Coal Age

Coal Age

With the spread of a variety of domestic plants, multi-crop agricultural practices became the norm. Soils and lands were exploited, with crops and microcrops selected for best utility in particular soil and weather conditions. The use of domestic draft animals dramatically enhanced agricultural potentials. Together with increasing sophistication in techniques of crop rotation, irrigation and fertilization, the Tsalal population was expanding, and the Tsalal were on the verge of breaking their historical cycles of feast and famine.

But there was a problem. Agriculture was labour intensive, to plant, maintain and grow. But simply taking was far less work. Nascent agricultural communities found themselves under constant pressure from hunter gatherers for whom they represented a free lunch.

The result was a state of low level warfare over centuries, between the semi-nomadic hunter gatherers and the agricultural communities. The war was chronicled in folklore and mythology, and balance of powers swung back and forth. At times, Agricultural communities were entirely wiped out. In other areas, tribes were exterminated. Success or one group or the other tended to lead to disaster as as subsequent unrestricted expansion lead to collapse.

However, pressure of war lead to semi-urban density. Essentially, small farmers or freeholdings were not viable. The individual farmer was vulnerable to theft and raiding, not only by the hunter-gatherers but also by the larger agricultural communities. Survival lay in huddling together.

Agricultural communities tended to lead to increased population density, with communities of anywhere from 40 to 200 individuals clustering together.

These communities steadily grew in size and power through the later middle era, reaching the point where during the summer, satellite communities were established or came under domination. The large central communities monopolised winter supplies, and during the winter, a large part of the regional population would migrate to the center.

The result was an almost universal tendency to large, densely packed community and building structures built with communal labour.

Of course, large communities, even centralised ones, needed heating through the winter. Traditionally, wood had been the fuel of choice. But larger populations lead to deforestation and reductions of wood supplies.

The Tsalal were inventive in insulating, digging their communal buildings down into the earth, and mastering through trial and error, problems of air circulation and drainage. These efforts produced other problems, more insect parasites, more bacteria, more person to person contact and disease transmission, for instance. Despite communal living and best efforts, the Tsalal winter lodgings still needed fire to heat their homes, boil their water and cook their food.

The spate of deforestation meant that there was a desperate need for fuel. This was met by the development of coal mining complexes throughout Tsalal lands.

Coal, the complexities of locating and mining deposits, the need to develop effective technology and organization to mine it, to transport it from the mine to agricultural communities mark the beginnings of Tsalal civilization, and charted the course of that civilisation for thousands of years. The first true cities, the first kingdoms, all lay at the center of mining complexes, and rose and fell with the currency of their deposits.

It would be an exaggeration to say that all Tsalal communities were dependent upon coal. Some agricultural communities were expelled or unable to access trading networks, and simply died off or froze out. Others found other local solutions, of varying degrees of invention, including accessing hot springs, geothermal, fermentation, etc. The rise of coal in many areas, and population collapse in other areas allowed for regeneration of forest lands, and the evolution of managed forests and charcoal manufacturing which competed somewhat with coal, or allowed many communities to escape the domination of the coal kings.

Nevertheless, charting population fluctuations in the Tsalal lands over centuries, it is remarkable how closely the population matches with the readily available coal supplies, dropping as deposits were mined out, rising as new deposits were found or new techniques allowed more efficient harvesting.

Despite the importance of coal to early Tsalal civilization, the aggregate volumes were relatively small. This derived from what were, over long periods, still relatively small populations, and the low scale of domestic use.

Another factor, over time, was the evolution and increasing efficiency of Tsalal architecture and coal burning techniques over the millenia, starting with open pit fires and extending to ceramic furnaces with forced air and water pipe heat distribution systems

As a result, of its organization around coal production and distribution, Tsalal civilization and technology evolved dramatically differently than more temperate cultures around the world.