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Materials and Dematerialization
Materials and
Dematerialization
Making the Modern World
Vaclav Smil
This second edition first published 2023
© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Edition History
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Set in 10.5/13.5pt Times by Straive, Pondicherry, India

Also by Vaclav Smil
China’s Energy Global Catastrophes and Trends

Energy in the Developing World Why America Is Not a New Rome
(edited with W. Knowland) Energy Transitions
Energy Analysis in Agriculture Energy Myths and Realities
(with P. Nachman and T. V. Long II) Prime Movers of Globalization
Biomass Energies Japan’s Dietary Transition and Its
The Bad Earth Impacts (with K. Kobayashi)
Carbon Nitrogen Sulfur Should We Eat Meat?
Energy Food Environment Harvesting the Biosphere
Energy in China’s Modernization Made in the USA
General Energetics Making the Modern World
China’s Environmental Crisis Power Density
Global Ecology Natural Gas
Energy in World History Still the Iron Age
Cycles of Life Energy Transitions (new edition)
Energies Energy: A Beginner’s Guide
Feeding the World (new edition)
Enriching the Earth Energy and Civilization: A History
The Earth’s Biosphere Oil: A Beginner’s Guide (new edition)
Energy at the Crossroads Growth
China’s Past, China’s Future Numbers Don’t Lie
Creating the 20th Century Grand Transitions
Transforming the 20th Century How the World Really Works
Energy: A Beginner’s Guide Invention and Innovation
Oil: A Beginner’s Guide Size
Energy in Nature and Society
Contents
Preface: Why and How ix
1. What Gets Included 1
2. How We Got Here 11

2.1 Materials Used by Organisms 13
2.2 Materials in Prehistory 18
2.3 Ancient and Medieval Materials 23
2.4 Materials in the Early Modern Era 33
2.5 Creating Modern Material Civilization 39
2.6 Materials in the Twentieth Century 48
3. What Matters Most 61

3.1 Biomaterials 63
3.2 Construction Materials 71
3.3 Metals 78
3.4 Plastics 84
3.5 Industrial Gases 89
3.6 Fertilizers 94
3.7 Materials in Electronics 97
4. How the Materials Flow 103

4.1 Material Flow Accounts 106
4.2 US and European Material Flows 111
4.3 Materials in China’s Modernization 118
4.4 Energy Cost of Materials 126
4.5 Life-Cycle Assessments 138
4.6 Recycling 148
viii Contents
5. Are We Dematerializing? 159

5.1 Apparent Dematerializations 162
5.2 Relative Dematerializations: Specific Weight Reductions 164
5.3 Consequences of Dematerialization 173
5.4 Relative Dematerialization in Modern Economies 184
5.5 Decarbonization and Desulfurization 194
6. Material Outlook 199

6.1 Natural Resources 202
6.2 Materials for Energy Transition 207
6.3 Wasting Less 213
6.4 Circular Economy 218
6.5 Limits of Dematerialization 223
References 241
Index 283
Preface: Why and How
The story of humanity – evolution of our species, the prehistoric shift from f oraging
to permanent agriculture, rise and fall of antique, medieval and early modern
civilizations, economic advances of the past two centuries, mechanization of

agriculture, diversification and automation of industrial protection, enormous in-
creases in energy consumption, diffusion of new communication and information
networks and impressive gains in quality of life – would not have been possible
without an expanding and increasingly intricate and complex use of materials.
Human ingenuity has turned materials first into simple clothes, tools, weapons and
shelters, later into more elaborate dwellings, religious and funerary structures, pure
and alloyed metals, and in recent generations into a still increasing variety of
designs, machines and extensive industrial and transportation infrastructures, meg-
acities, even as silicon, doped with small amounts of other elements, has been turned
into substrate for solid-state devices that have enabled the new electronic world.
This material progress has not been a linear advance but it consisted of two unequal
periods. First was very slow rise that extended from prehistory to the beginnings of
rapid economic modernization, that is until the 18th century in most of Europe, until
the 19th century in the US, Canada and Japan, and until the latter half of the 20th
century in most of Asia. An overwhelming majority of people lived in those pre-
modern societies with only limited quantities of simple possession that they made
themselves or that were produced by artisanal labor as unique pieces or in small
batches – while the products made in larger quantities, be they metal objects, fired
bricks and tiles or drinking glasses, were too expensive to be widely owned.
The principal reason for this limited mastery of materials was the energy
constraint: for millennia our abilities to extract, process and transport biomaterials
and minerals were limited by the capacities of animate prime movers (human and
animal muscles) aided by simple mechanical devices and by only slowly improving
capabilities of the three ancient mechanical prime movers, sails, water wheels and
wind mills. Only the conversion of chemical energy in fossil fuels to inexpensive and
universally deployable kinetic energy of mechanical prime movers (first by external
combustion of coal to power steam engines, later by internal combustion of liq-
uids and gases to energize gasoline and Diesel engines and, later still, gas turbines)
brought a fundamental change and ushered in the second, rapidly ascending, phase
of material consumption, an era further accelerated by generation of e lectricity and
x Preface: Why and How
by the rise of commercial chemical syntheses producing an enormous variety of

compounds ranging from fertilizers to plastics and drugs.
As a result, the world has become divided between the affluent minority that
commands massive material flows and embodies them in long-lasting structures as
well as in durable and ephemeral consumer products – and the low-income majority
whose material possessions amount to a small fraction of material stocks and flows
in the rich world. Now the list of products that most of the Americans claim they
cannot live without includes cars, home air conditioning, microwave ovens, dish-
washers, garburators, clothes dryers, home computers and mobile phones (Taylor
et al. 2006; Langlois 2020) – and they have forgotten how recent many of these
possessions are because 60 years ago many of them were rare or nonexistent. In
1960 fewer than 20% of all US households had dishwasher, clothes dryer or air
conditioning, first color TVs had just appeared, and (before the first microproces-
sors were made in 1971) there were no personal computers, mobile phones and
other portable electronic devices – and also no SUVs (they began their rise to market
dominance only during the late 1980s).
In contrast, those have-nots in low-income countries who are lucky to have their
own home often live in a poorly-built small earthen brick or wooden structure with
as little inside as a bed, a few benches and cooking pots and some worn clothes.
Those readers who have no concrete image of this great material divide should
look at Peter Menzel’s Material World: A Global Family Portrait where families
from 30 nations were photographed in front of their dwellings amidst all of their
household possessions (Menzel 1995). The book was published nearly three dec-
ades ago, and during the intervening time hundreds of millions of people (mostly in
Asia) have been lifted from the deepest poverty to a more dignified existence, but its
message still resonates. The latest World Banka data show that by the early 2020s
large shares of national populations in Asia (about 20% in India, Bangladesh and
Pakistan) and Africa (40% in Nigeria, 60% in Congo) still live below poverty line,
beyond the reach of adequate material consumption (World Bank 2022a).
And this private material contrast has its public counterpart in the gap between
extensive and expensive infrastructures of the rich world (transportation networks,
functioning cities, agricultures producing large food surpluses, largely automated
manufacturing) and their inadequate and failing counterparts in poor countries.
These contrasts make it obvious that a further substantial material mobilization and
transformation will be needed just to narrow the gap between these two worlds.
And an even larger demand for old and new materials will arise from the unfolding
energy transition.
The world’s primary energy supply remains dominated by fossil fuels (they pro-
vided 86% of all primary energy in 2000 and still 83% in 2020) and a new (as yet
uncertain) pattern will emerge during the coming decades, consisting of a mixture
of electricity generated without carbon combustion (mostly by wind turbines, pho-
tovoltaic cells and nuclear reactors), biofuels and (much more importantly) fuels
produced by using non-carbon electricity (for electrolysis to make hydrogen used
Preface: Why and How xi
directly for combustion or in fuel cells and in ammonia synthesis) or (less likely) by
syntheses relying on carbon from captured CO2.
And new energy converters necessarily accompanying this transition – ranging
from electric vehicles and other means of transportation relying on batteries to heat
pumps and new ways of energy uses by industries (with electricity displacing direct
fuel combustion – will create further substantial material needs, including much
higher demand for cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel as well as new substantial de-
mand for steel, aluminum and cement needed for requisite infrastructures (ranging
from new high voltage lines to water electrolysis, and from massive wind turbine
foundations to new hydrogen pipelines).
This new demand surge will only intensify a truly global extent of environmental
pollution and degradation resulting from extraction, processing and use of materials
and it will involve some unprecedented challenges. As for the extraction, even the
last intact domain, deep ocean floor, will see considerable amount of activity before
2050 and at the opposite end of the chain we will have to come up with new, effective
ways of recycling and disposal of hundreds of thousands of massive plastic blades
(some are now longer than 100 m), millions of PV panels and hundreds of millions
of discarded vehicular batteries. In the absence of such measures our use of indis-
pensable materials would pose even more worrisome threats on scales ranging from
local degradation and contamination to concerns about the integrity of the biosphere.
These impacts also raise the questions of analytical boundaries: their reasoned
choice is inevitable because including every conceivable material flow would be
impractical and because there is no universally accepted definition of what should
be included in any fairly comprehensive appraisal of modern material use. This lack
of standardization is further complicated by the fact that some analyses have taken
the maximalist (total resource flow) approach and have included every conceivable
input and waste stream, including waste flows (sometimes called hidden flows) as-
sociated with the extraction of minerals and with crop production as well as oxygen
required for combustion and the resulting gaseous emissions and wastes released
into waters or materials dissipated on land.
In contrast, other studies have restricted their accounts to much more reliably
quantifiable direct uses of organic and inorganic material inputs that are required by
national economies. I will follow the latter approach, as I will focus in some detail
on key materials consumed by modern economies, an approach easily justified by
their magnitude or their irreplaceable properties. Their huge material claims lead
us to ask a number of fundamental questions. How much further will the affluent
world push its already often excessive material consumption? To what extent is
it possible to divorce economic growth and improvements in average standard of
living from increased material consumption – in other words, how far we can push
relative dematerialization?
This reduction in the use of materials is most often expressed per unit of product
(standard soft drink aluminum can gets lighter) or per unit of economic output (less
copper or steel is needed per unit of GDP), and it has been a common phenomenon
xii Preface: Why and How
that has been well documented in sectors ranging from construction to transporta-
tion and with products ranging from small consumer items to large high-bypass jet
engines. Ultimately, relative dematerialization runs into fundamental physical limits:
a standard soft drink container cannot be made to weigh just one gram, and the law
of conservation of mass requires that in every chemical synthesis the total mass of
the reactants must equal the total mass of products. For example, ammonia synthesis
requires a molecule of nitrogen and three molecules of hydrogen to produce two
molecules of NH3 (N2 + 3H2 → 2NH3) and this means that to synthesize one ton of
ammonia we will always need 176.47 kilograms of hydrogen, no more but no less.
Synthesis of ammonia cannot be decoupled from hydrogen, but the use of nitrog-
enous fertilizers per unit of harvest can be reduced by improving the rate of their
uptake by crops (a difficult task to do since the compounds are subject to leaching,
volatilization and denitrification). The only way to uncouple it completely would be
to endow cereal and oil and sugar crops with the ability to supply their own nitrogen
as legumes do in symbioses with nitrogen-fixing bacteria – but this is not coming
anytime soon to wheat or sunflower field near where you live. The more realistic
dematerialization questions in food production are thus to ask to what extent we can
limit the use of fertilizers by growing less feed for animals and eating less meaty
(and less dairy-rich) diets, and how much we can reduce the current, unacceptably
high but persisting, level of food losses?
But before I get to answer such questions in convincing manner, I must review
first the evolution of human material uses, describe all the principal materials, their
extraction and production and their dominant applications, and take a closer look at
the evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing
and distribution and at the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material
consumption. And as always in my books, I will not offer any time-specific forecasts
regarding the future global and national use of materials. Instead, I will look at pos-
sible actions that could reduce our dependence on materials while maintaining good
quality of life and narrowing the gap between affluent and low-income economies.
We must realize that in the long run even the most efficient production processes,
the least wasteful ways of design and manufacturing and (for those materials that
can be recycled) the highest practical rates of reuse may not be enough to result
in absolute dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising
demand for specific materials generated by continuing population growth, improv-
ing standards of living and universal human preferences for amassing possession.
And any dreams of circular economy are just that: we should strive for maximum
practicable rates of recycling and reuse but it is impossible to have a closed global
material economy akin to the reuse of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur by grand global
biogeochemical cycles. This makes it highly likely that in order to reconcile our
wants with the preservation of biosphere’s integrity we will have to make delib-
erate choices that will help us to reduce absolute levels of material consumption
and thereby redefine the very notion of modern societies whose very existence is
predicated on incessant and massive material flows.
1
What Gets Included
Marcos Mello/Adobe Stock
Any study aiming to elucidate the complexity of material flows of modern societies,
their prerequisites, and their consequences should be as comprehensive as possible
and its coverage should be truly all-encompassing. But this easily stated aspiration
runs immediately into the key categorical problem: what constitutes the complete set
of modern material uses? There is no self-evident choice, no generally accepted list,
Materials and Dematerialization: Making the Modern World, Second Edition. Vaclav Smil.
© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
2 Materials and Dematerialization
only more or less liberally (and also more or less defensively) defined boundaries of
a chosen inclusion, a reality best illustrated by reviewing the selections made by the
past comprehensive studies and adopted by leading international and national data-
bases of material flows.
The first comparative study of national resource flows (Adriaanse et al. 1997),
subtitled The Material Basis of Industrial Economies, excluded water and air but
included all agricultural harvests (not just raw materials but all food and feed as
well), all forestry products, aquatic catches, extraction of minerals, and fossil fuels
but also hidden (waste) flows accounting for extraction, movement, or losses of
materials that create environmental impacts but have no acknowledged economic
values. These hidden flows are dominated by overburden materials (soil and rocks
that have to be removed before reaching mineral deposits, obviously most massive
with open-cast coal and ore mining), processing wastes (particularly tailings, mas-
sive flows associated with separation of relatively rare metals from rocks), soil,
sand, and rocks that have to be removed and shifted during large construction
projects, and soil erosion originating from fields and permanent plantations.
Waste flows are not monitored, their quantification is, at best, a matter of approx-
imate estimates, more often of just informed guesses – but their volume and mass
have been increasing, both because we have been exploiting minerals in deeper
overcast mines (more massive overburden) and because we require more metals
(from Co to Zn) whose ores are not as rich as the ores that we extract to produce the
world’s two dominant metallic materials, iron and aluminum. While hematite, the
most commonly exploited iron ore, contains 50–60% of the metal (when pure it is
about 70% Fe) and bauxite (the only commercially exploited aluminum ore) con-
tains 15–25% aluminum, copper ores that dominate the metal’s extraction in the
early 2020s have only 0.3–1.7% Cu, and in Chile, the world’s largest producer, they
average 0.6% Cu (Schlesinger et al. 2022). Mass of materials wasted during the
extraction phase is thus roughly equal to iron’s output, it is as much as nearly seven
times larger than the production of aluminum, and it is about 170 times larger than
the output of Chilean copper.
Thanks to the coming mass-scale electrification of transport and of many indus-
tries, it will be copper whose production will grow faster than any other of the five
metals now produced in largest quantities (Fe, Al, Cu, Zn, Pb). Uncertainties about
mass flows are even greater with the annual totals for hidden flows associated with
imported raw materials: obviously, this reality will make the greatest difference in
the case of large affluent economies that import a wide range of raw materials,
including precious metals, from scores of countries. For example, in 2020 US
imports of gold, silver, platinum, and diamonds equaled 3.4% of all purchases
abroad, a share three times as high as the imports of integrated circuits (OEC 2022).
But that gold came mostly from Switzerland, an intermediate source whose gold
What Gets Included 3
imports come mostly from other intermediaries (Hong Kong, UAE, Thailand, UK),
making it exceedingly difficult to trace the flow to its origin in order to determine
the total mass of waste flows behind these transactions.
Not surprisingly, Adriaanse’s study resorted to using worldwide averages for
these calculations: for example for overburden it applied the rate of 0.48 t for a ton
of bauxite and 2 t per ton of iron ore, global generalizations that must result in con-
siderable errors when used as national averages. Soil erosion rates are even more
variable, their detailed national studies are rare, annual soil losses (depending on
precipitation, extent of drought periods, wind speed, cultivation methods, deforesta-
tion) can differ by up to an order of magnitude even within relatively small regions,
and yet the study used only the rates derived from the US inventory. Another highly
uncertain inclusion was quantifying the mass of grass grazed by cattle (other animal
feed was included in crop harvests): obviously an average Maasai cow in Kenya will
consume only a fraction of grasses digested every year by beef cattle in Alberta or
Colorado.
Three years after this first comparative study came another project led by the
World Resources Institute (WRI), The Weight of Nations (Matthews et al. 2000).
That study presented material flows for the four nations included in the original
work (US, Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands) as well as for Austria and that
extended the accounting period from 1975 to 1996 (the original ended in 1993). Its
subtitle, Material Outflows from Industrial Economies, indicated the report’s con-
cern with outputs produced by the metabolism of modern societies. As its predeces-
sor, this study included all fossil fuels, estimates of hidden material flows (dominated
by the removal of overburden in surface coal mining), as well as the totals of all
processing wastes.
The report had also quantified earth moved during all construction activities
(highway, public, and private and also for dredging), soil erosion losses in agricul-
ture and waste from synthetic organic chemicals and from pharmaceutical industry.
But unlike the original study, the 2000 report also includes data on additional inputs
(oxygen in combustion and in respiration) and outputs, including the total output of
CO2 from respiration and water vapor from all combustion and it separates waste
streams into three gateways, air, land and water. The air gateway quantified gaseous
emissions (CO2, CO, SOx, and NOx, volatile organic carbohydrates) including oxy-
gen from all combustion, the outputs to land include municipal solid waste, indus-
trial wastes, and dissipative flows to land (manure, fertilizers, salt spread on roads,
worn tire rubber, evaporated solvents), and water outputs trace organic load and
total nitrogen and phosphate burdens.
Eurostat has been publishing annual summaries of domestic material consump-
tion for all EU countries since the year 2000, disaggregating the total flows into
fossil fuels, biomass (crops and forest products), metal ores, and nonmetallic
minerals (Eurostat 2022a). Eurostat’s methodological guides for economy-wide

