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Yam, cultivate and cook
- dccoolgai 8y agoI've followed this channel for a few years. It's fun to watch his whole series from the beginning, because he builds on what he made in previous videos. Like one video will show how to make a kiln and the next will be pottery in the kiln.
- Waterluvian 8y agoThere was one video where in the same video he went from some very basic tool to an advanced version of that tool, using each iteration to build the next. I think it might have been a drill but I can't recall. It was surprisingly inspirational.
- lazysheepherd 8y agoI definitely agree. I think this is the video you mentioned. I have watched it myself many times as well. "Primitive Technology: Cord drill and Pump drill" > https://youtu.be/ZEl-Y1NvBVI https://youtu.be/ZEl-Y1NvBVI
- blisterpeanuts 8y agoThe pump drill/firestarter is a particularly interesting bit of tech; it dates back to at least the Phoenicians (1000 BCE).
- tootie 8y agoHe reset about 6 videos with a new location, but yeah, it's awesome. My kids love it too.
- goda90 8y agoIt was so exciting when he finally built up to smelting bog iron. He only got a little amount, so not sure you could say he hit iron age technology, but it was cool to see that potential with such simple clay and fire.
- beat 8y agoThere's a lot of sophistication in "primitive" agriculture. Humans have always been as intelligent and ambitious as they are today; they just didn't always have today's tools. Yams always make me think of Gone with the Wind. The climax of Act III (not labeled as such, but stories are stories) is Scarlett O'Hara at her family's plantation. Yankee soldiers have come through and taken every scrap of food, but they didn't recognize the yams as food, because it's a Southern thing (yams in the South came over from Africa with the slave trade). So after they leave, she goes outside, digs up a yam with her bare hands, and starts eating it raw. And then she gives this amazing speech... (edited for book-quoted text) "As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." And that's the Scarlett O'Hara of the rest of the book/movie, the relentlessly resourceful one who will never allow herself to be victimized by anything or anyone.
- justinator 8y agoInteresting, in the movie it's changed to a radish.
- debacle 8y agoHumans have always had the same/similar capacity for intelligence, but the modern world creates people with IQs significantly higher than the median would have been only 150 years ago.
- jfz 8y agoBecause IQ is a measure of abstract analytical and pattern-matching intelligence, our economic shift towards more analytical/intelligence-driven work causes us to practice those skills more. I could say that FQ (factory-production quotient) has decreased over the last 150 years, but that doesn't mean that people are more or less intelligent, only that they practice different things.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
- fouc 8y agoHe made it sound like his yams aren't that tasty, I guess it depends a lot on the strain and growing conditions.
- newnewpdro 8y agoAre yams ever tasty plainly roasted? Most people wouldn't enjoy eating a plain baked potato. Some salt, paprika, and butter makes a world of difference.
- whistlerbrk 8y agoPaprika on a yam? Yeah, yams are unbelievably sweet when exposed to direct fire, like candy sweet. But I'm talking about the Garnet and Japanese varieties, this might just be a less cultivated specie he found locally and just went with it.
- newnewpdro 8y agoPaprika on everything But I was referring to plain potatoes, I've never had a real Yam, my understanding is that sweet potatoes are not the same thing.
- cirgue 8y agoNo, they aren’t. Sweet potatoes are extremely flavorful when roasted by themselves, yams not so much.
- _carl_jung 8y agoLike the other reply to this comment, I think you're referring to sweet potatoes. As an aside, you're right about baked/roasted sweet potatoes. Their GI when baked is in the mid 90s!
- starpilot 8y agoActually, yes. They're sold hot & fresh as street food in South Korea: http://crazykoreancooking.com/foodandculture/Koreas%20Love%20Affair%20with%20Sweet%20Potatoes http://crazykoreancooking.com/foodandculture/Koreas%20Love%2...
- ivankirigin 8y agoThis is probably my favorite youtube channel.
- lazysheepherd 8y agoIf categorized very roughly, Primitive Technology would be the best in it's wide category for me. But I cannot say it is the best channel for me among Vsauce, Kurzgesgt, CrashCourse, and many others.
- PuffinBlue 8y agoYeah, there is an awful lot of really fantastic content produced on YouTube now. It's getting to the point where there is so much quality that discovery of it all is getting hard. In the spirit of your answer, I would say these other channels are also outstanding in their categories: Any of Brady Haran's (Numberphile/Sixty Symbols/Objectivity etc) Fully Charged Show (electric vehicles/renewable energy) Nick Carver (film photography) Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics (watch a few to grok the style) Kevin Mullins (Fuji users photography and more) Explaining Computers (hard to categorise, that's why it's good) There are many many many more but I think most of those are really widely known, perhaps some of the above aren't quite as widely watched and they're very worth it.
