Bitumen

I’ve been doing some light research into the use of naturally occurring bitumen, all the way back into prehistory. It’s something of which I knew very little but could certainly be useful knowledge for my writing. A mention in a book I’m reading about the ancient Indus Valley Civilization got me interested.

It seems it was used all the back into the Paleolithic for all the sorts of things other tars might — adhesives, sealants. Hand axes have shown traces of the substance, mixed with clays or other materials, on their broad ends, supposedly to serve as a sort of pad or grip when wielding the stone tools. I had always thought they must have been uncomfortable to hold and use, and apparently our Neanderthals felt the same.

It can be mixed with oils and/or heated to make it more pliable, and spread on baskets or pottery to water-proof. It can be used, obviously, on boats of all sorts (including Native American canoes). In the Indus world, it was even used to line fairly large pools. One can imagine all sorts of uses and I intend to do just that in future fiction. I may just drop some references to it into the next Mora novel. Those Kohari must calk their sewn-together boats with something.

And, to be sure, it would have been an object of trade, a resource to be discovered, exploited, protected. The original black gold? Well, maybe not quite that valuable but a ready source would still be worth something.