material flow accounts offer detailed procedures for the inclusion of biomass (food,
feed, fodder crops, grazed phytomass, wood, fish, hunting, and gathering activities),
metal ores, and nonmetallic minerals and for all forms of fossil fuels as well as for
all dissipative uses of products, including organic and mineral fertilizers, sewage
sludge, compost, pesticides, seeds, road salt, and solvents (Eurostat 2018).
Eurostat aggregates also include unused materials (mining overburden, losses
accompanying phytomass production, soil excavation, dredging, and marine by-
catch) and quantify emissions (CO2, water disposal, and landfilled wastes) but
leave out oxygen and water. The latest compilations at the time of writing, for the
year 2021 (Eurostat 2022a), show the expected recovery from the Covid-induced
lows of 2020 and equally expected long-term decline in the EU’s fossil fuel extrac-
tion (down to about 1.1 Gt from just over 1.5 Gt in 2012) but continued growth in
the mobilization of nonmetallic minerals (about 3.3 Gt in 2021 compared to 2.9 Gt
in 2012). OECD publishes annual estimates for its 34 member states and for 170
other countries and city states, with some data going back to 1970. These totals
include domestic consumption of all materials originating from natural resources
and forming the bases of economies: all metals, nonmetallic minerals, biomass
(wood and food), and fossil fuels (OECD 2022).
In 1882, the US Congress mandated annual collection of statistics for mineral
commodities produced and used in the country. The US Geological Survey became
the first agency responsible for this work, then the US Bureau of Mines and since
1995 the task reverted to the USGS. This statistics were the basis for preparing the
first summary of America’s material flows aggregated by major categories and
covering the period between 1900 and 1995 (Matos and Wagner 1998). The series
was subsequently extended and by 2022 updates for most commodities are available
until 2018–2019 (Matos 2009; Kelly and Matos 2016 with updates). The latest data
on individual elements, compounds, and materials are updated annually in Mineral
Commodity Summaries (USGS 2022a).
The USGS choice of items included in its national material accounts is based on
concentrating only on the third class of the material triad by leaving out food and
fuel and aggregating only the materials that are used in all branches of the economy.
The series offers annual totals for domestic production, exports, imports, and
domestic consumption; it excludes water, oxygen, hidden material flows, and all
fossil fuels; and it includes all raw materials produced by agricultural activities
(cotton, seeds yielding industrial oil, wool, fur, leather hides, silk, and tobacco),
materials originating in forestry (all kinds of wood, plywood, paper, and paperboard),
metals (from aluminum to zinc), an exhaustive array of nonmetallic minerals
(be they extracted in their natural form, such as gypsum, graphite, or peat, processed
before further use, such as crushed stone or cement or synthesized, such as
ammonia), and nonrenewable organics derived from fossil fuels (asphalt, road oil,
waxes, oils, and lubricants and any variety of solid, liquid, or gaseous fossil fuel
used as feedstocks in chemical syntheses).
Very few of these inputs are used in raw, natural form as virtually all of them
undergo processing (cotton spinning, wood pulping, ore smelting, stone crushing or
cutting, and polishing) and, in turn, most of these processed materials become
inputs into manufacturing of semifinished and finished products (cotton turned into
apparel, pulp into paper, smelted metals into machine parts, crushed stone mixed
with sand and cement to make concrete). This compilation of agriculture-and
forestry-derived products, metals, industrial minerals, and nonrenewable organics
gives a fairly accurate account of annual levels and long-term changes in the country’s
material flows. While all imports and exports of raw materials are accounted, the
series does not include materials that were contained in traded finished goods: given
their mass and variety their tracking would be very difficult.
Where does this leave us? Those material flow studies that conceive their subject
truly sensu lato, as virtually any substance used by humans, include everything with
a notable exception of water, that is not only biomaterials used in production of
goods, all metals, nonmetallic minerals, and organic feedstocks but also all agricul-
tural phytomass (harvested food and feed crops, their residues, forages, and grazed
plants), all (biomass and fossil) fuels and oxygen needed for combustion. Slightly
more restrictive studies exclude oxygen and all food and feed crops, and they con-
sider only those agricultural raw materials that undergo further processing into
goods but include all phytomass and fossil fuels. In contrast, the USGS series exem-
plifies a sensu stricto approach as it includes only raw biomaterials used for further
processing and as it excludes oxygen, water, all fuels (phytomass and fossil), and all
hidden (and always tricky to estimate) material flows. My preferences for setting
the analytical boundaries are almost perfectly reflected by the USGS selection but
instead of simply relying on that authority I will briefly explain the reasons behind
my exclusions.
Leaving out oxygen required for combustion of fuels is a choice easily defensible
on the basis of free supply of a virtually inexhaustible atmospheric constituent.
Claims about danger of serious O2 depletion through combustion were refuted long
time ago (Broecker 1970; Liu et al. 2019). Complete combustion of 1 kg of carbon
consumes 2.67 kg of oxygen and burning of 1 kg of methane (CH4), the simplest
hydrocarbon, requires 4 kg of O2. This means that in 2021 the global combustion of
more than 11 Gt of fossil carbon (as coal, refined oil products, and natural gas)
claimed about 40 Gt of O2 (Liu et al. 2019) – or about 0.0027% of the atmosphere
content of 1.5 Pt of the gas. Even a complete combustion of generously estimated
global resources of fossil fuels (a clear impossibility, just a theoretical considera-
tion) would lower the atmospheric O2 content by no more than 2%.
There is thus no danger of any worrisome diminution of supply (to say nothing of
exhaustion) of the element, and yet once the choice is made to include it in material
flow accounts, it will dominate the national and global aggregates. For example, as
calculated by the comparative WRI study, oxygen was 61% of the direct US pro-
cessed material output in 1996, and in Japan in the same year the element’s share
was 65% (Matthews et al. 2000). Consequently, magnitudes of national material
flows that would incorporate oxygen needs would be nothing but rough proxies for
the extent of fossil fuel combustion in particular economies.
Reasons for excluding waste flows from the accounts of national material flows
are no less compelling: after excluding oxygen they would dominate total domestic
material output in all countries that have either large mineral extractive industries
(especially surface coal and ore mining) or large areas of cropland subject to soil
erosion. They are dominated by unusable excavated earth and rocks, mine spoils,
processing wastes, and eroded soil, while earth and rocks moved around as a part of
construction activities will make up a comparatively small share. Not surprisingly
(after excluding oxygen), in the WRI analysis these hidden flows accounted for
86% of the total domestic material output in both the United States and Germany,
but with much less mining and with limited crop cultivation, the rate was lower
(71%) in Japan (Matthews et al. 2000).
Daily flow of materials a large copper mine illustrates the cumulative immensity
of these waste flows (GRID 2017). Two-thirds of the 270,000 t of solid rock dug out
daily (180,000 t) are dumped directly, while the processing of 90,000 t of ore
requires 114,000 t of water and it yields 1,750 t of concentrate ready for smelting.
Just over 200,000 t (88,250 + 114, 000) of material are tailings retained behind dams
that must be large enough to accommodate this waste flow for some two decades of
operation: when the mine is closed, it leaves behind some 1.3 Gt of waste rock and
more than 600 Mt of solid tailings, nearly 2 Gt of material that can be never recycled
and that is most unlikely to be reused in any other way.
But the principal problem with the inclusion of hidden flows is not their unsurpris-
ing dominance of domestic output of materials in all large, diversified economies,
but the indiscriminate addition of several qualitatively incomparable flows. Unusable
mass of stone left in a quarry after it ceased its operation may be no environmental
burden, not even an eyesore. Moreover, once the site is flooded to create an artificial
lake those waste flows may become truly hidden as a part of a new and pleasing
landscape. On the other hand, bauxite processing to extract alumina (to give one of
many possible common examples) leaves behind toxic waste (containing heavy
metals) that is also often slightly radioactive and acidic and its worst recent acci-
dental release (in 2010 when about 1 Mm3 spread over an area of some 40 km2 in
northern Hungary, killing 10 people and injuring 120) can cause serious long-term
environmental damage (Gelencsér et al. 2011).
And no less fundamental is the difference between in situ hidden flows generated
by mineral extraction (abandoned stone, gravel, and sand quarries, and coal and ore
mines with heaps, piles, layers or deep holes or gashes full of unusable minerals or
processing waste) and by rain-and wind-driven land erosion that transports valua-
ble topsoil or desert sand not just tens or hundreds but as much as thousands of
kilometers downstream or downwind. The first kind of hidden flows may be
unsightly but not necessarily toxic and its overall environmental impacts beyond its
immediate vicinity may be negligible or nonexistent.
In contrast, surface erosion is globally important, often regionally highly worri-
some and locally devastating process that reduces (or destroys) the productivity of
crop fields, silts streams, contributes to eutrophication of fresh and coastal waters,
creates lasting ecosystemic degradation and substantial economic losses, or drives
large masses of fine dust right across the Atlantic Ocean carrying persistent organic
pollutants, metals, and microbes to the Caribbean (Garrison et al. 2006) or deposits
Saharan dust over the Alpine snow (Di Mauro et al. 2018). In any case, magnitudes
of these associated flows and their often undesirable environmental impacts dictate
that they should not be ignored when analyzing particular extractive or cropping
activities: as long as we remember that the flows cannot be quantified with high
accuracy, we should try to include them in specific analyses of future material
demand (I will return to this point when assessing material needs of the unfolding
energy transition).
My reasons for excluding water are based on several considerations that make
this indispensable input better suited for separate treatment rather than for inclusion
into total material requirements of modern economies. The most obvious reason is,
once again, quantitative: with the exception of desert countries, water’s inclusion
would dominate virtually all national material flow accounts and it would mislead-
ingly diminish the importance of many inputs whose annual flows are a small frac-
tion of water withdrawals but whose qualitative contribution is indispensable. For
example, in 2015 (the date of the latest detailed nationwide USGS estimate), the
total water withdrawals in the United States were about 445 Gt, while all materials
directly used by the country’s economy (the total dominated by sand, gravel, and
stone used in construction) added up to less than 1% of the withdrawn water mass
(USGS 2018).
At the same time, there are fundamental qualitative differences between these
two measures that make any direct comparisons highly misleading. The most
voluminous water withdrawal in the United States (accounting for 41% of the total
in 2015), that of cooling water for thermal electricity-generating stations, is not a
consumptive use: a small part of that flow is evaporated to become available later
(downwind, after condensation and precipitation) and most of that water becomes
available almost instantly after it is discharged (slightly warmed) for further
downstream uses. In contrast, materials that become embedded in long-lasting

structures and products are either never reused or are partially recycled only after
long period of being out of circulation.
And most of the second most voluminous water use in the United States (37%
used for irrigation), is also nonconsumptive: all but a tiny fraction of the irrigation
water is evaporated and transpired by growing plants, and (as with the cooling
water) after re-entering the atmosphere it is eventually condensed again and it is
precipitated, often after a long-distance transport downwind. And if the inclusions
of water were driven by resource scarcity concerns, then a critical distinction should
be made between water supplied by abundant precipitation and water withdrawn at
a high cost from deep and diminishing aquifers that cannot be replenished on a civi-
lizational time scale.
At this point it might be useful to note yet another (comparatively minor) prob-
lem with aggregate measures of material flows that is usually neglected by the
assemblers of national and global accounts, namely that of water content of sand
and of harvested biomass. Even when looking just at those biomaterials that are
used as industrial inputs, their water content is from less than 15% for raw wool to
more than 50% for freshly cut tree logs (the range is wider for food crops, ranging
from only about 5% for some seeds and less than 15% for harvested cereal grains to
more than 90% for fresh vegetables).
Freshly excavated sand can contain more than 30% of water, purified sands have
15–25% of moisture, storage in drainage bins reduces that level to about 6% and
drying in rotary bins or in fluidized bed dryers expels all but about 0.5% of moisture
for sands used in such processes as steel castings or hydraulic fracturing under
pressure. Moreover, sand used in hydraulic fracturing is also coated with resins
reinforced with nanomaterials in order to alter its surface wetting properties, crush
strength, and chemical resistance. The best solution would be to report the masses
of any moisture-containing materials in terms of absolutely dry weight in order to
make their flows comparable to those of materials that contain no moisture. This is
not the case in practice, and hence all national material aggregates contain far from
negligible shares of water.
Foodstuffs and fuels are obviously indispensable for the survival of any civiliza-
tion, and their flows have been particularly copious in modern high-energy societies
enjoying rich and varied diets, while traditional biofuels remain important in many
low-income countries. Moreover, unlike with water or oxygen, their inclusions
would not dwarf all other material flows combined: for example, even in the fuel-
rich United States, the mass of annually consumed coal, crude oil, and natural gas
is equal to about 50% of all non-energy minerals. So why to leave them out?
Exclusion of food and fuel is justified not only because these two large consumption
categories have been traditionally studied in separation (resulting in rich literature

