Civilization without wood?

[Bulhakov]

As a thought exercise and worldbuilding for an alternate earths scenario - what would human civilization look like if there were no sources of wood at all in the world? To not make the world too alien, let's imagine some superfungus or bacteria gradually destroyed all higher plantlife capable of lignification when humanity was reaching the stone age and humans managed to adapt. What plant life would evolve to fill the niche? Moss and mushrooms?

How civilization could have progressed if early humans couldn't make a spearshaft (unless large animal bones were available) and the only sources of fire were leaves from non-lignified plants and animal oils (and eventually coal, natural gas and mineral oil)?

We have some examples in our history of humans living in the arctic or in deserts, so there are places to draw ideas from.

[Willie the Duck]

As a thought exercise and worldbuilding for an alternate earths scenario - what would human civilization look like if there were no sources of wood at all in the world? To not make the world too alien, let's imagine some superfungus or bacteria gradually destroyed all higher plantlife capable of lignification when humanity was reaching the stone age and humans managed to adapt. What plant life would evolve to fill the niche? Moss and mushrooms?

How civilization could have progressed if early humans couldn't make a spearshaft (unless large animal bones were available) and the only sources of fire were leaves from non-lignified plants and animal oils (and eventually coal, natural gas and mineral oil)?

We have some examples in our history of humans living in the arctic or in deserts, so there are places to draw ideas from.

Well, if it is an after-the-fact effect (so wood existed, but then something came along and destroyed everything with wood) perhaps all the ferns without woody growth (most of them) would come to dominate, and the world might look a lot like when dinosaurs (other than birds, we've already had that discussion) ruled the earth.

I'm guessing that something would be worked out in terms of suitable substitutes for tent poles and spear shafts and such (stone-age humanity have been fairly inventive, after all), and there might be some practical replacements based on availability (fewer bow-hunters and more sling-hunters, for instance). Probably would depend on what kind of animals would evolve and dominate in this new world. I suspect the biggest thing would be the challenge of fire. Fire is a game-changer when it comes to calories -- chewing raw meat takes a huge amount of time and effort* (sufficient that most of the innate calorie density benefit of meat compared to other sources is lost because you burned so many calories chewing it). Mind you, there are other sources of fuel material than wood, animal oil, and fossil fuels (people have been using them for ages) -- peat; dung; and dry, composting plant matter all work, although usually not as readily as wood.
*highly fat-based animals like seals and such are easier, one of the reasons why humans living in the artic have been able to flourish

Fundamentally, I think a proto-human culture could exist in this world and look not-all-that-dissimilar from pre-metal cultures (recent and ancient) of our world. It would just be harder and slower and maybe there could be fewer of them based on lessoned resources.

[Mechalich]

As a thought exercise and worldbuilding for an alternate earths scenario - what would human civilization look like if there were no sources of wood at all in the world? To not make the world too alien, let's imagine some superfungus or bacteria gradually destroyed all higher plantlife capable of lignification when humanity was reaching the stone age and humans managed to adapt. What plant life would evolve to fill the niche? Moss and mushrooms?

Eliminating lignification is going awfully far. That's going to eliminate basically all extant vascular plants. I think a more viable scenario would be the elimination of secondary growth (including the alternative methods used by palms and bamboo). That would allow the persistence of most herbaceous plants and a small number of simply woody plants with simplified growth forms (which would still not produce anything like 'wood' as commonly conceptualized). The result would be the conversion of the planet into essentially a giant grassland. That's useful, because extant grassland-dwelling societies are already operate with low-levels of wood, so its possible to extrapolate from there.

This can also be broken down in terms of usage. Wood has three primary functions for humans: construction, fuel, transport, and tool-making. Alternatives for construction (earth, stone) and fuel (dung, peat, agricultural waste) exist, though they do impose some limitations. Most forms of mobile shelters, such as Yurts rely on a wooden lattice to support them. Trying to use bone as a replacement is significantly more difficult.

Tools and transport are harder. While some tools can be made from bone, horn, and where available ivory, these are considerably less abundant and less versatile than wood. Stone is abundant, but too heavy for many purposes. Transport is also very difficult. While boats can be built from reeds or hides, there are very real limitations on size for such vessels. Land-based vehicles are even harder, probably impossible to make anything beyond extremely simple carts.

Generally, I think that without wood it would be possible to sustain a stone age civilization, though probably at a lower level than that of the largest Stone Age Empires like Egypt or Mesoamerica.

[Bohandas]

chewing raw meat takes a huge amount of time and effort* (sufficient that most of the innate calorie density benefit of meat compared to other sources is lost because you burned so many calories chewing it)

Why is this not a diet? I mean, there are meat based diet programs but to my knowledge none of them are based on raw meat.

