too modern for a Lord of the Rings-y saxon-y setting?

Thanks for any replies!

K.

 

[KahlessNestor]

The oil they would use would be plive oil, not petroleum. Pitch can be found in natural deposits, I think. They would have used peat, not coal, for burning.

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

 

[tomBitonti]

Pitch was apparently made by mixing charcoal into boiling pine resin.

Oils were from various natural sources, predominant amoung them rendered animal fats such as lard and plant derived oils, especially olive oil.

In some regions there are natural hydrocarbon seeps.

The answer is more complex when the view encompasses more than Europe.

Thx!
TomB

 

[Celebrim]

The historically most important sources of oil for lamps were olive oil, rapeseed oil, and whale oil. Importance depends on the region, but whale oil was the most highly prized because it smelled sweet when burnt and produced very little smoke.

Pine tar was produced from the stumps and roots of pine trees. Pitch is a byproduct of producing charcoal from several sorts of wood. Bitumen, or what we would now call asphalt, was known to the ancients, but they tended to lack good sources for it. It seeped to the surface in a few places (notably, the dead sea), and was exported in relatively small quantities. Mining for asphalt or coal - except for relatively small scale strip mining of surface deposits - was unknown, and it wasn't until the 19th century that mineral hydrocarbons started to have great economic importance or that distillation of hydrocarbons was widely practiced. Crude oil, as we know it now, was basically unknown

 

[Rune]

And I guess final medieval lore question, did medieval people mine coal and burn it? Or is that too modern for a Lord of the Rings-y saxon-y setting?

Thanks for any replies!

K.

Middle-earth is pretty anachronistic, anyway. For instance, the hobbits drink tea and smoke pipes. That said, the dwarves-in-exile are often coal-miners (including all of Thorin's company).

 

[Celebrim]

Middle-earth is pretty anachronistic, anyway. For instance, the hobbits drink tea and smoke pipes. That said, the dwarves-in-exile are often coal-miners (including all of Thorin's company).

As with many things, what most people think of when they imagine the distant past is actually some sort 19th century pastiche. For example, with one exception, the costuming and technology for the Disney 'Princess' movies suggests that they are all post-medieval, and most of the fairy tales are actually set in the first half the 19th century. 'Cinderella' even suggests a mid to late 19th century setting.

Most D&D settings are basically early 19th century minus gunpowder, with towns being set in the universe of Dicken's 'Oliver Twist' and Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' more than 13th century London or Paris as it actually was. Ship technology tends to feature things like crow's nests and multi-masted, multi-sailed vessels that are 16th to 18th century sans cannon.

Tolkien however was doing this deliberately, with the Hobbit's journey from what was to him the familiar cozy world of his childhood into the 'wilderlands' of medieval story. That being said, since D&D is far more Tolkien pastiche than it is realistic medieval simulation, you'd be quite right to assume that the dwarves have mining technology that is far in advance of what was available in the medieval or ancient world. Virtually none of 18th century technology was beyond the skills of medieval craftsmen, it's just hadn't been thought of yet. So if you want to have coal mines in your world, or even dwarves pumping and distilling petroleum, go for it. Once you get petroleum though, I think you are firmly in the world of steam punk or even diesel punk, and should just go with the tropes.

 

[MNblockhead]

As with many things, what most people think of when they imagine the distant past is actually some sort 19th century pastiche. For example, with one exception, the costuming and technology for the Disney 'Princess' movies suggests that they are all post-medieval, and most of the fairy tales are actually set in the first half the 19th century. 'Cinderella' even suggests a mid to late 19th century setting.

Most D&D settings are basically early 19th century minus gunpowder, with towns being set in the universe of Dicken's 'Oliver Twist' and Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' more than 13th century London or Paris as it actually was. Ship technology tends to feature things like crow's nests and multi-masted, multi-sailed vessels that are 16th to 18th century sans cannon.

Tolkien however was doing this deliberately, with the Hobbit's journey from what was to him the familiar cozy world of his childhood into the 'wilderlands' of medieval story. That being said, since D&D is far more Tolkien pastiche than it is realistic medieval simulation, you'd be quite right to assume that the dwarves have mining technology that is far in advance of what was available in the medieval or ancient world. Virtually none of 18th century technology was beyond the skills of medieval craftsmen, it's just hadn't been thought of yet. So if you want to have coal mines in your world, or even dwarves pumping and distilling petroleum, go for it. Once you get petroleum though, I think you are firmly in the world of steam punk or even diesel punk, and should just go with the tropes.

When world building, I find that anachronisms are less of an issue than falling into a false sense of realism. If you look at history there are societies that discovered certain technologies long before we tend to think they were discovered and, to me more surprising, often that knowledge was lost. For example, look at the fascinating history of glass. Roman advanced glass-making techniques somehow was lost and not rediscovered until many centuries later in Europe. Also, look at roman aqueducts. Who knows what technologies certain individuals or communities discovered that were lost.