on achievements and prospects of energy and food production) but because they
simply are not sensu stricto materials, substances repeatedly used in their raw state
or transformed into more-or less-durable finished products used in all sectors of the
economy.
Unlike raw biomaterials (wood, wool, cotton, leather, silk), metals, nonmetallic
minerals and nonrenewable organics (asphalt, lubricants, waxes, hydrocarbon feed-
stocks), foodstuffs, and fuels are not used to build long-lasting structures and are not
converted or incorporated into a still-increasing array of ephemeral, as well as durable
industrial, transportation, and consumer items. Foods are rapidly metabolized to yield
energy and nutrients for human growth and activity; fuels are rapidly oxidized
(burned) to yield, directly and indirectly, various forms of useful energy (heat, motion,
light): in neither case they increase the material stock of modern societies. And, a
critical difference to which I will return later when noting the impossibility of circular
economy, energy flows of any kind (fuels, electricity, food) cannot be recycled.
Finally, I must defend a conceptual change that concerns the handling of materials
put by the EU’s material balances into the category of dissipative flows. According
to the EU definition, the eight categories of dissipative losses are a collection of
disparate residuals: some of them add up to small total flows (think about solvents
escaping from dry cleaning or about rubber tires wearing-away on roads), others are
more substantial (leaching and volatilization of manures, sewage sludge, and com-
posts applied to cropland) but dissipative losses contributed by both of these material
categories are not monitored and are very difficult to quantify. The USGS approach
accounts for the largest flows in this category (salt and other thawing materials,
including sand and grit, spread on winter roads, nitrogenous and phosphatic fertilizers
and potash applied to crops and lawns) by including them in the industrial minerals
group.
While salt and sand are abundant materials whose production is not energy-
intensive, inorganic fertilizers are critical material inputs in all modern societies that
cannot be ignored and that will receive a closer look when I examine advances in
the production of synthetic materials. But I would argue that most of the remaining
dissipative flows add up to relatively small amounts whose inherently inaccurate
quantification appears to outweigh any benefits of including them in any grand total
of consumed materials. And while manures and sludges represent relatively large
volumes to be disposed of, they do not recycle biomass but rather the products of its
decomposition: water, carbon, and small amounts of nutrients (above all nitrogen);
sludge contains at least 80% water, fresh manures 70–85%, but only a few percent
of nitrogen. Moreover, in many instances sewage sludge should not be recycled as
it contains heavy metals, pathogens, pesticide, and drug residues.
This leaves me with an argument for a single addition to the USGS list for the
inclusion of industrial gases. Although air (21% oxygen) is needed for combustion
of fossil fuels, the dominant energizer of modern civilization, adding air to the total
material input would have (as I have already explained) a skewing and confusing
effect similar to that of counting all uses of water -but assessing the use of gases
separated from the air in order to enable many industrial processes is another matter.
In simple mass terms, the global use of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and rare gases
such as argon or xenon constitutes only a minor item, but in qualitative terms their
use is indispensable in industries ranging from steelmaking (basic oxygen furnaces
now dominate the production of the metal) to synthesis of ammonia (using nitrogen
separated from air and hydrogen liberated from methane) and efficient lighting.
And although there is no way to anticipate accurately the global trajectory of
hydrogen -an energy carrier whose ascendance has been promised for generations
but whose production without carbon (“green hydrogen” liberated by electrolysis of
water using only electricity from renewable conversions) began receiving both
widespread and intensive consideration during the early 2020s (Green Hydrogen
Systems 2022) -there is no doubt that without the introduction of substantial vol-
umes of hydrogen into the global energy supply we cannot think about mass-scale
decarbonization of future industrial and transportation energy uses. And in addition
to green hydrogen, there has been also rising interest in green ammonia both as an
industrial feedstock and as a possible transportation fuel: I will have more to say on
both of these materials when I look at the unfolding energy transition.
2
How We Got Here
AlexAnton/Adobe Stock
Materials and Dematerialization: Making the Modern World, Second Edition. Vaclav Smil.
© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
sunsinger/Adobe Stock
The Earth’s biosphere teems with organisms that use materials for more than just
their metabolism. Moreover, in aggregate mass terms the material flows commanded
by the humanity do not appear to be exceptionally high when compared with the work
of marine biomineralizers. But it is the combination of the overall extent, specific
qualities, and increasing complexity of material uses (extraction, processing, and
transformation into a variety of inputs destined for structures, infrastructures, and
for myriads of finished products) that is a uniquely human attribute. To set it into a
wider evolutionary perspective, I will first note some of the most remarkable ways
of material uses by organisms ranging from marine phytoplankton to primates,
particularly those distinguished either by the magnitude of their overall fluxes or by
their unique qualities.
Afterward I will proceed with concise chronological surveys of human use of
materials, focusing first on the milestones in our prehistory, above all on those still
poorly explained feats of megalithic construction that required quarrying, transpor-
tation, and often remarkably accurate placement of massive stones. Then I will
review and quantify some notable deployments of traditional materials (dominated
by stone and wood) during the antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern era
(1500–1800), concentrating above all on the advances in building roads, aqueducts,
ceremonial, and religious structures and ships, as well as on the origins and devel-
opments in metallurgy and on materials used by households.
How We Got Here 13
I will end this chapter by two closely related sections that will describe the
c reation of modern material civilization during the nineteenth century and its post-
1900 spatial expansion and growth in complexity. I will focus on key quantitative
and qualitative advances in the use of materials that laid the foundations to the 20th
societies as they supported fossil fuel extraction, industrialization, urbanization, and
evolution of modern transportation modes on land, water, and in the air. These
developments were based on materials whose production required high energy
inputs and whose introduction and use have been dynamically linked with enormous
advances in scientific and technical capabilities. In turn, new materials have been
the principal drivers of increased food production and improvements in sanitation
that led to unprecedented gains in quality of life. They also expanded capabilities
for mechanized and automated production and for long-distance travel, information
sharing, and telecommunication.
2.1 Materials Used by Organisms
Inevitably, all organisms use materials: that is the essence of metabolism. Global
photosynthesis, the foundation of life in the biosphere, creates new biomass by
incorporating annually more than 60 Gt of carbon absorbed as CO2 from the atmos-
phere (Smil 2013; Ryu et al. 2019) and millions of tons of the three key macronutri-
ents (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, absorbed by roots) that are incorporated
into complex compounds forming plant tissues and organs. But these metabolic
necessities – mirrored by the nutritional requirements of heterotrophs, be they her-
bivorous, carnivorous, or omnivorous organisms – are not usually included in the
category of material uses that is reserved for active, extrasomatic processes.
In terms of the initial acquisition, these material uses fall into five major catego-
ries. The rarest, and in aggregate material terms quite inconsequential, category is
the use of collected natural materials as tools. The second category with limited
aggregate impact is the use of secreted materials to build protective or prey-catching
structures; the latter use has been mastered, often spectacularly, by web-making
spiders. The next one is the removal of specific biomass tissues (branches, twigs,
leaves, flowers), and now also discarded man-made materials (bits of plastics, paper,
glass, and metals) and their purposeful emplacement to create remarkably designed
structures ranging from beaver dams to intricate nests or, in the case of birds of
paradise, often elaborate decorated mating bowers. Then comes the removal and
repositioning of soils and clays, invisible as intricate rodent burrows and prominent
in termite mounds. And, finally, the most massive endeavor is the extraction of min-
erals from water, mostly to build exoskeletons, the process dominated by marine
biomineralizers including phytoplankton, corals, and mollusks.
2.1.1 Tools and Construction
Tool-using activities have been well documented with species as diverse as otters,
seagulls, elephants, and finches (Bentley- Condit and Smith 2009; Shumaker
et al. 2011; Sanz 2013), but they have reached the greatest complexity, and have
gone as far as resulting in specific cultures, among chimpanzees who use blades of
grass or twigs to collect termites or as honey-dipping sticks, leaves, or moss sponges
to extract mineral-rich liquids at natural clay-pits, and small stones and stone anvils
to crack open nuts, with studied populations displaying some “cultural” differences
in prevailing practices (Wrangham et al. 1996; Boesch and Tomasello 1998; Whiten
et al. 1999; Gruber et al. 2011; Lamon et al. 2018; Bessa et al. 2021).
Spider silk (made almost entirely of large protein molecules) is certainly the most
remarkable secreted material: some strands have tensile strengths comparable to
steel and some silks are nearly as elastic as rubber, resulting in toughness two to
three times that of such synthetic fibers as Nylon or Kevlar (Römer and Scheibel 2008;
Brunetta and Craig 2010). On the other end of secretion spectrum are frothy nests
excreted by spittle bugs. Use of collected materials is quite widespread among het-
erotrophs. Even some single-cell amoebas can build portable, intricate, ornate sand
grain houses whose diameter is mere 150 μm (Hansell 2007, 2011). And perhaps the
most remarkable collecting activity among insects is that of leafcutter ants (genus
Atta) as they harvest leaves, drag them underground into elaborately excavated nests
in whose chambers they cultivate fungus (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990). Garrett
et al. (2016) estimated that 2.9 (±0.3) km of leaf-cutting with mandibles was needed
to reduce a square meter of leaf to fungal substrate, with nearly 90% of the cutting
taking place inside nests.
Beavers are active harvesters of wood used to build their dams, and when wood
is not sufficient, they use stones (up to 30 cm in diameter) combined with branches
stacked in layers. Most of the dams are less than 10 m wide, with head differences
below 1.5 m, but the record sizes are equivalents of engineered structures up to
850 m long with heads up to 5 m (Müller and Watling 2016). But birds, rather than
mammals, provide the most varied and sometime spectacular examples of construc-
tion using collected materials; they range from simple and rather haphazard assem-
blies of twigs or stems to intricate constructs produced by Ploceidae, family of
tropical weaver birds, and they may use a single kind of a collected material or are
made from an assortment of tissues (Gould and Gould 2007; Burke 2012).
Birds use not only a wide range of collected plant tissues (slender blades of grass
to heavy twigs used by storks and eagles) but also feathers of other species and
spider silk (most passerine birds), and some nests may contain thousands of
individual pieces. Use of mud (by swallows) is not that common but many ground-
nesting birds (including penguins) collect small stones, while elaborate structures
How We Got Here 15
prepared by some bower birds of Australia and New Guinea to attract females may
include not only such colorful natural objects as shells, berries, leaves, and flowers
but also discarded bits of plastic, metal, or glass, and some species even make courts
creating forced visual perspective for the courted females (Endler et al. 2010). Some
insect species also use collected material to build their nests: paper wasps cut tiny
pieces of wood and mix them with their salivary secretions, and mud wasps shape
mud into cylindrical nests. In contrast, primates, our closest animal predecessors,
use branches and leaves to build only simple, temporary structures on the ground or
in the trees.
2.1.2 Soil Movements
Soil-displacing species engage mostly in digging tunnels, burrows, and nest but also
in using soils and clay to build above-ground structure range from insects to mam-
mals. The earliest burrow constructs date to the pre-Cambrian (650–700 million
years ago) oceans, coinciding with the emergence of macropredation (Turner 2000).
As demonstrated by Darwin in his last published book, earthworms are capable of
such prodigious effort of earth displacement (passing the particles through their
guts and excreting the worm casts on the surface) that they can bury monuments of
human activity in remarkably brief periods of time (Darwin 1881). Rodents are dili-
gent builders of often extensive subterranean networks of tunnels and nests that may
also help with temperature control and ventilation and that facilitate escape.
Termites are the greatest aggregate excavators and movers of soils in subtropical
and tropical environments. They construct their often impressively tall and volumi-
nous mounds by removing and piling-up soil to build their underground nests shel-
tering their massive colonies. Internal structure of mounds makes it clear that they
provide induced ventilation driven by pressure differences (Turner 2000). Biomass
densities of these abundant warm-climate insects range from 2 g/m2 in the Amazonian
rainforest (Barros et al. 2002) to around 5 g/m2 in Australia’s Queensland (Holt and
Easy 1993) and 10 g/m2 in arid Northeast Brazil, in Sao Paulo state as well as in dry
evergreen forest of northeast Thailand (Vasconcellos 2010), while in African savan-
nahs their total fresh-weight biomass can be more than twice the biomass of ele-
phants (Inoue et al. 2001).
Species belonging to genus Macrotermes move clay particles to build conical
mounds that are usually 2–3 m tall but can reach 9 m, with typical basal diameter
of 2–3 m, but much wider mounds are not uncommon. In Northeast Brazil, mounds
created by the excavation of vast tunnel networks by Syntermes dirus have persisted
for nearly four millennia and they consist of some 200 million soil cones typically
2.5 m tall and 9 m in diameter covering about 230,000 km2 and adding up to about
10 km3 of volume (Martin et al. 2018). Typical mass of termite mounds (wall and
nest body) is between 4 and 7 t but spatial density of mounds varies widely, with as
few as 1–2 and as many as 10/ha (Fleming and Loveridge 2003; Tilahun et al. 2012).
As a result, the total mass of termite mounds varies widely, from just 4–8 t/ha to
as much as 15–60 t/ha. A very conservative estimate of the clay mass used to build
termite mounds (assuming average of 5 t/ha and area of about 10 million km2 of
tropical and subtropical grasslands inhabited by mound-building insects) would be
5 Gt, but the actual total may be several times larger. In any case, this means that
the mass of soil displaced annually by these tiny heterotrophs would be of the same
order of magnitude as our civilization’s global extraction of metallic ores and other
non-fuel minerals at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In aggregate terms both the mass of materials collected by vertebrate animals to
build structures and the mass of soils displaced by burrowing heterotrophs, earth-
worms, and termites are negligible compared to the mass of compounds excreted by
species capable of biomineralization, above all by phytoplankton, protists, and
invertebrates. Biomineralization evolved independently across phyla, transcending
obvious biological differences: more than 30 biogenic minerals (two-thirds of them
being carbonates) are produced by a small number of vascular plants (belonging to
Bryophyta and Trachaeophyta), animal species ranging from Porifera to Chordata,
some fungi, many protists, and some Monera (Lowenstam 1981; Boskey 2003;
Gilbert et al. 2022). Some biomineralizers deposit the minerals on organic matrices
but most of them produce extracellular crystals similar to those precipitated from
inorganic solutions.
2.1.3 Biomineralizers
In mass terms by far the largest users of natural materials are marine biomineral-
izers able to secrete inorganic compounds they produce from chemicals absorbed
from water. Marine biomineralizers use dissolved CaCO3 to form calcite or
aragonite shells, two identical minerals that differ only in their crystal structure.
Reef-building corals (Anthozoa belonging to the phylum Cnidaria) are the most
spectacular communal biomineralizers, while coccolithophores (calcareous marine
nanoplankton belonging to the phylum Prymnesiophyceae) encase themselves with
elaborate calcitic microstructures (smaller than 20 μm), and foraminifera (amoe-
boid protists of the eponymous phylum) create pore-studded micro shells (tests).
Unicellular coccolithophores are abundant throughout the photic zone in nearly all
marine environments of the Northern hemisphere and up to about 50°S in the
Southern Ocean where their blooms account for a major share of global marine
CaCO3 production and export to the deep sea (O’Brien et al. 2012; Hernández
et al. 2020).
How We Got Here 17
They also form massive ocean blooms that last for weeks, cover commonly 105 km2
of the ocean surface, and are easily identifiable on satellite images. Coccolithopores
cover themselves by coccoliths formed inside the cell and extruded to form a
protective armor; many coccoliths detached from cells are also floating freely in
water. Coastal blooms have coccolith to coccolithophore cell ratios of 200–400, but
the ratios for open waters are much lower, between 20 and 40. Syracosphaera,
Umbellosphaera, and Gephyrocapsa are common genera, but Emiliania huxleyi
is the biosphere’s leading calcite producer (Stanley et al. 2005; Boeckel and
Baumann 2008; Monteiro et al. 2016). The species is also unusual because it pro-
duces fairly large coccoliths at a high rate, sheds about half of them, and, unlike
many other planktonic species, is a relative newcomer that originated only about
270,000 years ago.
Photic zone can extend from just a few meters to about 200 m; densities of coc-
colithophores can be as low as a few 1,000 cells/l, in blooms they surpass 100,000/l;
daily calcification rates range from less than 10 to 80 pg of calcite per cell a day; and
the largest blooms can cover 105 km2 for periods of weeks and their annual extent
adds up to about 1.5 million km2 (Lampert et al. 2002; Boeckel and Baumann 2008;
Hopkins et al. 2015). The most comprehensive compilation of carbonate production
(based on nearly three thousand measurements) ranged across six orders of magni-
tude (Daniels et al. 2018). Given these enormous natural variabilities, it is impos-
sible to offer any reliable estimate of coccolithophore – mediated annual global
calcification in the ocean – but a conservative set of assumptions illustrates the
magnitude of the process at its likely lower bound.
Assuming continuous coccolithophore production in 60% of the world’s ocean in
depths only up to 50 m, with average concentration of just 25,000 cells/l and calcifi-
cation rate of just 10 pg of calcite per cell a day, would result in annual global
sequestration of about 900 Mt of calcite. More liberal assumptions (50,000 cells/l,
20 pg/cell a day) would yield an annual withdrawal of roughly 3.7 Gt of calcite. The
best conservative estimate is thus annual coccolithophoride-mediated calcification on
the order of a few Gt/year, a low rate in geological perspective because high Mg/Ca
ratio and low absolute concentration of calcium in the modern ocean limit the pro-
