n the 5th century AD, oil wells that were excavated by humans appeared near Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire. The earliest use of oil for war was also in Middle East. ‘Petroleum, Money ,Power’ says that Homer’s famous book ‘Iliad’ states that ‘the Trojans kept throwing fire on the clippers, and the ship suddenly raised a fame that was difficult to extinguish.’ When the Persian’s king Samuels was preparing to capture Babylon, someone reminded him that the Babylonians could carry out street fighting. Samuels said that he can use fire attach, ‘We have a lot of bitumen and shredded hemp, which can quickly lead the fire around. The those on the roof either leave quickly or swallowed up by fire.’
In the 7th century, the Byzantine mixed crude oil with lime, then ignited and shot with a bow and arrow, or thrown by hand to attack the enemy’s ships. The Baku region of Azerbaijan is rich in oil seedling and gas seedling. The residents here have collected oil seedlings as fuel in an early time, and use it to treat the skin disease of the camels. In 1837, there are 52 oil pits dig by human and increased to 82 in 1827, but the output is small.
In Europe, from the German’s Bavaria, Italy’s Sicily and the Po River Valley, to Poland’s Galicia, Romania, since the middle age, there have been records of oil sleeping from the ground, and regards crude oil as a ‘universal medicine’. Farmers in Galicia, Romania have long dug wells to produce oil. It was not American, but Europeans, who first extracted kerosene from crude oil for lighting. In 1940s to 1950s, a pharmacist in Liviv made a kerosene lamp with the help of a blacksmith. In 1854, kerosene lamps had become a commodity on the Vienna market. In 1859, 36,000 barrels crude oil were mined in Europe, mainly from Galicia and Romania.
Shen Kuo of the Song Dynasty of China read in the book that ‘Gaonu Country has drowning water and is flammable.’ It is very strange. How can ‘water’ burn? He decided to conduct a field trip. During the inspection, Shen Kuo discovered a brown liquid. The locals called it ‘stone paint’ and stone fat. They used it to cook, light and warm. Shen Kuo figured out the nature and use of this liquid and gave it a new name called oil. And he mobilized the people to promote the use, thereby reducing the felling of trees. Shen Kuo wrote in his book ‘Meng Xi Bi Tan’, ‘there is oil in the territory of Yan, Yan…It is like lacquer, burning like hemp, but the smoke is too strong to make the curtain very dark…This thing will go big in the world, since the beginning of the world. As oil is too much, born endless in the earth, not as pine is sometimes exhausted.’ Shen Kuo found oil, and predicted, ‘the thing will go big in the world.’ is very rare.
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