I was always interested how things were done through the various ages of the civilization. I wish there were some comprehensive book(s) that would describe how civilization was "bootstrapped", from primitive tools and weapons to agriculture all the way to at least steam power.
It could make for a good reality/docu tv show; drop 50 engineers and scientists on a large desert island with many resources, and task them to rebuild civilization. It would be interesting to see how long it will take to get the required work just for food acquisition low enough so that one could engage in the civilization building. It would also be interesting to see whether there are big shortcuts, things that don't have to be redone.
Oh another thought: In our modern civilization, we require a lot of materials that cannot be found in the wild. In order to get them, we need to do complex mining - but to do that, we need simpler mining -- to do that, we first need some tools -- do make those, we need more basic tools. I kind of wonder what the shortest chain/tree of prerequisite tools and materials is from the stone age, to, say, a modern cpu (to make it easier, let's assume availability of resources is not an issue).
(I feel these thought experiements were kinda spurred by the finale of Battlestar Galactica, at least in my circle of friends.)
> I kind of wonder what the shortest chain/tree of prerequisite tools and materials is from the stone age, to, say, a modern cpu
I suspect the chain isn't as long as you think, and you probably spend most of your time on the last steps.
The HUGE win is steel. You can almost go from stone age to well into the Industrial Revolution with almost no intermediate steps based on knowledge alone (blast furnaces date to 1st century AD--the limitation on steel was lack of chemistry knowledge rather than engineering).
After that you start needing interlocking industrial infrastructure.
I, unlike, the sibling comment, believe that would be a great show, given the skillful background storytelling, and - possibly - scripted spectacular blowup here and there, carefully controlled with all safety measures taken of course.
My interested was spurred by a Russian book for children "Where do things come from" and Jule Verne's "Mysterious Island", but now I am tempted to watch Battlestar Galactica!
It would be a horrible reality TV show. Primitive construction techniques are very slow, especially if you also need to worry about acquiring food through primitive means, and each technique takes a lifetime to master. We and our children would all be dead by the time they rebuild the steam engine. But the series would not run that long because it would be boring.
The finale of Battlestar Galactica was totally the Golgafrincham “B” Ark from Douglas Adams. It turns out that “And they have a plan” was a lie, and the series just went downhill after season 2.
It's not quite what you're asking for but there's a really interesting series of books called the "Cross-Time Engineer" [1] which is a thinly veiled thought experiment of how to reboot civilization from a medieval time period with modern knowledge.
I recommend the series as it's absolutely fantastic from an engineering perspective, but also kind of horrifying from a culture one.
I've been reading Lewis Dartnell's "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch", and it is exactly what you want. A insightful collection of recipes to bootstrap civilization after a global disaster.
Yes, I absolutely love this book! It is pretty high-level though which is better than nothing and necessary to condense a lot of knowledge into a small-ish book, but less desirable than more technical book with drawings, schematics, precise chemical recipes etc.
Books like that must be created for the same reason insurances exist: you hope you never use it, but when and if (and over long horizons it is more a question of "when") disaster strikes, they are indispensable.
While we cannot confirm everything he wrote, it is a good insight into the Mediterranean civilization around 440 BC.
Old Greek, Roman and Egyptian transcripts are quite a good source. Some of them were preserved in Arab libraries during the middle age and as such survived the dark ages of the inquisition.
Not an historian, so I don't know how easy it is to get written sources from other cultures (Maya, Chinese, Japanese, ...), specially in the several centuries that preceded BC/AD.
I can't tell if the author is describing Iron Gall ink (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_gall_ink) but it's not especially hard to make in small quantities if you have the ingredients.
This is indeed a recipe for iron gall ink. Different parts of trees were used in different locations, but gall nuts were common around the mediterranean, hence the name. It is, as you say, easy to make, but it can ruin a good fountain pen due to its corrosiveness.
12 Years a Slave had an interesting bit about how you can make ink by boiling maple bank, though it was far less thorough than Northup's descriptions of the agricultural processes for cotton and sugarcane. There should be a sow like How it's Made, but depicting historical methods.
The BBC historical documentary series "The Edwardian Farm" had some of this. It follows a year in the life on a farm set in the Edwardian era and the three documentarians are a historian and two archeologists. It's really well done and super interesting.
'Quink' Blue Black ink is dyed blue, the blue dye fades over 20 years or so as the black iron ink, that is permanent, develops.
The blue dye is necessary as the black takes ~20 years to cure but should outlast the paper.
It is well worth considering the permanence of your daily ink, many Universities have tales of lost Professors trying to re-create the now-faded notes of their youth.
Will your original writing last for hundreds of years ?
Interesting you mention that—I like Pigma Micron pens (http://www.jetpens.com/search?q=pigma+micron&v=2), and they claim to be "archival." IIRC, Pilot G2 ink is also supposed to last for a very, very long time, and it's probably among the most-used pens in the world.