- yarosv 8y agoHighly recommend Technology Connections for old tech.
- evmar 8y agoBuy him a coffee each time he releases a video: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2945881 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2945881 (I have no particular connection to the channel or Patreon, I just like that I can support this channel because I also love it!)
- vinceguidry 8y agoMan I love that Patreon exists. Just by the collective weight of $1-2 donations, this guy can support himself just by making these videos. $6k per video isn't amazing, but it ain't too shabby either. We live in wondrous times.
- craftyguy 8y agoIt would be interesting to see a way to scale up production to produce more than just a couple of meals.
- loeg 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ajkzVf-VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ajkzVf-VM
- craftyguy 8y ago.. using the same (or similarly 'primative') technique.
- loeg 8y agoIt doesn't scale up. That's why it isn't used.
- craftyguy 8y agoFalse. Tribes in Papua New Guinea still grow food without industrial equipment, using technology that has changed little in the last tens of thousands of years. No shit it doesn't scale to feed millions, but it scales in some way to feed more than one guy on youtube.
- jschwartzi 8y agoYou kill the rats and the pigs that come for your yams then smoke the meat.
- wool_gather 8y agoIndeed. He has two other (earlier) videos of him building gardens, one with cassava, which he says is a very high-output food source. He also notes "A person could potentially be nearly self-sufficient from a small plot of sweet potatoes." Presumably it should scale for a small group, since they could share the work. https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/planting-cassava-and-yams/ https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/plantin... https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/sweet-potato-patch/ https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/sweet-p...
- IIIIIIIIII 8y agoMy favorite thing this guy does is not talk, for some reason.
- tootie 8y agoThere's another channel called kiwami japan about a guy who mostly is making knives out of things or other silly metal crafts. He also doesn't talk in most of them. I think the sound of banging wood or polishing metal is just very relaxing.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoHe does do (hardcoded) captions though. But yeah, most of that is seemingly inefficient home crafts, e.g. using hand drills and saws and lots of fast-forward sharpening.
- m0nty 8y agoIshitani is also very good. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q
- atipmt 8y agoYes, I think that is the main reason people enjoy his videos. I remember him stating somewhere, that he wanted to make this type of videos, because when he watches instructional videos, he always skips to the part where things are shown (and there is no talking).
- moogly 8y agoAgreed. Very refreshing that he's not engaging in that parasocial stuff that most Youtubers do. He let's his videos do the talking. And none of that "don't forget to like, subscribe, and write a question or comment below" mantra that everyone else nags about. Drives me crazy. Just when we finally got rid of the useless "Press Escape to exit fullscreen" nag...
- hjorthjort 8y agoI clicked this fully expecting "yam", "cultivate" and "cook" to be archaic Unix tools. Instead I got this. Such a happy surprise.
- cpburns2009 8y agoIf we anything they'd be named something like "ym", "cv", or "ck" if they were Unix tools. I was expecting a new set of JavaScript libraries.
- int_19h 8y agoMy guesses from the title were, in order: 1) A new JavaScript framework; 2) something to do with code quality; and 3) a new build system. Probably all related. I was pleasantly surprised, as well.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- knowThySelfx 8y agoI yam what I yam, said the caveman. Yummy was heard in the background.
- hyperpallium 8y agoInteresting, the enclosure need only be big enough to cover the tubers themselves. > ...conventional farming practice of clearing trees to make fields. Instead the yam vine uses the trees as scaffolding to climb on, allowing it to reach the light in the forest canopy. The vines would have to climb a long way, depending on tree height. (Obviously unacceptable for "primitive technology", but) cooking in aluminium foil avoids loss to charring, and is reusable,
- albertfrostt 8y agoInterestingly, aluminum is a really really new material for us. Wasn't really available until ~1950, and used to be more rare and valuable than gold.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoHow's that? Hard to refine? I did hear elsewhere that aluminium is one of the most common metals on the world, possibly even moreso than iron.
- shagie 8y agoAluminium is a common element. Refining it to a metal is a very difficult process (compared to other metals). It was so valuable that it was part of the showing off a young United States did for the Washington Monument. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.html http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.ht... > Frishmuth proposed that the pyramid be made of aluminum at a quoted price of $75, and if he was unsuccessful in casting it in aluminum he would cast it in aluminum bronze and plate it with gold for a total cost of $50, or, if platinum-plated, for $75. Aluminum bronze was an alloy of 90 parts copper and 10 parts aluminum and was quite abundant on the commercial market in 1884. The principal manufacturer was the Cowles Brothers of Niagara Falls, New York, who used a patented thermal process employing an electric resistance furnace and a raw material containing aluminum oxide and copper. The aluminum produced was always combined with the copper and could not be separated from it.