duction by most extant species (Stanley et al. 2005). The most obvious testimony to
high productivities of coccolithophores in the past are immense sequestrations in
Cretaceous and Tertiary chalk deposits (including the white cliffs of Dover).
In comparison to this ocean-wide process the periodic blooms, no matter of how
spectacular, make a minor contribution. A bloom covering 250,000 km2 in the north-
eastern Atlantic in June 1991 had calcification rates up to 1.5 mg C/m3/h and in less
than a month it had sequestered about 1 Mt of carbon in calcite (Fernández
et al. 1993). That would be just over 8 Mt of calcite and if a similar rate were to apply
to about 1.5 million km2 coccolithophore blooms that cover the ocean every year, the
total sequestration would be just on the order of 50 Mt of calcite. The same order of
magnitude is obtained by assuming 50 m of highly productive photic zone,
150,000 cells/l, daily calcification at 70 pg/cell, and average bloom duration of
30 days: that combination yields annual sequestration of about 25 Mt of calcite in
coccolithophoride blooms. Recent studies indicate that coccolithophores will
become more abundant but less calcified as CO2 increases (Krumhardt et al. 2019).
Silicon is the other mineral that is massively assimilated by marine microorgan-
isms, above all diatoms, silicoflagellates, and radiolarians: they use silicic acid
(Si[OH]4) to create their elaborate opal (hydrated, amorphous biogenic silica,
SiO2·0.4H2O) structures. Tréguer et al. (1995) estimated the rate of that uptake at
about 7 Gt Si a year. This means that the total mass of calcareous and siliceous mate-
rials sequestered by marine phytoplankton is on the order of 10 Gt/year larger than
the total extraction of all metallic ores and larger than the annual production of coal.
In comparison to marine processors of calcium and silica, aggregate use of these
elements by other organisms is orders of magnitude smaller but its forms are often
not only elaborate but also quite beautiful.
This is true about many mollusk shells: some of them are quite simple but others
show remarkable geometric properties even as the mechanisms of biomineralization
remain speculative (Abbott and Dance 2000; Furuhashi et al. 2009). Carbonates are
also bioprecipitated by reptiles and birds to build their eggs, and by snails to form
their shells. Curiously, a leading student of structures built by animals had deliber-
ately left out such activities from his surveys: Hansell (2007) acknowledged that
Great Barrier Reef may be (as its common description claims) the world’s largest
structure built by living animals, but in his writings, he focused on building that
requires behavior, an attribute that is obviously absent in coral polyps or coccolitho-
phores, organisms that just secrete their skeletons.
2.2 Materials in Prehistory
Evolution of hominins (the human clade that diverged from chimpanzees more than
five million years ago and that had eventually produced our species) should be more
accurately seen as a dynamic coevolution of several traits that have made us human:
upright walking, endurance running, cooperative hunting, eating meat, symbolic
language – and tool making, using natural materials to fashion objects that provided
simple but practical extensions and multipliers of human physical capacities. That
is why the archaeology of hominin evolution traces nearly as much the develop-
ments in making stone tools as it does the changes in bone structure, diets, and
socialization.
How We Got Here 19
2.2.1 Tools
Until 2010 the oldest stone tools of the lower Paleolithic, discovered in East Africa
(Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Gona in Ethiopia), were dated to about 2.6 million
years ago, but it was clear that earlier origins cannot be excluded (Davidson and
McGrew 2005). In 2010 cut marks found on animal bones at Dikika in Ethiopia
were dated to 3.4 million years ago, and a year later stone tools of similar age
(3.3 million years ago) were discovered at Lomekwi west of Kenya’s Lake Turkana
(Harmand et al. 2015). The tools, somewhat larger than the Oldowan artifacts, were
clearly made by knapping (intentional flaking) and did not arise as accidental rock
fractures. They predate the appearance of genus Homo (now shifted to as far back
as 2.8 million years ago) and were most likely made by australopithecine (species
made famous by the discovery of “Lucy” skeleton).
For millions of years, the aggregate mass of stones used to make Paleolithic tools
(the era that ended about 10,000 years ago) and then Neolithic artifacts remained
minuscule as hominin population counted in mere tens or hundreds of thousands.
Genetic studies and demographic models indicate 1.2 million years ago there were
only about 20,000 hominins, fewer than the combined total of chimpanzees and
gorillas (Huffa et al. 2010). A quarter million years ago the hominin numbers
reached 50,000, and 10,000 years ago there could have been about 100,000 indi-
viduals of Homo sapiens. Subsequent population growth was reduced by cooling
caused by the expansion of ice sheets during the last glacial maximum. European
population declined from more than 300,000 people 30,000 years ago to about
130,000 individuals 23,000 years ago and then grew to about 400,000 by the end of
the last ice age (Tallavaaraa et al. 2015).
Given these low population totals, it is obvious that using stones for tools was not
a matter of quantity and mass supply but of specific quality and manufacturing
skills to produce desired shapes and edges. Obsidian (volcanic glass formed by
rapid cooling of magma) and flint (crystalline quartz) were the best materials to
produce sharp cutting edges and piercing points by knapping; tools for pounding
and pulverizing were made by grinding from basalt, rhyolite, and greenstone.
Perhaps the most notable innovation in making stone tools was to modify stone
properties by heating: there is clear evidence that 164,000 years ago our species
began to use fire as an engineering tool to heat-treating stones in order to improve
their flaking properties (Brown et al. 2009).
As is attested by numerous finds in both Old and New World, the combination of
expert stone selection, appropriate manufacturing methods (heat treatment and
skilled flaking, knapping, or grinding), produced adzes, axes, hammers, awls,
arrows, tips, and knives that were ingeniously designed, esthetically pleasing,
admirably ergonomic, and practical. In contrast, wooden tools have been preserved
only in rare instances, particularly when buried in anoxic layers. There is no doubt
that hominins used wooden sticks to dig up roots and wooden clubs to kill small
animals but carefully crafted wooden weapons arrived relatively late. Although
some massive herbivores could be killed without any tools – carefully planned stam-
peding of buffalo herds over cliffs, whose best known example is Alberta’s Head-
Smashed-In Buffalo Jump near Fort Mcleod in Alberta (Frison 1987) – killing of
megafauna (from mammoths to elands) had generally required projectile weapons.
The earliest, and surprisingly well-preserved, throwing spears were found in
Germany in 1996: six 2.25 m long spruce-wood spears were dated to between
380,000 and 400,000 years ago (Thieme 1997), that is nearly 200,000 years before
the appearance of our species (Trinkhaus 2005). And a new evidence from a site of
Kathy Pan 1 in South Africa (fracture types, modification near the base, distribution
of edge damage) indicates that stone points could have been hafted to spear tips
about 500,000 years ago, pushing the time of first hafted multicomponent tools
about 200,000 years further than previously thought (Wilkins et al. 2012).
Other designs of food-procuring wooden tools are much more recent. Dating of
the first bows (from the most suitable species of wood, above all yew, white ash,
black locust, osage orange) and arrows (merely sharpened wood or stone-tipped)
remains elusive but they were common in the late Paleolithic. Hunting sticks made
of wood or mammoth tusks were used in Eurasia long before the invention of
Australian boomerang (returning stick) some 10,000 years ago. The earliest use of
fishing nets is impossible to estimate as they were undoubtedly woven from flexible
plant stems or boughs that decayed rapidly; the oldest known net, made from slim
willow branches and found in Finnish Karelia, is about 10,000 years old (Miettinen
et al. 2008).
Foragers living without permanent abodes left no traces of their temporary shel-
ters built from branches, grasses, reeds, or palm fronds. The oldest preserved com-
ponents of shelters are, naturally, stones arranged for protection (walls, roofs),
mammoth bones, and tusks made into walls, timbers, and hides. In contrast to the
vanished living spaces of foragers (save for the caves, some adorned with remark-
able paintings of animals made by the Neolithic hunters), archeologists have found
thousands of foundations belonging to houses, sheds, and store rooms of many pre-
agricultural or early agricultural societies. Perfect reconstructions of most of these
Neolithic structures are usually impossible and we can only speculate about the
actual use of wood (slender trunks of small trees, branches), reeds, straw, or clay in
their walls and ceilings. Neolithic foragers also built the first wooden vessels: the
oldest excavated examples of the simplest design, canoes dug out from a single tree,
are nearly 10,000 years old.
How We Got Here 21
2.2.2 Processed Materials
Although the prehistoric societies managed without any metals, some of them suc-
ceeded to change the properties of minerals by producing fired pottery. Excavations
of some of the earliest permanently inhabited sites indicate that they used quick-
lime (burnt lime), the material whose production required processing almost as
sophisticated as smelting of ores. In order to extract quicklime (CaO) from lime-
stone (CaCO3) by heating (CaCO3 → CaO + CO2), the rocks had to be first crushed
by hand to a fairly uniform small size (but tiny pieces and dust had to be avoided
in order to keep the charge porous); the earliest firing took place in pits filled with
layers of firewood and crushed limestone, and later small stone structures (kilns)
were built to confine the process and to concentrate the heat needed for
calcination.
After prolonged firing came the most hazardous operation, removal of the
highly caustic quicklime whose reaction with water (that is with moist skin, eyes,
or lungs) produces severe irritation and eventually burn, while ingestion of the
dust brings abdominal pain and vomiting. Controlled addition of water to quick-
lime produced hydrated (slaked) lime (Ca(OH)2, calcium hydroxide), the key
ingredient of whitewash, mortar, and plaster. Producing lime is clearly a complex
process that requires considerable amount of planning (collecting sufficient fire-
wood, fashioning a suitable pit or a simple kiln) and management (temperature
inside a kiln must reach at least 825 °C and it must be maintained for a prolonged
period) – but lime products dating to 9600 bce were excavated at Göbekli Tepe
(Courland 2011). Kilning limestone was thus the first successful industrial pro-
cess dependent on a chemical reaction – and one whose fundamentals had
remained nearly identical until the nineteenth century.
Many of these wood-and-stone gatherer-hunter societies had also mastered the
firing of shaped clays to produce pottery, the first process used by human to convert
commonly available minerals into utilitarian or ornamental objects (Cooper 2000;
Tsetlin 2018). Firing removes water from shaped clays, sets their shape, and
strengthens their final form. Firing clay to produce a small object requires relatively
low temperatures of 500–600 °C, and the oldest such piece of ceramics is the famous
Venus of Dolní Věstonice in Moravia, 11.1-cm tall statue of a nude female that was
made by Paleolithic foragers between 25,000 and 29,500 years ago (Vandiver
et al. 1989). To make larger, utilitarian pieces of simple earthenware temperatures
must reach about 1,000 °C and that could be achieved (for brief periods of time) in
covered fire pits or mounds but is much better done in stone kilns. The earliest pot-
tery pieces were undoubtedly pit-fired, but the dates of the oldest fired objects have
been receding with new finds, particularly in Asia.
Findings from Xianrendong Cave (in northern Jiangxi province) show that the
Upper Paleolithic hunters may have been firing simple small vessels in China as far
as 19,000–20,000 years ago (Wu et al. 2012). Japan’s Jōmon (cord-marked) pottery
(first various round-bottom bowls up to 50 cm tall, then larger flat-bottom vessels
for food storage and cooking) is up to 12,000 years old (Habu 2004). After 6000 bce,
ceramic objects – vessels, cups, vases, chalices, plates, figurines, many of them
finely ornamented, others fired at higher temperature to produce more durable
stoneware – became common throughout Europe as attested by numerous finds of
post 5500-bce Bandkeramik in Germany, Czech lands, and Austria (Petrasch 2020).
In the Middle East Egyptian, ceramic was particularly diverse, both in terms of raw
materials used and shapes produced. That was also the time when potter’s wheel
(allowing, in skilled hands, a superior execution of an intended shape) came into
widespread use.
2.2.3 Megaliths
Pre-agricultural and proto-agricultural societies have also left behind almost inde-
structible record of megalithic structures, beginning with remarkable stone circles
with carved animal reliefs at Göbekli Tepe (Caletti 2020). Western Europe – from
Sweden and Denmark through North Germany, the Low Countries, British Isles,
northwest France, northern Spain, and Portugal – and parts of the Mediterranean
region (southeastern Spain, southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta,
Balearics, Apulia, northern Italy) and Switzerland – have tens of thousands of meg-
aliths (Daniel 1980). These include tombs, menhirs (single standing stones), stone
circles, and alignments (such as famous parallel arrays at Carnac in southern
Brittany and Stonehenge nearby Avebury), and megalithic buildings or temples with
graves oriented toward the east or southeast, toward the rising Sun. Radiocarbon
dating suggest that these megaliths graves emerged during the second half of the
fifth millennium bce in northwest France, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic coast
of Iberia and that they spread along the sea route (Paulsson 2019).
Despite centuries of speculation and decades of interdisciplinary scientific stud-
ies, we still do cannot offer any definitive explanation concerning the specific meth-
ods of quarrying these massive stones, transporting them across often rough terrain,
and erecting them in predetermined fashion, sometimes in remarkably accurate
alignments with periodical configurations of celestial bodies. Transportation
arrangements remain particularly unclear as both the unit masses and the straight-
line distances were often considerable. The inner circle at Stonehenge was made of
bluestones (43 remain, the original number is unknown) weighing 2–4 t. They had
to brought from Preseli Hills in southwestern Wales about 230 km from the Salisbury
plain (and hence their move almost certainly involved shipments in coastal vessels),
How We Got Here 23
and although the outer circle came from Marlborough Downs only 32 km north of
the site moving 50-t stones was an even greater logistic challenge (Thorpe and
Williams-Thorpe 1991; Ixer and Bevins 2017).
2.2.4 Textiles
Finally, there is no doubt that the first textiles are of prehistoric origin but the poor
preservation of natural materials used for clothing makes it impossible to offer any
reliable chronology (Ginsburg 1991). Bone sewing needles used to make warm
clothes needed to survive the Ice Age temperatures (and also fishing nets and bags)
became common during the Solutréan phase of the Upper Paleolithic Europe
(21,000–17,000 years ago). The first deliberately cut, processed, and shaped body
covers made of plant material (leaves, bark fibers) and animal skins had long decayed,
precluding any dating. Skin tanning, needed to keep the hides supple in low tempera-
tures, is definitely of prehistoric origin but identification of specific processes (using
plant materials or minerals) becomes possible only during the Mesopotamian
and Egyptian antiquity. Quality and functionality of prehistoric clothes made by
Neolithic foragers is best demonstrated by annuraangit, Inuit skin-and-fur garments
that provided excellent protection in the Arctic environment (Oakes 2005).
Flax weaves were produced even before the plant was domesticated in the Middle
East more than 10,000 years ago and seed size indicates that by the 3rd millennium
bce different forms of flax (for oil and for fiber) were cultivated in Europe north of
the Alps (Karg 2011). Cotton cultivation began in Asia about 7,000 years ago, much
later in Mesoamerica, and phylogenetic analysis shows that the African-Asian spe-
cies and the New World species stem independently from wild progenitors and con-
verged morphologically under domestication (Wendel et al. 1999). Primitive looms
used to make rough linen fabric came around 6,000 years ago, rough wool cloth was
spun and woven more than 10,000 years ago, woolly sheep were domesticated about
8,000 years ago but it took at least another 2,000 years before the appearance of first
woven wool fabric (Broudy 2000).
2.3 Ancient and Medieval Materials
Material world of the oldest settled societies – whose crop productivity and
population growth sufficed to establish cities and support very slow economic
expansion – was determined by their immediate environment. As a result, living
quarters included caves excavated in silt (in China’s Shaanxi) or in limestone (in
central Anatolia), light wooden frames with walls of bamboo and clay (in Japan),
unbaked brick structures (in sub-Saharan Africa), painstakingly assembled stone
houses (in the Mediterranean and high-lying parts of Asia), massive log houses
(in Scandinavia and Russia), and sturdily built structures using fired bricks or
mortared stones (throughout the continental Atlantic Europe).
Environment made yet another, strategic, difference. As Adshead (1997) pointed
out, a key reason for China’s (and more generally East Asia’s) choice of ephemeral
wooden housing in contrast to Europe’s preference for sturdy construction using
stone and bricks was the high frequency of destructive earthquakes and I would also
add of annual typhoons and major floods. The other reasons were the Chinese pref-
erence for low initial capital outlay and high cost of maintenance, the reverse of
European approach. Heritage also mattered, with medieval and Renaissance Europe
admiring and emulating many examples of monumental Roman stone structures.
Some of the earliest sedentary societies soon mastered the construction of monu-
mental structures whose erection required not only ingenious quarrying and trans-
port of stones to building sites but, unlike with pre-historic megaliths, also careful
(and often detailed and extremely accurate) cutting and intricate assembly of mas-
sive structures or production and emplacement of prodigious quantities of bricks.
Some ancient societies had also developed remarkably ingenious infrastructures
designed to serve their growing cities, with the Roman aqueducts (commonly tens
of kilometers long, with extended sections carried on stone arches) being perhaps
the best illustration of these capabilities. The first sedentary societies of the Middle
East, Mediterranean, and East Asia were also the first complex civilizations to smelt
metals, initially only copper and tin on limited scales (for ornamental or limited
military uses), later mastering also the production of zinc, lead, iron, mercury, s ilver,
and gold.
In the Middle East, India, and Europe iron became the dominant metal after
roughly 1200 bce and its artisanal production was eventually on a scale sufficient to
supply relatively inexpensive nails for house and ship construction, shoes for horses,
variety of hand tools and machine components, and a wide range of weapons. These
metallurgical advances led Christian Thomsen (1836) to divide material evolution
into Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages but that was not a universal sequence as some
societies (perhaps the best example is Egypt before 2000 bce) had a pure copper
era, while others skipped the bronze age and moved directly from stone to iron arti-
facts. In any case, in terms of total material flows all pre-industrial societies
remained in wooden age: in all forested environments no materials were as ubiqui-
tous as timber for buildings and wood for tools, utensils, implements, and machines.
2.3.1 Wood
First, woody phytomass used in construction consisted of small trunks, tree

