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      <p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="As this mosaic reveals, pearls have been treasured for countless centuries. " class="richtext-image full-width" height="465" width="618"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-01.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>As this mosaic reveals, pearls have been treasured for countless centuries. <div class="credit"> </div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<h3>
	Symbols of wealth and power</h3>
<p>
	Before the creation of cultured pearls in the early 1900s, natural pearls were so rare and expensive that they were reserved almost exclusively for the noble and very rich. A jewelry item that today's working women might take for granted, a 16-inch strand of perhaps 50 pearls, often costs between $500 and $5,000. At the height of the Roman Empire, when pearl fever reached its peak, the historian Suetonius wrote that the Roman general Vitellius financed an entire military campaign by selling just one of his mother's pearl earrings.</p>
<p>
	No one will ever know who were the earliest people to collect and wear pearls. George Frederick Kunz, whom I like to call America's first gemologist, in his 1908 masterpiece, <cite>The Book of the Pearl</cite>, states his belief that an ancient fish-eating tribe, perhaps along the coast of India, initially appreciated the shape and lustre of saltwater pearls, which they discovered while opening oysters for food.</p>
<blockquote>
	Pearls played the pivotal role at the most celebrated banquet in literature.</blockquote>
<p>
	No matter the origin, a reverence for pearls spread throughout the world over the ensuing millennia. India's sacred books and epic tales abound with pearl references. One legend has the Hindu god Krishna discovering pearls when he plucks the first one from the sea and presents it to his daughter Pandaïa on her wedding day. China's long recorded history also provides ample evidence of the importance of pearls. In the Shu King, a 23rd-century B.C. book, the scribe sniffs that as tribute, a lesser king sent "strings of pearls not quite round."</p>
<p>
	In Egypt, decorative mother-of-pearl was used at least as far back as 4200 B.C., but the use of pearls themselves seems to have been later, perhaps related to the Persian conquest in the fifth century B.C. Rome's pearl craze reached its zenith during the first century B.C. Roman women upholstered couches with pearls and sewed so many into their gowns that they actually walked on their pearl-encrusted hems. Caligula, having made his horse a consul, decorated it with a pearl necklace.</p>
<p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="The Romans and Egyptians prized pearls above all other gems. " class="richtext-image full-width" height="332" width="432"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-02.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>The Romans and Egyptians prized pearls above all other gems. <div class="credit"> </div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<p>
	Pearls, in fact, played the pivotal role at the most celebrated banquet in literature. To convince Rome that Egypt possessed a heritage and wealth that put it above conquest, Cleopatra wagered Marc Antony she could give the most expensive dinner in history. The Roman reclined as the queen sat with an empty plate and a goblet of wine (or vinegar). She crushed one large pearl of a pair of earrings, dissolved it in the liquid, then drank it down. Astonished, Antony declined his dinner—the matching pearl—and admitted she had won. Pliny, the world's first gemologist, writes in his famous <cite>Natural History</cite> that the two pearls were worth an estimated 60 million sesterces, or 1,875,000 ounces of fine silver ($9,375,000 with silver at $5/ounce).</p>
<p>
	The Arabs have shown the greatest love for pearls. The depth of their affection for pearls is enshrined in the Koran, especially within its description of Paradise, which says: "The stones are pearls and jacinths; the fruits of the trees are pearls and emeralds; and each person admitted to the delights of the celestial kingdom is provided with a tent of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds; is crowned with pearls of incomparable lustre, and is attended by beautiful maidens resembling hidden pearls."</p>
<p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Over time, a range of pearl styles became available to royalty and commoners alike. " class="richtext-image full-width" height="328" width="432"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-03.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Over time, a range of pearl styles became available to royalty and commoners alike. <div class="credit"> </div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<h3>
	Pearl Harbors</h3>
<p>
	During the long history of pearls, the principal oyster beds lay in the Persian Gulf, along the coasts of India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and in the Red Sea. Chinese pearls came mainly from freshwater rivers and ponds, whereas Japanese pearls were found near the coast in salt water. Nearly all the pearls in commerce originated from those few sources. Over the next millennium only three substantive events altered what appeared to be a very stable pattern. Considering the minimal state of pearling in the United States today, it is impressive that two of the three developments occurred in the New World.</p>
<p>
