When a tree falls in the forest, but nobody comes along for 45,000 years, can you still hear it?
Recipe for 'preserved wood' (not 'petrified' wood): take one dead tree, cover with enough mud or freezing water to keep oxygen out, wait. How long? Perhaps only
45 years, in the case of the Suriname hardwoods being harvested with underwater robot saws. Or maybe around
100 years, for the millions of logs that sank in Lake Superior during logging operations, now being brought to the surface. But the carbon dating of
45,000 years on the Kauri wood being 'logged' in New Zealand swamps and turned into furniture has these beat.
posted by woodblock100
on Mar 22, 2010 -
51 comments