branches, and bushes, and only the availability of stone adzes (and later good metal
axes) and acquisition of requisite carpentry skills made it possible to build first
How We Got Here 25
massive log houses made of shaped and joined timbers; later still came metal saws
that could be used to produce long boards and other precisely cut components. Most
preindustrial wooden houses were poorly built and had short life spans, but properly
constructed wooden structures were surprisingly durable, even in monsoon climate
where they have been exposed to annually heavy rains: wood for Japan’s Hōryūji
pagoda in Nara, the world’s oldest extant wood building, was cut nearly 1,400 years
ago (Yamato 2006).
Remarkably, East Asian (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) buildings did not use
any fasteners, but their frames, beams, and roofs relied on a variety of precise
mortise-and-tenon joints that not only allowed the wood to expand and contract in
reaction to changing atmospheric humidity but also to withstand frequent earth-
quakes. Moreover, tall pagodas were essentially earthquake-proof because of shin-
bashira, a central pole that does not support the structure but acts as a massive
stationary pendulum (Atsushi 1995). Its action is equivalent to tuned mass damping
in modern skyscrapers with their large concrete or steel blocks suspended at the tops
of tall buildings.
Wood was also the only material used during the antiquity and the Middle Ages
for the hulls and masts of ocean-going vessels. Small river boats were made of a
single-tree trunk but Homer credited Odysseus with cutting down 20 trees to build
his ship (Odyssey 5:23): that would translate to mass of 10–12 t. Egyptian boats
used to transport stone obelisks were much heavier but the ships that made the first
Atlantic crossings were remarkably light: a Viking ship (based on a well-preserved
Gokstad vessel built around 890 ce) required wood of 74 oaks, including 16 pairs
of oars (Bill 2011). Typical Mediterranean vessels also remained small and had
hardly grown during the millennium between the demise of the Roman Empire and
the first great intercontinental voyages of the late fifteenth century.
2.3.2 Stone
Stone’s durability made it the preferred material for utilitarian structures built to last
(aqueducts, roads) for funerary (pyramids, tombs) and religious or ceremonial (tem-
ples, gates, palaces, towers, obelisks, statues) monuments. Many stone structures
impress due to their mass but among them Egyptian pyramids at Giza are unique:
Khufu’s pyramid not only remains the largest stone structure ever built (195 m high),
it required 2.5 million stones whose average weight was 2.5 t and yet this mass of
more than 6 Mt of stone occupying 2.5 Mm3 was laid down with an admirable degree
of accuracy (Lehner and Hawass 2017). In comparison, great Mesoamerican pyra-
mids (Teotihuacan and Cholula) are not that imposing, not only because Teotihuacan’s
flat-topped Pyramid of the Sun rises only to just over 70 m (including the temple) but
also because its core is a mass of soil, rubble, and adobe bricks, and only its exterior
was clad with cut stone and plastered with lime mortar.
Other stone structures are distinguished by their ubiquity, other yet by complexity
and lightness that belies the heaviness of the material (medieval cathedrals), and
some have shown an almost incredibly tight fit and accurate emplacement. During
the Roman Empire, the largest mass of stones went into well-engineered aqueducts
(including elevated bridges, inverted siphons, and distribution networks within
cities) as well as in their extensive system of roads (cursus publicus), but most of
their monumental structures (triumphal arches being a major exception) were
marble-clad bricks (Adam 1994). Intricately designed stone monuments dominated
in South and Southeast Asia (including Angkor Wat, the world’s largest Hindu tem-
ple in Cambodia, and Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist monument in Java) as
well as the Mesoamerican (Maya, Aztec) and South American (Inca) ceremonial
sites. And Africa’s most massive stone structure, 240-m long oval enclosure of Great
Zimbabwe whose construction began after 1100 ce, required an estimated one mil-
lion of stone blocks (Ndoro 1997).
Medieval Europe brought stone architecture to unprecedented heights (literally
and figuratively) with its bold and intricate designs of large cathedrals with arched
vaults, flying buttresses, and tall spires (Fitchen 1961; Schutz 2002). Prak (2011)
showed that this was achieved by relying on surprisingly simple underlying princi-
ples of modular design (transferred on a personal basis by designers/builders) aug-
mented with on-site experimentation. The most obvious commonalities of stone
construction are elaborate quarrying (the task all the more remarkable during the
earliest period when, as in ancient Egypt, the masons had only copper chisels and
dolerite mallets), often highly accurate dressing, frequent needs for long-distance
land-or water-borne transport to often distant building sites and ingenious ways of
emplacing massive components. Even today we are impressed by the inventiveness
and skills used in quarrying, transporting, shaping these massive stones, and in
designing and organizing their final emplacement, often with admirably tight
tolerances.
That is particularly true in case of monoliths (used for statues or as steles or
obelisks: Rome has eight of them imported from ancient Egypt) by traditional civi-
lizations; we still can only speculate about many specific artisanal techniques and
construction management required to build the pyramids on the Giza plateau or to
fit the polygonal stones of massive Inca walls at Sacsayhuamán and Ollantaytambo
with incredible tightness. Nor do we know exactly how the ancient Egyptians
orchestrated the transport of a 1,000-t stone statue 270 km by a Nile ship from
Aswan to Thebes. Not surprisingly, specific modalities of building many of these
structures remain elusive: the only certainty is that their construction required care-
ful planning and extraordinary supply and worksite management, particularly for
those structures that were completed in what appear to be incredibly short periods
of time.
How We Got Here 27
Egypt’s largest pyramid took only 20 years to complete (2703–2683 bce). The
Parthenon, a simple post-and-lintel building but one possessing perhaps the best-
ever proportions, required only 15 years (447–432 bce). And the astonishing Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople, a relatively light structure deriving its impact from enor-
mous vaults, did not take even five years to complete (527–532). In contrast, centu-
ries might have elapsed before laying the foundation stone and the consecration of
many European cathedrals: construction of Notre Dame took nearly two centuries,
from 1163 to 1345; St. Vitus, dominating the Prague Castle, was begun in 1344 and
it was completed only in 1929.
Nor can we, obviously, quantify the mass or volume of construction stone used
annually in antique or medieval societies, but revealing calculations can be made for
the requirements of some large projects. Correct order of magnitude of materials
deployed by the Roman to build their roads can be estimated by assuming average
width of 4 m (surviving stretches of Italian viae have widths between 2.4 and 7.5 m)
and the depth of at least 1 m (with paving stones topping layers of gravel, pebbles,
clays, and sand): leaving aside subsequent repairs, the initial construction of
85,000 km of major roads would have required 425 Mm3 of aggregate (sand and
gravel) and quarried stone (Smil 2017).
2.3.3 Clays
In alluvial plains, clays turned to bricks became the dominant material of construc-
tion: Mesopotamian kingdoms built their ziggurats, palaces, and walls from bricks
(both adobe and better quality made from fired clays). Bricks were also indispensa-
ble for the building boom in the imperial Rome that needed relatively inexpensive
and rapidly (and locally) produced material in order to build massive buildings
whose exteriors were then clad in marble. The first bricks were made with puddled
clay (just mixing clay and water with additions of sand, chopped straw, or dung),
these mixtures were shaped in wooden molds and bricks were left to dry in the sun
(Fernandes et al. 2010).
Early Mesopotamian cultures (Sumer, Babylon, Assyria) produced prodigious
amounts of these bricks (Babylonian standard was a square- shaped prism,
40 × 40 × 10 cm), which they used to build their houses, palaces, and towers. Poor
quality of such bricks turned even the most massive structures into mounds of clay:
a few exceptions aside – above all Chogha Zanbil, a partially preserved Elamite
structure in Iran’s Khuzestan with three of the five stories still standing
(Porada 1965) – Mesopotamia’s stepped flat-topped temple towers (ziggurats) built
after 2200 bce are now nothing but hillocks on an arid plain. Bricks burnt in kilns
fueled with wood or charcoal were used first in ancient Mesopotamia, they were
common in both European and Asian antiquity and remained the most important
quotidian construction material in many Old World cultures until the arrival of
concrete and structural steel.
Slim, oblong Roman bricks (45 × 30 × 3.75 cm) were clad by marble in all monu-
mental buildings, but even after that protective layer was stripped away they have
survived fairly well in dry Mediterranean climate where their poor heat conductivity
helped to keep the structures cool in summer (Brodribb 1987). Romans also used
bricks to construct remarkably expansive vaulted ceilings. There were many differ-
ent methods of laying down the bricks and combining them with stones and wood
(common Roman choices were opus reticulatum, vittatum, mixtum, and testaceum),
all of them seen in the ruins stripped of its marble cladding.
Structures built with fired bricks proved more durable (naturally, with some
repairs) even in Asia’s tropical climates: many stūpas (meaning, literally, heaps in
Sanskrit), huge mound-like constructs built to house Buddhist relics have survived
for more than a millennium (Longhurst 1979). Mahabodhi stūpa (Bodhgaya tem-
ple), built at the site of Buddha enlightenment 2,500 years ago, great sandstone-clad
Sāñcī stūpa of Bhopāl (36 m base diameter, 15 m tall), Phra Pathom Chedi stūpa in
Thailand, and 122-m tall Jetavanaramaya in Anurādhapura (Sri Lanka), built some
1,700 years ago, are among the best examples of these massive fired-bricks struc-
tures (Bandaranayake 1974; Pant 1976). Number of bricks (made of 60% fine sand
and 35% clay) required to build Jetavanaramaya was put at between 93 and
200 million (Leach 1959).
Fired earthenware and stoneware (the latter material having much lower water
absorption after firing) was also used to make roof, floor, and decorative tiles.
Ceramic roof tiles were commonly used around the Mediterranean since the antiq-
uity, while the first example of glazed bricks and decorative tiles are found in even
older Mesopotamian structures. Floor and wall tiles were eventually produced in a
great variety of finishes (unglazed, glazed, mosaic, hand-painted), and particularly
intricate tiling designs became one of the signature marks of medieval Muslim
builders who excelled in matching colors and shapes; a less exuberant ancient tiling
tradition had also evolved in a number of European countries, especially in Italy,
Spain, and Portugal.
Clay amphoras were the most common containers of sea-born Mediterranean
commerce (Twede 2002). These ceramic jars were used to transport wine, olive oil,
and also processed foodstuffs such as garum, Roman fish sauce. Romans also used
wooden barrels made by skilled craftsmen (coopers) from hardwood staves kept
tight by iron hoops, with a typical barrel consuming 50–60 kg of wood (Twede 2005).
During the Middle Ages, these containers dominated European trade in liquids as
well as in pickled and salted foods. Porcelain, the highest-quality material made of
fired clay (specifically kaolin, soft white kaolinite clay indispensable for making
How We Got Here 29
fine ceramics), was invented around the sixteenth century bce (during the Shang
Dynasty) in China, soon made in Korea and Japan, and this East Asian monopoly
was broken only during the early eighteenth century with the production of true
porcelain in Europe, first in Germany and France, and soon afterward in England
(Atterbury 1982).
Durable construction using bricks (and tiles) required good bonding material, but
the first clay and mud mortars were weak; only the calcination of limestone (CaCO3)
resulting in quicklime (CaO) whose hydration produced Ca(OH)2, slaked lime,
made a superior material. As already noted, the kilning of limestone predates the era
of the oldest centralized empires and slaked lime was used routinely in ancient
Egypt. Davidovits (2002) caused a controversy by claiming that the blocks of Giza
pyramids were not quarried stones but mixtures of granular limestone aggregate and
alkali alumino-silicate-based binder that were cast in situ. Although this hypothesis
was rejected by most Egyptologists, it continues to have adherents even among
material scientists.
Romans are credited with the invention of concrete but that is an inaccurate attri-
bution. Concrete is a mixture of cement, aggregates (sand, pebbles), and water, and
cement is a finely ground mixture of lime, clay, and metallic oxides fired in kilns at
high temperature. There was no cement in Roman opus cementitium and hence the
sturdy mixture, strong enough to build large vaults and domed structures, was not
the material known as concrete. Opus cementitium contained aggregates (sand,
gravel, stones, broken bricks, or tiles) and water, but its bonding agent was lime
mortar (Adam 1994). Only the combination of slaked lime and volcanic sand from
the vicinity of Puteoli near the Mount Vesuvius (pulvere puteolano, later known as
pozzolana) produced a superior mixture that could harden even under water and that
could be used to build not only massive and durable walls but also spectacular
vaults. The coffered ceiling of Pantheon (118–126 ce) with dome span of 43.2 m
remained unsurpassed for nearly two millennia (although San Pietro’s dome,
designed my Michelangelo and completed in 1590, came close with 41.75 m).
2.3.4 Glass
The last ancient material invention that required heat processing was glass
(Macfarlane and Martin 2002). Its earliest small Mesopotamian pieces are about
5,000 years old, the art of making art objects was advanced during the New Kingdom
era of the ancient Egypt, glass finds are not uncommon at Roman sites – but it
became an important material only during the Middle Ages, both in construction (as
attested both by intricately designed multicolored cathedral windows) and in every-
day use (as shown by elaborate glass goblets of Venetian and Bohemian glass).
Crown glass production was the only practical way to produce pans of limited sizes
until the mid-nineteenth century. Molten material was mouth-blown to create a
large bubble and then spin it into a disc (with a circle in the middle, up to 1 m in
diameter) that was, after cooling, cut into panes. This glass was too expensive for
glazing of ordinary homes, and glass windows became common only during the
early modern era.
But the most consequential material development in the antiquity was not a rou-
tine use of a wide variety of biomaterials (wood, bones, hides, plant-and animal-
textiles) and common construction (stones, clays, sand, concrete) and ornamental
(tiles, glass) materials, but an ability to smelt and to shape a growing array of met-
als. Ore mining and metal smelting resulted in an epochal advance that began with
the use of copper and its alloys and was followed by smelting of iron ores making
iron the dominant metal of the ancient Greece and Rome, the two great Mediterranean
civilization whose accomplishments influenced so much of the subsequent
European, and global, history.
2.3.5 Non-ferrous Metals
Copper, soft and malleable when pure and easy to alloy, was the first metal used by
Stone Age societies as early as almost 10,000 years ago, initially without any smelt-
ing as the bits of outcropping pure metal were shaped cold or subjected to anneal-
ing, that is repeated heating and hammering (Forbes 1972). Copper smelting and
casting took off more than 6,000 years ago, first in Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh, the
great Sumerian epos [about 2500 bce] refers to a copper box and a bronze bolt and
excavations found copper knives, axes, and spears in the region’s ancient empires),
a millennium later in Egypt, and about 3,500 years ago it was common in China.
Relative abundance of copper sulfide ores made the element the dominant metal
between 3000 and 1000 bce.
Ore reduction (Cu has a fairly high melting point, 1,083 °C) was done with wood
or charcoal, first in clay-lined pits, later in small clay furnaces and the metal was
purified by further heating. Producing copper from abundant sulfide ores (chalcopy-
rites) was more complicated: crushed ore (by hand, later by harnessed horses or
waterwheel-driven hammers) had to be the first roasted to remove sulfur and vari-
ous associated metals (As, Fe, Pb, Sn, Zn). Roasted ore was first smelted in shaft
furnaces and then smelted once again to yield 95–97% pure metal. All of this dev-
astated local and regional wood resources and copper smelting was a leading cause
of Mediterranean deforestation, particularly in Spain and Cyprus (Smil 2017).
But annealed copper was a soft metal and it had low tensile strength. That is why
a much stronger and much harder bronze became the first practical alloy in history
How We Got Here 31
and why Christian Thomsen chose it for his now classic periodization of Stone,
Bronze, and Iron Ages (Thomsen 1836). Bronze, an alloy of copper with 5–30% of
tin (10% being typical), has tensile strength nearly four times that of annealed cop-
per and it is nearly six times harder, good enough for durable knives, swords, axes,
and medals (as well as for bells and musical instruments). Brass is an alloy of c opper
(ranging from less than 50% to about 85%) and zinc; its smelting dates to the first
century bce but it became common only during the high Middle Ages. Zinc increases
the alloy’s tensile strength and hardness to about 1.7 times that of cold-drawn cop-
per without reducing malleability and resistance to corrosion. Pewter is an alloy
dominated by tin (about 90%) with added antimony and copper.
Besides copper, tin, bronze, and brass, the other color (nonferrous) metals whose
production was mastered by ancient metallurgists included zinc, lead, mercury,
silver, and gold. Analysis of lead in an ice core from Greenland made it possible to
reconstruct the world’s longest series of metal production. Hong et al. (1994) esti-
mated that large lead–silver smelting by Greeks and Romans increased total lead
output from about 250 t/year in 750 bce to nearly 80,000 t by 50 ce. Lead’s low
melting point and easy malleability made it an early candidate for making water
pipes in Roman cities but the greatest demand for the metal was for inverted siphons
(U-shaped pipes connecting a header tank on one side with a lower-lying receiving
tank on the opposite bank), a preferred way for the Roman engineers to cross val-
leys where stone bridges would have to be taller than 50–60 m. Post-Roman decline
and stagnation kept lead output at only about 12,500 t thousand years later, and the
global output surpassed the highest antique production only by the middle of the
eighteenth century.
Gold and silver were used in antiquity for ornaments (Tutankhamun’s burial
mask, from about 1320 bce, is perhaps the most famous golden object of the era)
and jewelry in both the Old and the New World, and they were also used to mint
coins, often debased by addition of cheaper metals: gradual debasement of the
Roman denarius is perhaps the most notorious example of the process (Salmon 1999).
Patterson (1972) made the following rough estimates of annual rates of Greco-
Roman silver production: 25 t between 350 and 250 bce, 200 t between 50 bce and
100 ce and, again, 25 t during the fourth century CE. Mercury was incorporated into
ointments and cosmetics (just about the worst possible use imaginable) and later
became a key element in experimental alchemy.
2.3.6 Iron
Iron ores are distributed worldwide and many deposits exploited before the twenti-
eth century were rich in metal: pure magnetite contains 72.4% of iron and pure
hematite has 69.9% of the metal. Smelting iron ore requires higher temperatures
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contaminerebbe la casa e vi allude pur Giovenale nella Satira XV ne’
seguenti versi:
Naturæ imperio gemimus, quum funus adultæ