	As Europe raced to capitalize on what Columbus had stumbled upon, the major powers of the day concentrated on spheres of influence. Spain focused its efforts in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central America, the Spanish forced slaves to dive for pearls. The English colonizers along North America's Atlantic coast and French explorers to the north and west, all found native Americans wearing pearls, and they discovered freshwater pearls in the Ohio, Mississippi, and Tennessee River basins. So many gems were exported to Europe that the New World quickly gained the appellation "Land of Pearls."</p>
<blockquote>
	Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle maker, had a dream and a hard-working wife, Ume.</blockquote>
<p>
	What is now the United States became famous for two products. Its best freshwater pearls fueled a ready market overseas, purchased by people who, unlike the then less sophisticated frontier Americans, knew the rarity and value of large, round, lustrous pearls. Many of the best examples made their way into Europe's royal gem collections, where they can still be seen on display, usually misidentified as saltwater pearls from the Orient. America also produced mother-of-pearl buttons, which it exported all over the world. Iowa became the center of the trade, shipping billions of iridescent fasteners until World War II, when newly invented plastic virtually drove quality buttons out of the market.</p>
<p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Mother of Pearl" class="richtext-image full-width" height="327" width="432"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-04.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Mother-of-pearl, the iridescent coating inside oyster shells, once formed the foundation of a thriving button industry in the U.S. <div class="credit"> </div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<p>
	While North America set a new standard for large freshwater pearls, white saltwater pearls from the coasts of Panama and Venezuela competed with pearls from Bahrain, and black saltwater pearls from the Bay of California (in what is now Mexico) provided an alternative to Tahitian blacks. More pearls arrived in Spain than the country's aristocratic market could absorb. As with the emeralds it was mining in Colombia, Spain found ready buyers for its new pearls across Europe and in India.</p>
<p>
	Those pearl supplies continued into the 1800s, until overfishing in Central American waters and in North American streams depleted the beds. Pollution also took its toll as the United States industrialized. Then, toward the end of the last century, the single event that forever reshaped the pearl trade slowly unfolded in the isolated island nation of Japan.</p>
<p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Kokichi Mikimoto " class="richtext-image full-width" height="418" width="541"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-05.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Son of a Japanese noodle maker, Kokichi Mikimoto single-handedly launched the cultured-pearl industry. <div class="credit"> </div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<h3>
	A Culture is Born</h3>
<p>
	Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle maker, had a dream and a hard-working wife, Ume. Together they set about to do what no one else had done—entice oysters to produce round pearls on demand. Mikimoto did not know that government biologist Tokichi Nishikawa and carpenter Tatsuhei Mise had each independently discovered the secret of pearl culturing—inserting a piece of oyster epithelial membrane (the lip of mantle tissue) with a nucleus of shell or metal into an oyster's body or mantle causes the tissue to form a pearl sack. That sack then secretes nacre to coat the nucleus, thus creating a pearl.</p>
<p>
	Mise received a 1907 patent for his grafting needle. When Nishikawa applied for a patent for nucleating, he realized that he and Mise had discovered the same thing. In a compromise, the pair signed an agreement uniting their common discovery as the Mise-Nishikawa method, which remains the heart of pearl culturing. Mikimoto had received an 1896 patent for producing hemispherical pearls, or mabes, and a 1908 patent for culturing in mantle tissue. But he could not use the Mise-Nishikawa method without invalidating his own patents. So he altered the patent application to cover a technique to make <em>round</em> pearls in mantle tissue, which was granted in 1916. With this technicality, Mikimoto began an unprecedented expansion, buying rights to the Mise-Niskikawa method and eclipsing those originators of cultured pearls, leaving their names only for history books.</p>
<p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="necklace" class="richtext-image full-width" height="349" width="468"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-06.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Mikimoto's efforts made pearls in a range of styles and prices available to consumers worldwide. <div class="credit"> </div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<p>
	Largely by trial and error over a number of years, Mikimoto did contribute one crucial discovery. Whereas Nishikawa nucleated with silver and gold beads, Mikimoto experimented with everything from glass to lead to clay to wood. He found he had the highest success rates when he inserted round nuclei cut from U.S. mussel shells. Although some countries continue to test other nuclei, U.S. mussel shells have been the basis for virtually all cultured saltwater pearls for 90 years.</p>
<p>
	Even though third with his patents and his secrets, Mikimoto revolutionized pearling. Ever the flamboyant showman and promoter, he badgered jewelers and governments to accept his cultured products as pearls. His workers created massive pearl structures, which he displayed at every major international exposition. By mastering the techniques, Mikimoto, then hundreds of other Japanese firms, made pearls available to virtually everyone in the world.</p>

