The Wood Age: Humans and the Forests That Made Them Human with John Perlin

Mind, Body, and Soil

In this episode of the podcast I sit down with John Perlin, whose book A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization explores the history of, well, of us. As you’ll hear in this episode the history of humans is inextricably intertwined, or made possible, with the history of trees and of wood. Wood is our materia prima, the foundational material of both our ecology on earth and the civilizations we have built. We explore the cycles of humanity and their relationship with wood throughout the last million years, touching on the Stone Age (which is really the wood age), Rome and Greece, the American revolution, the Industrial revolution, containerization and the green revolution, and the present. John’s book offers us a mirror to see our activities and how the stories we tell ourselves are ones we’ve been telling ourselves over and over again.

Find John Perlin:

A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization

Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy

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