Virginis occurrit, vel terra clauditur infans,
Et minor igne rogi [262].
Seppellivansi quindi la notte allo splendore delle faci. Le loro ossa

poi deponevansi in luogo detto subgrundarium, sotto di un tetto,
cioè, o gronda sporgente, a modo di nido di rondine [263].
Nè abbruciavansi tampoco i corpi di coloro che erano colpiti dalla
folgore: Hominem ita exanimatum, cremari fas non est; condi terra
religio tradit, disse il medesimo Plinio [264].
Ora il costume della cremazione divien soggetto alle più serie
investigazioni e discussioni in Italia, che lo si vorrebbe sostituire a
quello della sepoltura de’ cadaveri. Ragioni specialmente di igiene lo
pongono innanzi e lo propugnano calorosamente, e se adottato,
come pare dall’Italia, verrà seguito pure dalle altre nazioni incivilite,
avrà avuto una volta di più suggello l’osservazione del francese Ipp.
Lucas dell’Istituto di Francia che «all’Italia è affidata per diritto
l’iniziativa del progresso umanitario [265].» È principalmente nella mia
Milano che l’importante questione si agita, sicchè egregiamente
quell’ottimo uomo che è Giuseppe Sacchi, osservava che la
cremazione è per Milano il ritorno ad un’antica usanza, additando
una località nei pubblici giardini che era ad essa destinata, e
rivendicando per tal modo alla nostra città il doppio merito di aver
sempre spento con la violenza della sua riprovazione i roghi della
Inquisizione, e di avere all’opposto innalzato pei cadaveri il rogo
purificatore. Fra noi, a tale scopo, si istituì un comitato promotore
sotto la presidenza dell’illustre medico e chimico prof. Giovanni Polli
e del qual fan parte quei chiari suoi colleghi che sono il Pini, lo
Strambio, il Dell’Acqua, il Griffini e il Tarchini-Bonfanti. E solenne
conferenza indissero costoro nel giorno 6 aprile 1874, per trattarvi
dell’argomento e del modo migliore di cremazione, dove appunto si
udirono le suddette parole del Sacchi, dove Amato Amati espresse il
concetto che la nuova usanza, restaurando coll’urna cineraria
domestica il culto della famiglia, vi alzerà il carattere morale della
nazione, e il dotto prete prof. Bucellati in una bella sua lettera diretta
per quell’occasione al Comitato, scaltrì di pregiudizio la credenza
che essa possa ledere i diritti della cristiana religione [266]. Concesse
queste brevi parole ad un argomento di tutta attualità, faccio ritorno
al mio tema.
La dimane del rogo i parenti e gli amici venivano invitati ad un
banchetto funebre. Prima di mettersi a tavola si purificavano col
lavarsi. Se ricco il defunto, davasi tale banchetto anche al pubblico
ed appellavasi silicernium. A differenza di Grecia, dove il Silicernium
compivasi nella casa del parente più prossimo del defunto e subito
dopo l’esequie, come si trova ricordato in Demostene (De Coron.); in
Roma e nella romana colonia questo convivio aveva luogo presso il
sepolcro stesso; e le camere squisitamente decorate, che così
comunemente s’incontrano nelle loro tombe, come accessorie di
queste, ma non mai adoperate a ricevere urne, erano senza dubbio
intese a questo fine. In Pompei, nella Via delle Tombe, troveremo un
Triclinium funebre stabile presso le tombe, costituito da un recinto,
con entro tre letti triclinarii di materia di fabbrica, su cui, a renderli più
comodi, si saranno all’occasione distesi materassi, pulvinares.
Il più spesso il silicernium misuravasi dalla entità dell’asse redato o
dalla gratitudine dell’erede; Persio lo attesta:
Sed cœnam funeris hæres

Negliget iratus si rem curtaveris, urnæ
Ossa inodora dabit: ceu spirent cinnama surdum,
Seu ceraso peccent casiæ, nescire paratus [267].
Se poi l’erede limitavasi a sola distribuzione al pubblico di carni

crude, dicevasi essa visceratio. Esempio celebre del primo fu il
silicernio imbandito da Cesare per la morte di Giulia a ventiduemila
persone; altri dicono sessantaseimila.
Un altro banchetto funebre famigliare facevasi nove giorni dopo e
designavasi col nome di novemdialia e nel dì susseguente,
denicales feriæ [268], purificavasi la casa mortuaria contaminata dalla
presenza del morto e quindi per consueto distribuivansi ancora
largizioni alla plebe.
Non era per altro così de’ funerali de’ poveri. Non sorgeva cipresso
avanti la porta, non difilava processione, non intendevansi suoni,
non celebravansi le altre cerimonie e solennità.
Tre giorni dopo la morte, giungevano quattro necrofori, vespillones,
sul cader della notte, a levarli di casa in una cassa da nolo, detta
sandapila, ed a portarli nella fossa pubblica oltre le mura, in luoghi
detti puticuli ed anche putiluci, a causa, disse il dotto Turnebo, della
profondità delle fosse, nelle quali, non altrimenti che in pozzi, non
poteva scendere luce, e tutto era presto finito.
Reduce la famiglia dal funerale, si purificava la casa contaminata
dalla presenza del cadavere spazzandola con iscopa di tamerigia o
di palma ed invocando Deverra (da verrere, spazzare), divinità che
presiedeva appunto alla pulitezza delle case.
A tutte le predette cerimonie teneva dietro il lutto: per gli uomini
ristretto a dieci giorni di isolamento o ritiro nella propria casa; per le
donne ad un anno o a dieci mesi almeno.
Eravi poi il lutto publico, quando si volevano onorare grandi virtù di
illustri trapassati o piangere la perdita di qualche grande battaglia,
come fu quella toccata a Canne, in cui perirono quarantacinque mila
romani, il Console Paolo Emilio e ottanta senatori. Esso indicevasi
dal Senato ad ogni ordine di cittadini.
In tal tempo sospendevasi dal rendere giustizia, i consoli non
sedevan sulle loro sedie curuli, i littori portavano capovolti i fasci, i
senatori deponevano il laticlavio, gli anelli d’oro, nè radevan la
barba, o tagliavano i capelli, proibiti i conviti festosi, l’accender fuoco
nelle case e il fabbricare.
Nel lutto privato poi esponevansi le imagini del defunto ad
incitamento di virtù, come s’esprime al proposito Sallustio: Sæpe
audiri præclaros civitatis nostræ viros solitos dicere, cum majorum
imagines intuerentur vehementissime sibi animum ad virtutem
accendi: scilicet non ceram illam, neque figuram, tantam vim in se
habere: sed memoriam rerum gestarum eam flammis egregiis viris in
pectore crescere, neque prius sedari quam virtus eorum famam
atque gloriam adæquaverit [269]. Doveva Foscolo di certo aver
rammentato questo passo, del quale serbò perfino qualche parola,
quando cantava ne’ Sepolcri:
A egregie cose il forte animo accendono

L’urne de’ forti [270].
E il medesimo nostro grande Poeta aveva poco prima cantato come

tanto venerata e sacra fosse la memoria de’ cari defunti, che venisse
perfino giurato su di essa:
. . . . e fu temuto
Su la polve degli avi il giuramento [271].
Properzio presta uno di tali giuramenti, per le ossa del padre e per
quelle di sua madre:
Ossa tibi juro per matris, et ossa parentis.
E Quintiliano, più tardi, così esprime il dolore provato per la moglie e

pel figlio statigli da morte immatura rapiti: io giuro pei loro mani,
divinità del mio dolore,
Per illos manes, numina doloris mei.
Nè con queste dimostrazioni aveva fine il lutto.