I mean, granted it would be hugely expensive and inconvenient to have all your meat delivered the day it was slaughtered so that it didn't go bad (because freezing it would entail either thawing it or eating it frozen) but there are plenty of fad diets that have succeeded despite being very expensive and inconvenient.

[Mechalich]

Why is this not a diet? I mean, there are meat based diet programs but to my knowledge none of them are based on raw meat.

I mean, granted it would be hugely expensive and inconvenient to have all your meat delivered the day it was slaughtered so that it didn't go bad (because freezing it would entail either thawing it or eating it frozen) but there are plenty of fad diets that have succeeded despite being very expensive and inconvenient.

Two reasons. The first, and obvious one, is that cooking provides protection from disease and parasites. Eating raw meat is unsafe and should generally be avoided when possible (humans get away with it in the case of sushi because fish are sufficiently evolutionarily distant from us that most of the parasites they carry don't effect us, but sushi menus still have to carry warning labels).

The second thing is that while you can get more calories out of the same amount of meat when cooked, that's dependent upon eating all of it, all the broth, all the fat, etc. With some cooking methods, like grilling, this is impossible, as a considerable quantity of calories are going to end up dripping into the fire. As the raw vs. cooked calculation is rarely one to one, this ends up being complicated.

That being said, the raw food diet does exist, taking advantage of a similar effect with vegetables and grains.

[LibraryOgre]

There's lots of people from places with little to no wood that don't just eat everything raw. While wood is a great source of cooking fuel, it's not the only source. Grasses, for example, peat, coal, and dung (which is mostly just recycled grasses) have all been used as fuel for cooking fires. When you get to metallurgy, you're going to need coal or peat, but you can probably manage cooking.

Early on, I see the big problem is wood-as-a-construction-and-tool material. What makes the shafts of spears, bows, and arrows? Clubs can manage with thick bones (though those are more expensive to replace), and slings will do fine (they are, after all, stone and leather, shaped by stone), but you're going to have problems creating house frames and scaffolding without wood.

Some of it is just going to come down to how creative you can get with the large fungi that exist.

[Rakaydos]

There's lots of people from places with little to no wood that don't just eat everything raw. While wood is a great source of cooking fuel, it's not the only source. Grasses, for example, peat, coal, and dung (which is mostly just recycled grasses) have all been used as fuel for cooking fires. When you get to metallurgy, you're going to need coal or peat, but you can probably manage cooking.

Early on, I see the big problem is wood-as-a-construction-and-tool material. What makes the shafts of spears, bows, and arrows? Clubs can manage with thick bones (though those are more expensive to replace), and slings will do fine (they are, after all, stone and leather, shaped by stone), but you're going to have problems creating house frames and scaffolding without wood.

Some of it is just going to come down to how creative you can get with the large fungi that exist.

Sounds like the good old thighbone club and wicker shield will get a lot more milage than it did IRL.

Speaking of wicker. what kind of potential is there in the structural use of woven grasses and reeds?

[LibraryOgre]

Sounds like the good old thighbone club and wicker shield will get a lot more milage than it did IRL.

Speaking of wicker. what kind of potential is there in the structural use of woven grasses and reeds?

Notably, linen cuirasses were a thing, and could be incredibly strong and light. I think grasses and reeds might do well against arrows and sling stones (blunting the momentum, if nothing else), they'd be helpless against clubs.

[awa]

cotton armor is a thing, stiffened with salt. You dipped it in salt water and let it dry in the shade.

[Willie the Duck]

Speaking of wicker. what kind of potential is there in the structural use of woven grasses and reeds?

The primary issue will be as load-bearing structures. Lots and lots and lots of wicker-esque structure can be combined to support some weight, but it's always going to be cumbersome and challenging, especially for anything you want to move, put in or near water, or have a space below it (since you're effectively creating a mound of grass/reeds, just with some defined structure to maximize strength and minimize weight). Tent poles are the obvious situation where wood is easier, but also (ex.) once you get to the pottery phase, you also want to be able to hang a pot over the (peat or dung) fire, and thus you want something from which to hang it (and the wicker mound would want to be right where your fire is).

There's lots of people from places with little to no wood that don't just eat everything raw. While wood is a great source of cooking fuel, it's not the only source. Grasses, for example, peat, coal, and dung (which is mostly just recycled grasses) have all been used as fuel for cooking fires. When you get to metallurgy, you're going to need coal or peat, but you can probably manage cooking.