Automata and other complex mechanical devices, including the first known analog computer are found in Hellenistic Greece. Even electricity in some fashion was used in ancient times. Romans and Egyptians used electric eels and catfish to treat headaches and other pain. Some claim that Parthians had developed a primitive battery (see Bagdad batteries). I think this theory is mostly discredited, but it is interesting to read theories on how batteries may have been created out of primitive material and used to deliver mild electric shocks when a person touched an idol, or as a medicinal device, or just a novelty (the electroplating theory has been debunked, afaik). The ancient Greeks had developed a miniature steam engine (aeolipile), but it was just used as a curiosity, a toy. Amazing that nobody thought to put the concept to practical use until the industrial revolution.

In a fantasy world, with MAGIC and fantastical creatures, there would be even less reason to develop many technologies, especially those intermediate technologies that would lead to the modern world.

In an a world where magic is repressed, certain sciences and inventions may be feared and repressed as magic.

So I see no issue with having ships that are more 18th century, but without cannons or any number of other anachronisms. Human history in real life has not seen a smooth progression of technological and scientific advancement. Also, all regions in the world do not advance at the same pace. Don't worry too much about historical verisimilitude--most folks have a faulty understanding scientific history anyway and are informed more by Hollywood than actual history and science.

 

[Herobizkit]

Oil comes from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Oil, of course. It's also the origin of the Alchemy Jug. See, this one wizard, he LOVED salads but could never decide how to garnish them...

 

[PrometheanVigil]

Oil comes from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Oil, of course. It's also the origin of the Alchemy Jug. See, this one wizard, he LOVED salads but could never decide how to garnish them...

That is such an Alton Brown type o' joke. He did it in the salad episode for Good Eats. Check it out, show's awesome.

 

[Celebrim]

When world building, I find that anachronisms are less of an issue than falling into a false sense of realism. If you look at history there are societies that discovered certain technologies long before we tend to think they were discovered and, to me more surprising, often that knowledge was lost. For example, look at the fascinating history of glass. Roman advanced glass-making techniques somehow was lost and not rediscovered until many centuries later in Europe. Also, look at roman aqueducts. Who knows what technologies certain individuals or communities discovered that were lost.

Automata and other complex mechanical devices, including the first known analog computer are found in Hellenistic Greece.

Also, the Chinese developed complex mechanical time keeping devices around the third century AD, and then at some point lost both the knowledge and memory of them, so that when European traders arrived with complex mechanical time keeping devices in the 16th century, the courts of China marveled... at something that they had invented a 1000 years before.

The ancient Greeks had developed a miniature steam engine (aeolipile), but it was just used as a curiosity, a toy. Amazing that nobody thought to put the concept to practical use until the industrial revolution.

Perhaps they did, but if they did, they probably would have asked what such an engine could do that could not be done better by slaves. And, if we started making machines that did the labor of slaves, what would the slaves do? We can't no for certain that this was said regarding the steam engine, but we do know this was said regarding the windmill and the watermill by the Romans. The Romans knew how to build them, but they only used them as a temporary devices. It would appear that before an industrial revolution in wind power or water power could take place, some revolution in how you thought about individual rights and about the structure of society had to take place as well. It wasn't until the 13th century that such a revolution in individual rights and dignity met up with both economic need and engineering knowledge, leading the industrial revolution of the High Middle ages.

In an a world where magic is repressed, certain sciences and inventions may be feared and repressed as magic.

In a sense, I've written this into my homebrew world's backstory. There is an era of the distant pass where magic looked a lot like technology, and so now when people create sufficiently advanced technology it is associated with that condemned time and treated as a sort of 'witchcraft'.

So I see no issue with having ships that are more 18th century, but without cannons or any number of other anachronisms. Human history in real life has not seen a smooth progression of technological and scientific advancement. Also, all regions in the world do not advance at the same pace. Don't worry too much about historical verisimilitude--most folks have a faulty understanding scientific history anyway and are informed more by Hollywood than actual history and science.

I don't either. And in particular, the problem with assuming a hard correspondence between real world history and your fantasy game is that your fantasy game has many features the real world does not. You should expect the fantasy world to not perfectly correspond to real world historical periods. What I think history is useful for though is adding depth of detail you might not otherwise be inspired to create. It's quite fine to be 'anachronistic' because there is no real historical period to measure the anachronism by, but you should I think be conscious regarding your 'anachronism'. The only thing I object to is making assumptions without due consideration. By all means, if you think it fits, have schooners instead of cogs in your quasi-medieval world, just understand what you are doing and why. As you say, the false realism is worse than anachronism.