V’erano commemorazioni funebri altresì durante l’anno, come nelle
feste Parentali che seguivano in febbrajo e in giorni fasti detti anche
Feralia, e come nelle feste Lemuralia, e, com’altri dice, Remuralia,
perchè istituite da Romolo in onore del fratello Remo da lui ucciso,
che avvenivano in maggio, nelle quali la famiglia recavasi ad onorare
il sepolcro del diletto defunto e là nel vicino triclinio, fra le dapi del
banchetto, non dovevan mancare l’appio, il sale, il miele, le lenti, il
farro, le uova e le fave.
La cerimonia incominciava a mezza notte: il padre di famiglia
alzavasi dal letto, e tacito e invaso da sacro terrore, a piedi scalzi,
solo facendo scricchiolare le dita per allontanare le ombre dal luogo
pel quale passava, incamminavasi a una fontana. Quivi lavate per
tre volte le mani, rifaceva il cammino gittando al di sopra del suo
capo delle fave nere che aveva in bocca e mormorando questo
scongiuro: con queste fave io mi riscatto insieme con quelli della mia
famiglia. Tali parole doveva ripetere per ben nove volte senza
guardare dietro di sè, supponendosi che l’ombra dalla quale era
seguitato raccogliesse non vista le fave. La festa lemurale
chiudevasi dal medesimo padre di famiglia, prendendo dell’acqua
un’altra volta, battendo su di un vaso di bronzo e pregando l’ombra
di uscire dalla sua casa, ripetendo ancor nove volte le parole: uscite,
o mani paterni.
Le offerte poi che si facevano sulle tombe in codeste funebri
commemorazioni, che feralia appunto si chiamavano da questo pio
costume di donativi ai morti, come lasciò scritto ne’ Fasti il già citato
Poeta latino:
Hanc, quia justa ferunt, dixere Feralia lucem [272];
si vennero poco a poco aumentando. Pur nondimeno tenevasi che

non eccessive fossero le esigenze degli Dei Mani. Udiamo Ovidio:
Est honor et tumulis. Animas placate paternas,

Parvaque in extinctas munera ferte pyras.
Parva petunt Manes: pietas pro divite grata est
Munere; non avidos Stix habet ima Deos.
Tegula projectis satis est velata coronis,
Et sparsæ fruges, parcaque mica salis.
Inque mero mollita Ceres violaque solutæ;
Hæc habeat media testa relicta via.
Nec majora veto: sed et his placabilis umbra est.
Adde preces positis et sua verba focis [273].
Non lascerà il lettore in codesta citazione di rilevare la costumanza

d’offrire ai morti i doni su d’una tegola o coccio. Venivano sporti
anche su d’una pietra.
Anche Giovenale accennò alla tenuità delle offerte che si facevano
a’ defunti, nella Satira V, dicendola Exigua feralis cœna patella [274].
Chiudevansi in questi giorni i templi degli Dei celesti, erano interdette
le nozze e vietato l’uso del fuoco, perocchè si reputassero giorni
immondi: di che pure ne avvisa il succitato Ovidio, nel medesimo
libro secondo Fastorum, dove pure ricordò che in quelle feste,
feralia, facevasi altresì sagrificio alla dea Tacita o Muta, della quale
canta la sventura e i casi avventurosi, per avere garrula rivelato ella
alla ninfa Giuturna gli amorosi intendimenti del Tonante verso di lei e
accesa pur colla sua indiscrezione le furie gelose di Giunone, onde
Giove resola muta e affidata a Mercurio perchè la scorgesse a’ regni
inferni, venisse da questo Dio fatta madre dei gemini Lari, divenuti
poi questi custodi della romana città.
V’erano poi anche le Inferiæ, e sacrifizi in onore degli Dei d’Averno,
che celebravansi a notte dal sagrificatore seguito dagli Editui, o
guardiani, che avevano la cura de’ templi, dai Camilli e Camille,
giovanetti che assistevano ai sagrifzi, dai popi o ministri che
menavan le vittime, le quali erano in tale occasione un bue ed una
pecora, e dai vittimarj, e talvolta anche dai littori preceduti dal suono
dei siticini e dai præclamitatores, che ingiungevan la sospensione
del lavoro. Accoltisi questi intorno all’ara uno de’ præclamitatores
bandiva alla accorsa plebe silenzio, acciò non isfuggisse pur una
voce di sinistro augurio:
. . . . Vos pueri et puellæ

Iam virum expertæ, male ominatis
Parcite verbis [275].
E il sacerdote compiva allora il sagrificio, invocando i nomi terribili di

Ecate e di Proserpina, ed aspergeva di vino il sepolcro.
Da’ riti funerarii è naturale il passaggio a ragionar de’ sepolcri, che i
romani ergevano a memoria ed onoranza de’ loro cari ed illustri
defunti. Dirò di essi prima di particolareggiar di quelli che troveremo
schierati lungo la Via delle Tombe di Pompei, per la quale mi sono
proposto di condurre il mio benevolo lettore.
Come semplici erano stati i primi costumi di Roma; semplici e
modeste erano pure state le loro tombe; ma poichè ebbero i nipoti di
Romolo a fare prima cogli Etruschi e poi colla Grecia, impararono
così dall’un popolo e dall’altro solennità e pompe che vennero ogni
dì più, anche per loro aggiunzioni, crescendo. Già dissi de’ ludi
gladiatorj introdottisi ne’ funerali allorchè volevansi splendidi e
solenni: ora delle sepolture, le quali furono grandiose spesso,
maravigliose talvolta, a seconda delle fortune del trapassato.
La legge delle XII Tavole vietò il seppellire in città: epperò convien
rintracciare le tombe e i mausolei fuori di essa, lungo le vie più
frequentate e vaste. Così sorsero sulla via Appia principalmente,
sulla Aurelia, Lavicana, Ostiense, Flaminia, Prenestina, Salaria e
Tiburtina, e a’ nostri giorni ancora trovansi molti cippi e colonne
sepolcrali che attestano dell’estensione del terreno, in antico
consacrato all’inumazione, ed anche Giovenale chiude la Satira I coi
versi che ricordano la via Flaminia e la Latina come frequentatissime
di sepolture:
Experiar quid concedatur in illos,

Quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina [276],
alludendo appunto a siffatto costume.

Se, al dir di Varrone, i monumenti si collocavano lunghesso le vie per
tenere continuamente viva nel pensiero del viandante l’idea della
loro fralezza: sic monimenta quæ in sepulcris; et ideo secundam
viam quo prætereuntes admoneant et se fuisse et illos esse
mortales [277]; non mancavano tuttavia di coloro che aborrissero
avere loro tomba in luoghi così publici e rumorosi; e tra questi il già
più volte citato Properzio fa voti perchè la sua Cinzia, lui morto, non
gli abbia ad alzare in essi la tomba.
Dî faciant, mea ne terra locat ossa frequenti,
Qua facit assiduo tramite vulgus iter.
Post mortem tumuli sic infamantur amantem;
Me teget arborea devia terra coma.
Aut humet ignotæ cumulus vallatus arenæ:
Non juvat in media nomen habere via [278].
Non altrimenti, se mi è lecito esprimere qui il mio proprio sentimento,

io direi per me de’ moderni cimiteri monumentali, dove la curiosità e
l’arte sostituiscono sempre il dolore e il religioso raccoglimento.
Fuor di Pompei, la Via delle Tombe s’aprì nel sobborgo Augusto
Felice, cioè immediatamente fuori della città, nè più nè meno dunque
che in Roma e in tutte le città, si può dire, del mondo romano.
V’erano per altro eccezioni: le Vestali avevano il privilegio del
sepolcro entro le mura e l’ebbero, per singolar privilegio, Valerio
Publicola, Tuberto, Fabrizio, Cesare; e Trajano fu il solo degli
imperatori cui venisse concessa la sepoltura in città. La famiglia
Claudia aveva pure tal privilegio della sepoltura sotto il Campidoglio.
I discendenti di Publicola, che con lui avevano ottenuto il diritto della
sepoltura in città, in fatto non se ne valsero, poichè, al dir di Plutarco,
contentavansi di mettere un ardente torchio sulla tomba di famiglia al
verificarsi d’ogni morte, facendo del resto i loro congiunti seppellire
nella contrada di Velia.
Di grandi e spesso enormi spese, come dissi, profondevano ne’
sepolcri e ne’ monumenti i Romani e ne stanno a testimonianza
ancora la piramide di Cajo Cestio, la tomba di Cecilia Metella e la
Mole Adriana e non era sempre un pensiero di sfarzo e d’orgoglio
che presiedeva a queste opere, ma più sovente il sentimento di pietà
e d’amore che li animava e ciò leggiadramente espresse il francese
Roucher ne’ seguenti versi che reco nel loro idioma:
Ce respect pour les morte, fruit d’une erreur grossière,

Touchait peu, je le sais, une froide poussière,
Qui, tôt ou tard s’envole éparse au gré des vents,
Et qui n’a plus enfin de nom chez les vivants;
Mais ces tristes honneurs, ces funèbres hommages
Ramenaient les regards sur des chères images;
Le cœur près des tombeaux traissaillait ranimé
Et l’on aimait encore ce qu’on avait aimé.
Epperò i ricchi fabbricavano nelle proprie ville i sepolcri in forma di

edicole di buona e severa architettura e le quali decoravano di
statue, di pitture e musaici, di vasi e di urne di eletti marmi. E
siccome sa il lettore che degli estinti non serbavansi che le ceneri
leggiere, come Paolo Emilio in Properzio dice alla consorte:
En sum quod digitis quinque levatur onus [279];
così non ad un solo defunto destinavasi ciascun sepolcreto, ma a

tutti i defunti d’una famiglia, compresi pure i liberti, collocandosi le
ceneri in altrettante nicchie; onde appellavasi sepulcrum familiare,
perchè sibi quis familiæque suæ constituebat [280], di che se ne trovò
esempio in Pompei; Sepulcrum comune dicevasi quella stanza che
riceveva le ceneri di più persone appartenenti a più famiglie,
disposte a due ollæ cinerariæ per colombajo.
Sepolcri ereditarj eran poi quelli quæ sibi hæredibusque suis, o quæ
paterfamilias jure hæreditario aquisivit [281]; ma se dovevan servire
per determinate persone, solevano apporvi le lettere H. M. H. N. S.
cioè Hoc monumentum hæredes non sequitur, o alle tre ultime
lettere sostituivansi queste A. H. N. T., vale a dire Ad Hæredes non
transit [282], come se ne ha memoria in quel passo di Orazio:
Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum

Hic dabat, heredes monumentum ne sequeretur [283].
Co’ sepolcri propriamente detti non voglionsi confondere i cenotafi,

monumenti onorarii, che venivano dal popolo eretti alla memoria di
quegli illustri uomini ch’erano morti per la patria; onde egregiamente
e con tutta ragione poteva Ugo Foscolo nel succitato suo Carme de’
Sepolcri dire:
Testimonianza a’ fasti eran le tombe,
e le annuali feste e le cerimonie religiose che inoltre vi si praticavano

valevano veramente a tramandare a’ posteri la memoria de’ nomi e
delle gesta gloriose:
Religïon che con diversi riti

Le virtù patrie e la pietà congiunta
Tradussero per lungo ordine di anni [284].
Nondimeno questi monumenti che si elevavano a spesa pubblica e

per cagione d’onore, rispondendo al significato delle due parole
greche onde il nome si componeva, non contenevano le ceneri o gli
avanzi del corpo della persona che si voleva onorare: erano
costruzioni semplicemente commemorative, come sono oggidì
talune di quelle che sorgono nel tempio di Santa Croce in Firenze,
che si vorrebbe fare il Panteon degli illustri italiani; onde Virgilio nel
lib. III dell’Eneide appellò eziandio tal sorta di tumuli tumulus inanis,
o vuoto, là appunto dove ricorda il cenotafio rizzato da Andromaca
ad Ettore suo marito.
I luoghi per altro, sui quali si innalzavano i cenotafi non erano sacri,
come quelli de’ sepolcri.
Ma se a sepolcri e monumenti di ricchi e maggiorenti erigevansi
cenotafii, mausolei, vôlte sepolcrali, piramidi ed altrettali opere
architettoniche e scultorie; per cittadini minori, o poveri, adottavansi
corrispondenti segni meno dispendiosi. Tali erano le columellæ,
dette anche dai Latini cippi; le mensæ, le tavole quadrangolari più
lunghe che larghe; i labellæ o labra, che erano pietre a forma di
bacino; le arcæ somiglianti a forzieri, sorrette per lo più su’ piedi di
lione o d’altro animale.
Ageno Orbico ricordò varii luoghi ne’ sobborghi di Roma, dove
stavano moltissimi sepolcri di persone del volgo e di schiavi.
Sestertium denominavasi il campo, pure fuori delle mura, dove
seppellivansi le persone ch’erano state per ordine degli imperatori
mandate a morte; nè a me è dato ricordarle, senza ad un tempo
rammemorare la interessantissima scena che vi fa svolgere nel suo
bello e dotto romanzo Tito Vezio il patriotta Luigi Castellazzo, cui una
straordinaria modestia ha consigliato ascondersi sotto il pseudonimo
di Anselmo Rivalta.
Allorchè sulle iscrizioni de’ sepolcri leggevansi le parole tacito
nomine, sottacendosi ad un tempo il nome delle persone alle quali
appartenevano, significavano esse che racchiudessero persone
dichiarate infami.
A’ sepolcri de’ semplici cittadini era espressamente vietato di
aggiungere fregi, ove non fossero o una colonna di non oltre i tre
cubiti di altezza, statue ed emblemi della professione che il defunto
aveva esercitata.
Le iscrizioni incominciavano colle due lettere greche Θ Κ, che
corrispondevano a Diis Manibus, come assai sovente usiam pur noi
sostituendo, secondo la nostra credenza, le lettere D. O. M. cioè,
p
Deo Optimo Maximo, o Χ il monogramma di Cristo.
Era poi concesso piantare presso le tombe olmi e cipressi, perchè
alberi non producenti frutti; ed educarvi olezzanti fiori, come
testimonia Ugo Foscolo nel lodatissimo suo Carme già citato:
Ma cipressi e cedri
Di puri effluvii i zefiri impregnando,
Perenne verde protendean sull’urne
Per memoria perenne....
Le fontane versando acque lustrali
Amaranti educavano e vïole
Su la funebre zolla [285].
Frequenti poi erano le piccole are accanto alle tombe pei sacrifici,
che nelle feste summentovate facevansi da congiunti ed eredi, a
placar l’ombre dei diletti loro morti.
Era tutta adunque una religione, venerata e profonda questa verso i
defunti, e dinnanzi alla quale s’arrestavano le disquisizioni ed i dubbi
anche de’ filosofi più miscredenti.
Nulla quindi di più consentaneo a tale comune reverenza pei defunti
e per le loro dimore, che l’esistenza di apposite leggi, le quali
guarentissero l’inviolabilità e il rispetto delle tombe. Troviamo infatti
nel Corpus Juris, prima nel Lib. XLVII il Tit. XII; poi tutto il Titolo XIX
che trattan De sepulcro violato. Nel primo è comminata l’infamia
come conseguenza dell’azione di violato sepolcro, oltre diverse altre
pene inflitte a chi manomettesse cadaveri, ossuarj e tombe: nel
secondo è irrogata la condanna alle miniere allo schiavo colto a
demolire sepolcri, ed alla relegazione se il faceva d’ordine od
autorità del padrone. Chiunque poi avesse violato i sepolcri domos
defunctorum, sottraendovi sassi, marmi, colonne, od altro qualunque
materiale, per servirsene ad uso di fabbrica, o turbando corpi sepolti
o reliquie, multato di ingente pena pecunaria; punito il giudice perfino
in venticinque libre d’oro quando avesse negletto di castigare i
violatori di sepolcri. E come per legge antica codesti profanatori di
tombe punivansi della pena del sacrilegio; così anche ai tempo del
basso impero si fu costretti a richiamare la medesima severa
sanzione penale; argomento codesto a ritenere che si fosse infiltrato
poco a poco ne’ degeneri nipoti la mancanza di rispetto a’ sepolcri.
Così era assolutamente vietato l’impedire, sotto pretesto di debito, la
sepoltura del defunto, colla comminatoria di cinquanta libre di multa,
e in difetto pagasse di sua persona avanti il giudice competente; non
potendosi tampoco nè molestare il moribondo, nè turbare il funerale,
pena l’infamia, e posta al bando la terza parte de’ beni del
disturbatore.
Nel libro XLVIII Digestorum, Tit. XXIV De cadaveribus Punitorum,
apprendiamo come non si potessero negare a’ congiunti i corpi di
coloro che fossero stati condannati nel capo, citandosi l’autorità del
divo Augusto, che nel libro X De Vita sua, ebbe a scrivere aver egli
ciò voluto che si osservasse. Il giureconsulto Paolo poi lasciò
ricordato che i cadaveri de’ condannati, dietro domanda di
chicchessia, si lasciasse che venissero dati alla sepoltura; solo i
deportati nelle isole ed i relegati, restando anche dopo la morte la
pena, non fosse lecito che venissero trasferiti e sepolti senza licenza
del Principe; ciò che del resto il Principe soventissime volte
accordava.
Finalmente, nel Lib. I. Receptarum sententiarum di Giulio Paolo, Tit.
XXI, che versa De sepulcris et Lugendis, è sancito come allora che
per invasione di fiume, o timore alcuno abbiasi a togliere un
cadavere già consegnato a perpetua sepoltura, compiuti prima
solenni sagrifici, abbiasi a compiere la traslazione di notte tempo;
che a non funestare i luoghi sacri della città, non sia lecito portar
cadaveri dentro di essa sotto minaccia di punizione; che colui che
trovasi in tempo di corrotto astener si debba dai convivii, dagli
ornamenti e dalle vesti bianche; che la spesa funeraria debbasi
imputare avanti tutti i debiti ereditarj, e per ultimo quegli che abbia
spese per seppellire un morto od a cagione de’ funerali di lui, possa
rivalersi appo l’erede, il padre od il padrone.
Il giureconsulto Paolo, alla legge ff. de injuriis, contemplò il fatto di
chi avesse lapidato la statua di un defunto, e non ammettendo nè
distinzioni, nè limitazioni, perchè l’animo maligno fosse evidente;
rispose doversi quel fatto punire siccome ingiuria: nè a lui fece velo il
vantaggio qualunque che da simile fatto ritenesse la storia,
registrando che le male opere di quel cittadino avessero condotto a
tanto sdegno il paese da meritare che dalla furia del popolo la sua
statua saxis cæsa fuisset venisse da’ sassi abbattuta.
Intorno a che l’illustre scrittore di penale diritto prof. Francesco
Carrara, nella sua dotta memoria Sulle ingiurie ai defunti, letta nello
Ateneo di Brescia, nella tornata del 15 giugno 1873 e pubblicata
nella Temi Zanclea, a modo di epifonema commenta: «Così
ragionavano gli antichi e così si durò a ragionare per secoli in Italia
ed in Germania, dove lo spirito non usurpa le veci della sapienza, e
dove una questione giuridica non si scioglie con un motto brillante.»
E venne con copia d’argomenti a conchiudere, pur tenendo conto
dell’interesse della storia, che sì sovente si invoca a diffamazione de’
defunti, che ultima conseguenza alla quale meni diritto un tale
interesse sia che le calunnie lanciate contro i defunti nei fatti relativi
alla vita pubblica dovrebbero dichiararsi perseguitabili ad azione
popolare, cioè ad azione pubblica esercitata dal Pubblico Ministero
nella sua rappresentanza dei contemporanei e dei posteri, cioè della
società tradita ed ingannata da maligno calunniatore; osservando
che Platone come moralista ci avrebbe guidato a questa conclusione
con la sua nota formula dei doveri che legano i vivi verso gli
estinti [286].
Via delle Tombe in Pompei. Vol. III, Cap. XXII.
Poichè li lettore sa tutto ciò, che sull’argomento de’ trapassati e de’