  



While pearls are now available to the masses, these gems were once the most expensive jewelry in the world.

The History of Pearls





  
      <p>

            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Different forms of currency through time" class="richtext-image full-width" height="480" width="672"
            src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-money-01.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>Today we value gold Kruggerands and paper Franklins, but cattle and cowrie shells have also served as currency.<div class="credit">&copy; Steve Sucsy (coin), Skip O'Donnell (bills), narvikk (cow), Steve Goodwin (shells)/iStock</div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            </p>
<p class="note">
	Editor's Note: The dates below mark the approximate start of use.</p>
<h3>
	In the Beginning: Barter</h3>
<p>
	Barter is the exchange of resources or services for mutual advantage, and the practice likely dates back tens of thousands of years, perhaps even to the dawn of modern humans. Some would even argue that it's not purely a human activity; plants and animals have been bartering—in symbiotic relationships—for millions of years. In any case, barter among humans certainly pre-dates the use of money. Today individuals, organizations, and governments still use, and often prefer, barter as a form of exchange of goods and services.</p>
<h3>
	9000 - 6000 B.C.: Cattle</h3>
<p>
	Cattle, which throughout history and across the globe have included not only cows but also sheep, camels, and other livestock, are the first and oldest form of money. With the advent of agriculture also came the use of grain and other vegetable or plant products as a standard form of barter in many cultures.</p>
<h3>
	1200 B.C.: Cowrie Shells</h3>
<p>
	The first use of cowries, the shells of a mollusc that was widely available in the shallow waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, was in China. Historically, many societies have used cowries as money, and even as recently as the middle of this century, cowries have been used in some parts of Africa. The cowrie is the most widely and longest used currency in history.</p>
<h3>
	1000 B.C.: First Metal Money and Coins</h3>
<p>
	Bronze and Copper cowrie imitations were manufactured by China at the end of the Stone Age and could be considered some of the earliest forms of metal coins. Metal tool money, such as knife and spade monies, was also first used in China. These early metal monies developed into primitive versions of round coins. Chinese coins were made out of base metals, often containing holes so they could be put together like a chain.</p>
<h3>
	500 B.C.: Modern Coinage</h3>
<p>
	Outside of China, the first coins developed out of lumps of silver. They soon took the familar round form of today, and were stamped with various gods and emperors to mark their authenticity. These early coins first appeared in Lydia, which is part of present-day Turkey, but the techniques were quickly copied and further refined by the Greek, Persian, Macedonian, and later the Roman empires. Unlike Chinese coins which depended on base metals, these new coins were made from precious metals such as silver, bronze, and gold, which had more inherent value.</p>
<h3>
	118 B.C.: Leather Money</h3>
<p>
	Leather money was used in China in the form of one-foot-square pieces of white deerskin with colorful borders. This could be considered the first documented type of banknote.</p>
<h3>
	A.D. 800 - 900: The Nose</h3>
<p>
	The phrase "To pay through the nose" comes from Danes in Ireland, who slit the noses of those who were remiss in paying the Danish poll tax.</p>
<h3>
	806: Paper Currency</h3>
<p>
	The first known paper banknotes appeared in China. In all, China experienced over 500 years of early paper money, spanning from the ninth through the fifteenth century. Over this period, paper notes grew in production to the point that their value rapidly depreciated and inflation soared. Then beginning in 1455, the use of paper money in China disappeared for several hundred years. This was still many years before paper currency would reappear in Europe, and three centuries before it was considered common.</p>
<h3>
	1500: Potlach</h3>
<p>
	"Potlach" comes from a Chinook Indian custom that existed in many North American Indian cultures. It is a ceremony where not only were gifts exchanged, but dances, feasts, and other public rituals were performed. In some instances potlach was a form of initiation into secret tribal societies. Because the exchange of gifts was so important in establishing a leader's social rank, potlach often spiralled out of control as the gifts became progressively more lavish and tribes put on larger and grander feasts and celebrations in an attempt to out-do each other.</p>
<h3>
	1535: Wampum</h3>
<p>
	The earliest known use of wampum, which are strings of beads made from clam shells, was by North American Indians in 1535. Most likely, this monetary medium existed well before this date. The Indian word "wampum" means white, which was the color of the beads.</p>
<h3>
	1816: The Gold Standard</h3>
<p>
	Gold was officially made the standard of value in England in 1816. At this time, guidelines were made to allow for a non-inflationary production of standard banknotes which represented a certain amount of gold. Banknotes had been used in England and Europe for several hundred years before this time, but their worth had never been tied directly to gold. In the United States, the Gold Standard Act was officialy enacted in 1900, which helped lead to the establishment of a central bank.</p>
<h3>
	1930: End of the Gold Standard</h3>
<p>
	The massive Depression of the 1930s, felt worldwide, marked the beginning of the end of the gold standard. In the United States, the gold standard was revised and the price of gold was devalued. This was the first step in ending the relationship altogether. The British and international gold standards soon ended as well, and the complexities of international monetary regulation began.</p>
<h3>
	The Present:</h3>
<p>
	Today, currency continues to change and develop, as evidenced by the new $100 U.S. Ben Franklin bill.</p>
<h3>
	The Future: Electronic Money</h3>
<p>
	In our digital age, economic transactions regularly take place electronically, without the exchange of any physical currency. Digital cash in the form of bits and bytes will most likely continue to be the currency of the future.</p>

  



From barter, cattle, and cowrie shells to modern coins and currency, see how economic exchange has evolved through time.