And many of those places are going to be good examples to model from (or, where they do use wood, where there will be a problem). Lots of plains and desert nomads have gotten by with non-wood fuel, but found enough wood for bows, tent and litter poles, spear and axe handles, etc.

Some of it is just going to come down to how creative you can get with the large fungi that exist.

That's going to be the wrench in all of this -- what is there instead of woody plants (also: how does the rest of the ecosystems change in response) and what of that can you leverage as replacements?

[Lord Torath]

The primary issue will be as load-bearing structures. Lots and lots and lots of wicker-esque structure can be combined to support some weight, but it's always going to be cumbersome and challenging, especially for anything you want to move, put in or near water, or have a space below it (since you're effectively creating a mound of grass/reeds, just with some defined structure to maximize strength and minimize weight). Tent poles are the obvious situation where wood is easier, but also (ex.) once you get to the pottery phase, you also want to be able to hang a pot over the (peat or dung) fire, and thus you want something from which to hang it (and the wicker mound would want to be right where your fire is).

I seem to recall that some ancient peoples lived in homes made of stacked sod. Mud-and-straw bricks could work pretty well for a building material. As far as suspending your cooking pot over the fire, a bone could work as well as a stick.

As far as transporting goods, I was going to suggest a travois. But you need a couple of shafts for that, which means wood or a lot of careful bone splicing. Which is probably doable. Cut and shape the end of a pair of bones to fit together and then wrap the joint in rawhide (or something similar) that will shrink and bind the two pieces together. Repeat on the other ends of the bones until you have a shaft of the appropriate length. I will confess that my stone-age survival skillls are not really "up to snuff" as they say (or used to, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), but this seems feasible to me.

[LibraryOgre]

I seem to recall that some ancient peoples lived in homes made of stacked sod. Mud-and-straw bricks could work pretty well for a building material. As far as suspending your cooking pot over the fire, a bone could work as well as a stick.

Definitely, and there are dugouts and flat-out adobe. There's lots of building options. But wood is easy to shape and join, which is part of why it's popular for houses.

And I keep thinking of Morrowind. While you've got some areas that have trees, others are blasted wastelands with nothing, or mushroom forests.

[Mechalich]

That's going to be the wrench in all of this -- what is there instead of woody plants (also: how does the rest of the ecosystems change in response) and what of that can you leverage as replacements?

If the change happens during the Pleistocene, as conceived of here, then the general answer is grass, lots and lots of grass.

This would of course have huge ecological consequences since trees are extremely important habitat even in areas where they are not abundant and also have a massive impact on hydrology. For example, most rivers and streams in grasslands are - in the absence of human intervention - surrounded by riparian forest, which serves to shade the waters and keep them cool. In this situation that entire ecosystem vanishes.

The general outcome is depauperate grasslands with low diversity ecosystems (insect diversity, especially, takes a huge hit).

As far as transporting goods, I was going to suggest a travois. But you need a couple of shafts for that, which means wood or a lot of careful bone splicing. Which is probably doable. Cut and shape the end of a pair of bones to fit together and then wrap the joint in rawhide (or something similar) that will shrink and bind the two pieces together. Repeat on the other ends of the bones until you have a shaft of the appropriate length. I will confess that my stone-age survival skillls are not really "up to snuff" as they say (or used to, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), but this seems feasible to me.

One problem with using bones for construction and tools is that bone is a limited resource. Humans, even stone age ones, have a bad tendency to extirpate megafauna in regions they inhabit for a long time, which makes it hard to rely on bones from the biggest (and therefore most useful) animals like elephants. Reliable bone has to be sourced from domesticated animals, which are not ideal for the purpose.

Alternatively, it is possible to make tools using antler/horn, and in a world like this humans might selectively breed animals to produce tool-ready sources. An Oryx for instance, already produces extremely long and straight horns. Scaled up, those would produce effective shafts. Straight-tusked elephants would also help, if they survive. Ivory is suitable for use in many tools, and even in structural frames, and the tusks of straight-tusked elephants were both huge and well, straight (especially compared to something like a woolly mammoth), making them easier to use.

[Rakaydos]

The primary issue will be as load-bearing structures. Lots and lots and lots of wicker-esque structure can be combined to support some weight, but it's always going to be cumbersome and challenging, especially for anything you want to move, put in or near water, or have a space below it (since you're effectively creating a mound of grass/reeds, just with some defined structure to maximize strength and minimize weight). Tent poles are the obvious situation where wood is easier, but also (ex.) once you get to the pottery phase, you also want to be able to hang a pot over the (peat or dung) fire, and thus you want something from which to hang it (and the wicker mound would want to be right where your fire is).