sepolcri praticavasi in Roma e fuori di essa ne’ luoghi ad essa
soggetti, restringendomi ora più presso al mio tema di Pompei,
usciamo insieme dalla Porta Ercolanese ed inoltriamo nella Via delle
Tombe di questa città, della quale era parte, anzi attraversava,
com’egli già conosce, il Borgo Augusto Felice, dissotterrato dalle
ceneri dal 1763 al 1770 e dal 1811 al 1814. La vista è imponente,
presentandosi tutta fiancheggiata da sontuosi monumenti. E
monumenti eziandio debbono essere stati sparsi per tutto il pendio
della collina, tanto essendoci dato d’argomentare dalle varie
elevazioni verdeggianti di essa.
È da questo punto, in cui s’è posto il piede nel sobborgo, il qual
potrebbesi dire dei morti, che è dato comprendere in un sol colpo
d’occhio tutto il corso della via antica infino ad oggi scoperta e di
ammirare nel suo complesso l’elegante magnificenza di tanti ipogei,
de’ quali fu detto a ragione presentare forme sconosciute
all’architettura attuale ed all’arti moderne.
È all’uscire del pari di questa porta, che m’avvenne di ricordare
altrove esservisi scoperto lo scheletro della sentinella, qui morta
fedele alla sua consegna. Era eziandio prossima a tal luogo la tomba
di M. Cerrinio Restituto, come ce lo appresero le due seguenti
iscrizioni, di cui l’una è la fedele ripetizione dell’altra:
M. CERRINIVS
RESTITVTVS
AVGVSTAL. LOC. D. D. D.
Nel mezzo della cappella, sacellum, era una piccola ara, avente
l’iscrizione medesima, ripetuta come dissi, ma disposta in questo
modo:
M. CERRINIVS
RESTITVTVS
AVGVSTALIS
LOCO DATO
D. D. [287].
Un semicerchio a manca, che dicevasi schola, perchè ad uso di

sedile, di tufo e pietre pomici, recava la seguente iscrizione, che
chiarisce aver appartenuto al sepolcro di Anio di Marco Vejo:
A. VEIO M. F. II VIR. I. D.
ITER QVINQ. TRIB. MILIT. AB. POPVL. EX D. D. [288].
Più grande è l’emiciclo detto di Mammia, scoperto nell’anno 1763,

che racchiudeva il sepolcro di questa donna, che fu sacerdotessa
pubblica, e al quale s’ascendeva per un passaggio aperto alle spalle
dell’emiciclo. Era il sepolcro meglio costruito che siasi scoperto in
Pompei. Aveva già un ordine di colonne joniche al di sopra di altro
ordine dorico, su cui posavano alcune statue. L’interno era decorato
da nicchie e pitture: in una delle prime stavano le ceneri di Mammia
in un’urna di terra cotta chiusa in altra di piombo. L’iscrizione, in
caratteri forti, così fu letta:
MAMMIAE P. F. SACERDOTI PVBLICAE LOCVS
SEPVLTVRAE DATVS DECVRIONVM DECRETO [289].
Su d’un piccolo pilastro a fior di terra e non discosto dal sepolcro di

Mammia, leggevasi l’iscrizione, che rammenta i versi che ho appena
riferiti del Venosino Poeta:
M. PORCI
M. F. EX DEC.
DECRET. IN
FRONTEM
PED. XXV
IN AGRVM
PED. XXV [290].
Avanti a questa tomba venne trovata una statua in abito consolare,

forse quella di Porcio stesso, il quale era per avventura il padre della
sacerdotessa Mammia.
Fra la tomba e l’emiciclo si rinvennero sedici cippi funerarii, parecchi
di essi di marmo, su taluno dei quali si decifrarono le seguenti
iscrizioni:
C. VENERIVS
EPAPHRODITVS
—
ISTACIDIA. N. F.
RVFILLA SACERD. PVBLICA
—
N. ISTACIDIO
CAMPANO
—
CN. MELISSAEVS
APER
—
ISTAC....
MENOIICI
Nello stesso luogo si trovarono frammenti di statue ed una lucerna in

terra cotta con una figuretta avente nelle mani un fiore in basso
rilievo, e colla iscrizione:
ANNVM NOVVM FAVSTVM FELICEM MIHI [291].
È da questa parte sinistra della via che si incontra quella casa che
comunemente vien detta essere il Pompejanum, o villeggiatura di
Cicerone, ch’egli col Tusculum prediligeva sovra tutte l’altre sue ville,
se per ornarla con magnificenza ebbe a incontrar debiti, come lasciò
scritto in una sua lettera ad Attico [292]. Ne ho già parlato altrove, nè
però mi ripeterò: solo piacendomi far notare al lettore come a ogni
modo, sia questa od altra la casa del grande Oratore Romano,
sarebbe sempre stata una ricca abitazione, che non tolse al suo
proprietario di abitarla e decorarla riccamente. L’essere nella non
lieta via delle tombe, dimostrerà ognor più come la religione de’
sepolcri non fosse accompagnata allora quanto adesso, per forza di
superstizione, da alcun pensiero di orrore. Ove poi si rifletta aver
Cicerone difeso Publio Silla, che fu il primo patrono della Colonia
Veneria Cornelia, nulla di più probabile apparirà che ne abbia
ricevuto in guiderdone il terreno di quella casa e poi anche la casa
stessa, che per essere nel Pagus Felix, spettava alla Colonia
militare, la quale, giusta quanto m’accadde di più volte notare, Lucio
Cornelio Silla vi aveva dedotta, e che però avesse appartenuto a lui.
Lungo questo lato è pur il sepolcro di Scauro, della tribù Menenia,
che vuolsi dal punto di vista archeologico considerare siccome il più
interessante, di quanti sepolcri si sono scoperti a Pompei. La base è
quadrata ed è di tufo vulcanico: essa poggia con tre gradini sovra
altra base più grande della stessa forma e materia, e nella quale è
praticata la camera sepolcrale, o columbarium, con quattordici
nicchie, come quadrato ne è il cippo. Il lato che è ora rivestito d’un
ampio tavolo di marmo, il cui angolo superiore sinistro, essendo
spezzato e perduto, lasciò imperfetta la iscrizione, che completata
non a guari dallo studio, suona così:
A VMBRICIO A. F. MEN
SCAVRO
II VIR. I. D.
HVIC DECVRIONXES LOCVM MONVM.
ET HS ∞ ∞ IN FVNERE ET STATVAM AEQUESTR
FORO PONENDAM CENSVERVNT
SCAVRVS PATER FILIO [293].
Il gran basamento inferiore offriva già rappresentazioni a basso

rilievo di stucco, oggi pel gelo compiutamente scomparse. In uno de’
quadri vedevansi due bestiarii con lance: l’un d’essi combatteva
contro di un lupo, l’altro contro di un toro. Alcuni cani inseguivano de’
cinghiali furiosi, cervi e lepri correvano a precipitosa fuga. In un
quadro superiore scorgevansi gladiatori armati di tutto punto che
battevansi a oltranza, altri a cavallo che scagliavano lance a costoro;
era curioso che dovessero menar botte all’orba, perchè le visiere de’
loro elmetti mancassero delle fessure per gli occhi. Interessa il
vederne ricordati in grossolani caratteri neri i nomi con una cifra
accanto; indicante il numero delle vittorie riportate. L’uno è nominato
Bebrix, cioè della Bebricia in Asia e riportò quindici vittorie, il suo
avversario è Nubilior e ne conta undici; di altri due non è leggibile il
nome. Degli altri quattro gladiatori, due secutores e due retiarii, alle
prese fra loro, leggesi il nome di Nitimus, reziario vittorioso cinque
volte, e di Hippolitus, secutor, degli altri due no. Quello che pugna
con Nitimus vedesi ferito, cadere implorando la pietà degli spettatori,
offerendo ad un tempo la gola al ferro del vincitore, come era la
pratica già da me esposta nel capitolo dell’Anfiteatro. Superiormente
a questi bassi rilievi stava una iscrizione, nella quale si lesse il nome
di Quintus Ampliatus, il capo forse di questa famiglia gladiatoria, ed
al quale per avventura spettava la tomba, perocchè si creda da molti
che la tavola di marmo colla iscrizione di Scauro surriferita, trovatasi
bensì di poco discosta, non le appartenesse, ma là venisse
collocata, perchè scomparsa, per la rovina del tempo, ogni
decorazione.
Eravi un terzo quadro sulla porticina con cinque figure di gladiatori
armati, di cui l’uno egualmente ferito a morte.
Sepolcro circolare è quello che segue subito, con base quadrata e
torre rotonda su di essa. Sulle piccole piramidi del recinto sono i
bassirilievi di stucco rappresentanti una donna che fa l’offerta su di
una acerra, e un’altra che depone un lino sul suo bambino caduto
sulle rovine, forse quelle del tremuoto del 63.
Appresso a questi sepolcri elevasi a poca altezza un cippo, sulla cui
sommità figura una testa, sotto la quale si allargano le spalle,
rendendo da lunge la figura d’uomo, quasi significasse l’ombra d’un
defunto. Sul ventre, o specchio che vogliasi altrimenti dire, di essa, è
questa iscrizione:
IVNONI
TYCHES IVLIAE
AVGVSTAE VENER [295].
Questa Tiche è la stessa Tiche Nevoleja che ha altro maggiore

monumento in questa medesima funerale campagna? Taluni il
pensarono: altri la vogliono una sorella di essa: ambe poi furono
certamente addette al servizio di Giulia figliuola d’Augusto.
Non credasi qui che la parola Junoni accenni alla Dea di questo
nome, come erroneamente interpretò l’abate Romanelli, ma sì al
genio tutelare di Tiche; perocchè Junones si dicessero appunto le
fate e gli angeli custodi di sesso femminino, dei quali si credeva che
uno nascesse insieme a ciascuna donna, destinato a vegliarla tutta
la vita ed a morire con lei. Sono figurate, dice Rych nel suo
Dizionario delle Antichità, come giovani donzelle, colle ali di
pipistrello o di falena e vestite da capo a piedi come è in una
dipintura di Pompei; mentre l’angelo maschile (Genius, Silvanus)
fosse abitualmente rappresentato nudo, o pressochè nudo e colle ali
d’un uccello.
Tibullo consacra alla Giunone, o angelo custode di Delia e in nome
di costei, l’elegia sesta del Lib. IV, che comincia appunto:
Natalis Juno sanctos cape thuris honores

Quos tibi dat tenera docta puella manu [296].
In quanto all’ultima parola della iscrizione, Vener, io seguii la

comune interpretazione, leggendo Venerea; altri però lessero
Augustæ Veneri, cioè a Venere Augusta: meglio sarebbe stato allora

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Materials and Dematerialization 2nd

Edition Vaclav Smil

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic Vaclav Paris

Choral Music: Methods and Materials 2nd Edition, (Ebook

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Optical Thin Films and Coatings 2e : From Materials to

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data applied for

Cover Design: Wiley

Set in 10.5/13.5pt Times by Straive, Pondicherry, India

China’s Energy Global Catastrophes and Trends

Preface: Why and How ix

1. What Gets Included 1

2. How We Got Here 11

3. What Matters Most 61

4. How the Materials Flow 103

5. Are We Dematerializing? 159

6. Material Outlook 199

by the rise of commercial chemical syntheses producing an ­enormous variety of

Marcos Mello/Adobe Stock

minerals (Eurostat 2022a). Eurostat’s methodological guides for economy-­wide

downstream uses. In contrast, materials that become embedded in long-­lasting

categories have been traditionally studied in separation (resulting in rich literature

2.1 Materials Used by Organisms

2.1.1 Tools and Construction

2.1.2 Soil Movements

2.2 Materials in Prehistory

2.2.2 Processed Materials

2.3 Ancient and Medieval Materials

First, woody phytomass used in construction consisted of small trunks, tree

2.3.5 Non-­ferrous Metals

Naturæ imperio gemimus, quum funus adultæ

Seppellivansi quindi la notte allo splendore delle faci. Le loro ossa

Sed cœnam funeris hæres

Se poi l’erede limitavasi a sola distribuzione al pubblico di carni

A egregie cose il forte animo accendono

E il medesimo nostro grande Poeta aveva poco prima cantato come

Ossa tibi juro per matris, et ossa parentis.

E Quintiliano, più tardi, così esprime il dolore provato per la moglie e

Per illos manes, numina doloris mei.

Nè con queste dimostrazioni aveva fine il lutto.

Hanc, quia justa ferunt, dixere Feralia lucem [272];

si vennero poco a poco aumentando. Pur nondimeno tenevasi che

Est honor et tumulis. Animas placate paternas,

Non lascerà il lettore in codesta citazione di rilevare la costumanza

. . . . Vos pueri et puellæ

E il sacerdote compiva allora il sagrificio, invocando i nomi terribili di

Experiar quid concedatur in illos,

alludendo appunto a siffatto costume.

Non altrimenti, se mi è lecito esprimere qui il mio proprio sentimento,

Ce respect pour les morte, fruit d’une erreur grossière,

Epperò i ricchi fabbricavano nelle proprie ville i sepolcri in forma di

En sum quod digitis quinque levatur onus [279];

così non ad un solo defunto destinavasi ciascun sepolcreto, ma a

Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

Preface: Why and How ix

1. What Gets Included 1

2. How We Got Here 11

3. What Matters Most 61

4. How the Materials Flow 103

5. Are We Dematerializing? 159

6. Material Outlook 199

by the rise of commercial chemical syntheses producing an enormous variety of

minerals (Eurostat 2022a). Eurostat’s methodological guides for economy-wide

downstream uses. In contrast, materials that become embedded in long-lasting

2.3.5 Non-ferrous Metals