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History of Oil: Regions and Uses of Petroleum in the Classical and Medieval Periods

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Encyclopedia of Petroleum Geoscience

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Definition

Petroleum is not a recent discovery, it was known to various ancient peoples in Asia, North Africa, Europe, and America where it seeped to the surface and was used in various forms for at least 70,000 years. It was most widely used to caulk ships, pave roads, cement buildings, waterproof canals, heal skin diseases, kill lice, and preserve mummies (Novelli and Sella 2009). The term petroleum (Latin “rock oil”) was popularized by Georgius Agricola in his 1546 book De Natura Fossilium. The Arabic-Persian word, naft, and the Greek-Latin word, naptha (the origin of the modern word naphthalene), come from the Akkadian-Assyrian word, naptha, used for liquid petroleum in Mesopotamia, the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in modern-day Iraq.

Introduction

Prehistoric hunters used bitumen to attach flint spear points to wooden shafts as early as 70,000 years ago (Boëda et al. 1996, 2008), one of the earliest known human uses of a petroleum-related product. They probably...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eni Natural Resources, Milan, Italy

    Jonathan Craig

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  1. Jonathan Craig
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Correspondence to Jonathan Craig .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Rasoul Sorkhabi

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Craig, J. (2020). History of Oil: Regions and Uses of Petroleum in the Classical and Medieval Periods. In: Sorkhabi, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Petroleum Geoscience. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02330-4_38-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02330-4_38-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02330-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02330-4

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