I was envisioning essentially chineese fingertraps as a basis for a structural material. Basketweaving as an archetectural engineering discipline.

[Yora]

The critical properties of wood are thst it's fairly easy to cut and is strong in both compression and tension. Bone is really the only comparable material, and as explained, it's availability is greatly limited, especially for large pieces.

I could be mistaken, but wicker and bamboo are still wood, so they are out as well.

I think without wood, paleolithic societies should be perfectly viable, and perhaps even early mesolithic ones, though only at a small scale. Someone mentioned a few fairly isolated cultures in treeless regions, and I think they would all fall under this category. But that would probably be it. No neolithic societies that could develop civilizations.

A somewhat untelated but fun thing: Humans can breath normally at oxygen concentrations that are too low to sustain fire. Worlds with massive biospheres and plenty of large megafauna are possible in which fire just isn't a thing that happen without having meaningfully different biology. That would really inhibit the development of complex cultures.

[Mechalich]

I think without wood, paleolithic societies should be perfectly viable, and perhaps even early mesolithic ones, though only at a small scale. Someone mentioned a few fairly isolated cultures in treeless regions, and I think they would all fall under this category. But that would probably be it. No neolithic societies that could develop civilizations.

I think you could still get Neolithic level societies, but it would only be possible in certain areas. Specifically, it would need to be in places where a sedentary hunter-gatherer lifestyle was possible. A lot of the uses of wood can be replaced with stone or even pottery (ex. jars instead of baskets) if you don't have to go anywhere. However, such regions are fairly rare, and the absence of forests would be even less common. Probably they would be limited to a very small number of coastal regions (shell and coral are also potential substitutes for wood for some purposes) with abundant fish and shellfish resources.

A somewhat untelated but fun thing: Humans can breath normally at oxygen concentrations that are too low to sustain fire. Worlds with massive biospheres and plenty of large megafauna are possible in which fire just isn't a thing that happen without having meaningfully different biology. That would really inhibit the development of complex cultures.

Not exactly. The lowest oxygen concentration at which sustained human life is possible is that which is found at ~5,000 meters in elevation. Fire still burns at that altitude, though it takes a lot more effort and the right mix of fuels. Also, ecosystems at that altitude are very limited. Large mammals are found in the Tibetan Steppe, but they top out much smaller than lowland relatives, and the plateau's overall productivity is very low because of the limits on what kind of grasses can survive there.

[Lord Torath]

Bamboo is actually a grass, not a tree. So it may be available.

[Yora]

Grass is still a plant and the hard structure in bamboo is the same composite of celulose, hemicelulose, and lignin as in trees. I don't want to rule out that grasses evolved lignin in convergent evolution and didn't inherit it from earlier common ancestors with trees, but if it has the same chemical composition and structure it's still wood in any way that matters.

Not exactly. The lowest oxygen concentration at which sustained human life is possible is that which is found at ~5,000 meters in elevation. Fire still burns at that altitude, though it takes a lot more effort and the right mix of fuels.

That's number of molecules per volume. It's different from the percentage of all molecules in the same volume.

I've seen demonstrations of low-oxygen labs were people set paper on fire and it would go out almost immediately from lack of oxygen, but the people breathing normally.

Humans can get hypoxic from both low oxygen concentration in air and from thin air, but it's not the same chemically.

[Bulhakov]

Thanks for all the creative input.

I don't want to cop out too much and make bamboo and cane available too easily, but some sort of wickery sounds good.

With all the animal husbandry that has helped civilization develop, what would be different in this world? Maybe breeding some form of antelope or buffalo specifically for the purpose of obtaining long horns for construction material? I'm also thinking whaling would be a much more lucrative business, also much more dangerous due to small leather or pontoon crafts.

What differences can you foresee once civilization hits the iron age? With coal for fuel and ironworks there's nothing stopping technological progress. Or is there?

[Storm_Of_Snow]

It would depend on what level of civilisation you'd already hit before the loss of wood - today, the main issue would be turning CO2 into O2, but go back even a couple of hundred years and without wood to make charcoal (plus little access to natural gas, and coal only really being available if you can open-cast mine it) you'd have very few metals above bronze, and glass and pottery will be very difficult to make.

[Bohandas]

It would depend on what level of civilisation you'd already hit before the loss of wood - today, the main issue would be turning CO2 into O2, but go back even a couple of hundred years and without wood to make charcoal (plus little access to natural gas, and coal only really being available if you can open-cast mine it) you'd have very few metals above bronze, and glass and pottery will be very difficult to make.

