inkSoot and water
The commonest ink on earth: something burnt, something wet
What it is
Ash or soot from a fire, ground and mixed with water, oil, plant juice or animal bile.
The long version
Across the whole map the base ingredient is carbon and the variable is the liquid. The Philippines: soot or ashes with water, oil, plant extracts like sugarcane juice, or pig bile. Kurdistan: soot with breast milk, reportedly. Bosnia: soot with honey, and sometimes saliva. Ötzi's marks were made from soot or fireplace ash.
Inference — carbon is the pigment every human group already had. Any fire makes it, it does not fade, and the particle is large enough to stay where it is put. Nothing else available before industrial chemistry does all three.
Connected to
Named here by
- Ötzi What the pigment turned out to be.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Batok — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Batok — Wikipedia (en)
- Ötzi — Wikipedia (en)
- Sicanje — Wikipedia (en)
- Deq (tattoo) — Wikipedia (en)
- Carbon black — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there