- 8y ago
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoA tip: turn on captions. The creator somewhat famously doesn't talk, but does provide really informative captions for each step of the build/experiment process. Related: if you like this and want more I recently read a book series called Bonesetter that has a protagonist who lives in primitive times and it tells the story of a person kicked from their tribe, but who prospers by building Primitive Technology type inventions. https://www.amazon.com/Bonesetter-Book-1-Laurence-Dahners-ebook/dp/B003ODI7Z0/ https://www.amazon.com/Bonesetter-Book-1-Laurence-Dahners-eb...
- mabbo 8y agoAnother tip: watch it once without the captions, then again with them. There's more 'wonder' this way.
- chucksmash 8y agoWould also recommend. I watched nearly all of these videos without captions when I first came across the channel before I realized there were captions. It's fun to "play along at home" and try to figure out why he's doing something without the captions.
- hrnnnnnn 8y agoI had no idea, thanks for the tip!
- loeg 8y ago> This form of farming is a good way to get around the conventional farming practice of clearing trees to make fields. Yeah, you harvested two yams (less than a day's calories) over a six month period. That doesn't scale up the way modern farming practices do.
- gcb0 8y agothe primitive tech blogger guy is not trying to live off the land. he just have a Survivor/Bigbrother kinda of tv show for survival nerds. he probably live off the proceeds of paracord bracelets and pocket knife banners :)
- loeg 8y agoAgain, I was commenting specifically on this claim: > This form of farming is a good way to get around the conventional farming practice of clearing trees to make fields. It's not a good form of farming, because it's both low density and expensive.
- ekimekim 8y agoDepends on your criteria. If you only aim to feed a small group, it is significantly less cost to make a handful of enclosures than to clear a large amount of space for a field, even if the field is more efficient at scale.
- DougWebb 8y agoThe point is that "a handful of enclosures" would only provide a few meals for a small group but would take six months to produce them. The group needs to eat for the entire six months. Let's say each enclosure produces three-days worth of yams in six months. To feed one person for a year you need 100 enclosures, and you need to stagger their planting so you can harvest them continously. Each enclosure takes up about one square meter, so you need a line of them 100m long for each person in your group. You also need space to walk between them, so you need 3m for each two lines of enclosures. For a ten-person group, that's a 100m x 30m yam farm.
- atipmt 8y agoI stumbled on his videos a couple of months ago. Sadly, I only realized yesterday that there were captions that described his process, but watching it without isn't too bad either. He does things in a very evident manner and it's pretty relaxing just watching him do his thing.
- distances 8y agoI prefer without captions, it's more relaxing and I'm not planning to replicate the feats anyway. :)
- blisterpeanuts 8y agoWhat a great idea, to feature this fellow's Primitive Technology blog (and his outstanding Youtube channel) here on a high tech news site. Fire making, clay pots, mud huts, stone axes, rope, hunting weapons -- these are what kept people alive for eons, and ironically in our modern high tech era, many if not most of these skills are largely forgotten by all but a few remaining primitive tribes and archivists like him. These videos are worth watching not just to celebrate these high achievements but also to disseminate and preserve the knowledge. Should you find yourself stranded in a forest hundreds of miles from civilization, you may indeed need to build a friction fire, knap a stone knife, weave some cordage, rough up a shelter, and hunt for food. As a "primitive survival skills" fan (I'm a viewer, not a doer) I have learned so much that I feel a certain confidence that were I to somehow fall off civilization's ship, and be forced to fend for myself, or to help a group of stranded individuals to survive, we would somehow make it.
- mljoe 8y agoI think it is interesting to reflect on the idea that high technology builds on top of primitive technology. Just as he uses past tools to make more complex tools, every human era of technology builds upon the last. You could say primitive stone tools are in the recipe for developing an ICBM or a semiconductor if you go back far enough.
- wool_gather 8y agoBrings to mind the famous bone club -> space station transition from the 2001 film.
- dvtv75 8y agoI think that's actually meant to be an orbital nuclear launcher, making the comparison even more appropriate.
- equalarrow 8y agoOh yay, someone posted this! I’ve been a subscriber to the primitive technology channel for quite some time. The things this guy makes are truly awesome. I put his videos sometime for my kids because they’re actual worthwhile to talk to them about what he’s doing. I often think of perception of time when I watch him work. Tens of thousands of years ago, when humans worked like this, their concept of time was completely different than ours. I’ve read comments by the guy that says some of these projects have taken many weeks. With our instant gratification culture, it’s good to reflect on his achievements and timescales. I’ve also practiced making fire with hand drill and it’s hard. But when it works, it’s awesome. A primal connection to the past. I recommend watching the video on how he makes lime. Really good stuff.