Couldn't you make something similar by applying the same procedure used to make charcoal to some other kind of plant matter? Heat some grass or roots or something in anoxic conditions to remove water and volatile compounds.

It probably wouldn't be as good but I'd imagine it would be at least cloer than what you startd with

[Mechalich]

Couldn't you make something similar by applying the same procedure used to make charcoal to some other kind of plant matter? Heat some grass or roots or something in anoxic conditions to remove water and volatile compounds.

It probably wouldn't be as good but I'd imagine it would be at least cloer than what you startd with

Theoretically yes, though the devil is in the details. Agricultural waste and dung both tend to burn at lower temperatures than wood, making getting the reaction correct very difficult. Also, without the lignified structure of wood, even if you were successful you're going to end up with powder (this happens today in the production of biochar for carbon sequestration), which probably means it would be necessary to somehow pelletize it for use in metallurgy and other high intensity heating processes.

[Algeh]

One thing to keep in mind is that "tree" isn't a distinct taxonomic group, but rather the end result of many different kinds of plants trying to win at the "I'm taller than you" game over many generations, which is incentivized since you can then send out branches with leaves on them to grab sunlight before it reaches shorter plants.

If a fungus or bacteria made a specific "I'm taller than you" strategy, such as lignification, nonviable, plants using the next best strategy for being tall would take their place, and probably be very treelike but just slightly worse at it. If you don't want anything vaguely woodlike to appear, you probably want a reason to somehow disincentivize plants evolving to be taller than other plants.

[gomipile]

If there aren't any woody plants for a geologically long period of time, why would the lignin-eating fungi maintain the ability to consume lignin in live plants?

[Gnoman]

It would depend on what level of civilisation you'd already hit before the loss of wood - today, the main issue would be turning CO2 into O2, but go back even a couple of hundred years and without wood to make charcoal (plus little access to natural gas, and coal only really being available if you can open-cast mine it) you'd have very few metals above bronze, and glass and pottery will be very difficult to make.

You can burn an astounding number of things, and once you develop forced air boosting (something that was historically used for wood fires, so very likely to be developed in this woodless setting) you can burn bone - which burns plenty hot for pottery. An extended Bronze Age would be perfectly feasibly, and (save for different building materials and a probable lack of serious boats) would probably resemble the historical Bronze Age quite a bit.


One alternative that nobody seems to have brought up is plastic. We mostly think of those as petroleum-derived, but there's other possible sources. Probably the most notable is caesin, which is derived from milk protein. Historically, this was discovered pretty late, but there's no fundamental reason it couldn't have been discovered earlier.

[Mechalich]

You can burn an astounding number of things, and once you develop forced air boosting (something that was historically used for wood fires, so very likely to be developed in this woodless setting) you can burn bone - which burns plenty hot for pottery. An extended Bronze Age would be perfectly feasibly, and (save for different building materials and a probable lack of serious boats) would probably resemble the historical Bronze Age quite a bit.

It is possible to build boats - including rather large ones - using concrete. There are inefficiencies involved, but it seems a likely path to go down in the absence of wood.

[Gnoman]

True, though that is a significantly later technology and it is much harder.

[sktarq]

It is possible to build boats - including rather large ones - using concrete. There are inefficiencies involved, but it seems a likely path to go down in the absence of wood.

Although I don't see it being done much till WWII.

Though there were plenty of reed bundle boats/barges (basically use a bundle of floating reed material to make a pontoon or catamaran type hull) and whaling could help get the very large hides needed for very large kayak style boats...no these were not kept around or developed mostly because wood was so much better. But people are industrious little critters and will tend to figure out ways to do the things.


Adobe, mudbrick, etc would all be major building materials.

Depending on what materials are included in "wood" (reeds, bamboo, vines etc) developing something to fill the role of poles, handles, and other sticks would likely be a priority. On the more fantastical end training vines (even not very woody ones) to weave into a pattern which is then harvested and treated to preserve and strengthen it may become an important art. Even if it just something to put over the adobe walls to hang thatch from.
Speaking of the roof....this is going to be the hardest part of building without wood.

Another thing to think about is how this lack of wood will effect things we don't normally think of as being "wood". Like a stone & concrete bridge or ceiling for example. Most such structures use falsework while they are building these structures. Some replacement by using dry sand to fill voids temporarily but will be hard to find in many areas and needs LOTS of labour to deal with.

[Bohandas]

There was also experimentation during WW2 with making boats out of ice

[Radar]

There was also experimentation during WW2 with making boats out of ice

Specifically pykrete: sawdust + ice composite. Very good mechanical properties, but the need to keep it at considerably low temperatures made it unfit for the purpose of building an aircraft carrier.