First Use of Coal for Energy

"Long before coal fueled the Industrial Revolution, ancient societies around the world were already exploiting its power to smelt metal or heat water . . . Evidence such as fragments of low-quality coal in fireplaces suggests people have been sporadically burning coal since the late Paleolithic, more than 10,000 years ago. But the first reliable written records of the widespread use of coal don’t show up until about 2000 years ago, during China’s Han dynasty . . . Now, archaeologists excavating a large Bronze Age settlement known as Jirentaigoukou, in China’s modern-day Xinjiang Autonomous Region, have pushed that date back by many centuries . . . The settlement was also awash in coal, from mere cinders to lumps as big as eggs. It was found heaped in large storage pits and inside houses, crushed alongside stone tools, and burned within cooking hearths and smelting furnaces . . . they appeared to have built the earliest known system for large-scale consumption . . . An earlier occupation of Jirentaigoukou, 4600 to 4300 years ago, left no signs of coal burning. Archaeologists found only charcoal — made from partially burned wood — within these earliest layers. 'People typically use the easiest and closest means available for energy . . . This usually means burning woods and twigs that are easily accessible until they exhaust nearby forests.'”