The History of Money


<div class="rich-text">Vaccination began as a traditional therapy over a thousand years ago.</div>
<div class="rich-text"><p>Vaccines are often seen as a marvel of modern medicine. Surprisingly, the history of vaccination extends back centuries. This animated sequence details the intriguing history of vaccination, beginning more than a millennium ago.</p>
</div>
<div class="rich-text"><h3>
 A History of Vaccination
</h3>
<p>
 Posted: September 5, 2014
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrator
 </strong>
 : As surprising as it may seem, vaccination began as a type of traditional therapy at least 1,000 years ago.
</p>
<p>
 In India, when a wave of smallpox approached a town, there are tales of people doing something extraordinary—they were lining up to actually buy the disease. The healers, known as Brahmins, would take a cloth and rub the person's upper arm. Then they would scratch the skin, just enough to draw blood. They would then apply dried smallpox scabs, taken from patients who had survived the disease.
</p>
<p>
 Most people would get sick, but recover and from that point on, they were protected. Over 1,000 years ago, the Brahmins had observed one of the basic principles of immunity—that you rarely get infected twice.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Dr. Paul Offit
 </strong>
 :â¨ We've got to give people credit. I mean, they got it right. They knew that there was something going on, that protected you—they just had no idea what it was or why.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrator
 </strong>
 : This early form of inoculation was called "variolation." Some say it originally came from Africa, others believe it began as an ancient form of Chinese medicine, where the powder of dried smallpox scabs was blown up the nose.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Dr. Peter Fisher
 </strong>
 :â¨ We know that as early as 1000 AD, the Chinese were using variolation, using smallpox to prevent smallpox. And they were using some very advanced techniques actually what we would now call, you know, techniques you could recognize in modern virology.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrator
 </strong>
 : Importantly, they always used a weakened form of the disease.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Fisher
 </strong>
 :â¨ They would select out the mild cases. And they would collect the lymph and put it in a vial and let it dry out and carry it in their pockets for two or three weeks, so you got at least a semi-killed vaccine. The viruses were, if not dead, certainly moribund.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrator
 </strong>
 : From the Brahmins in India, we fast-forward around 700 years to Europe, where over 400,000 people were dying from smallpox every year.
</p>
<p>
 An English mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had only just survived smallpox and she desperately wanted to protect her children. Whilst in Constantinople, she wrote of seeing a practice unheard of in English medicine.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Voiceover
 </strong>
 : The old woman comes with a nutshell full of the best sort of small pox and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, which gives you no more pain than a common scratch and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrator
 </strong>
 : Like the Brahmins, the local women practiced a form of folk medicine, handed down through generations.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Voiceover
 </strong>
 : The children play together all the rest of the day. Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three. And in eight days time, they are as well as before their illness.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrrator
 </strong>
 : Lady Mary inoculated her own son, providing him with something remarkable—immunity.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Offit
 </strong>
 : People knew that if you fought a particular disease and you survived it and you were immune for the rest of your life, that was a good thing. So people tried to figure out how can they essentially simulate that infection without really causing suffering and death, but still inducing the immunity that comes from that.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Narrator
 </strong>
 : Lady Mary brought the technique back to England, where it was widely accepted. They didn't understand why it worked, and it was never risk-free. But the death rate with wild smallpox was around 30%. With variolation, it dropped to 2%.
</p>
<p>
 Fast forward another 70 years to an English doctor called Edward Jenner, who took the next vital step. He proved that deliberate infection with a mild, non-fatal disease—called cowpox—would protect against smallpox. He called his technique "vaccination," from
 <i>
  vacca
 </i>
 , Latin for cow.
</p>
<p>
 <strong>
  Fisher
 </strong>
 :â¨ The one thing that Jenner discovered was that vaccinia, or cowpox, which is generally a very mild disease in humans cross reacts—it prevents smallpox. It was his only discovery, an important discovery, but people think that he invented the whole idea, which he didn't.
</p></div>




<div class="rich-text">Vaccination began as a traditional therapy over a thousand years ago.</div>

A History of Vaccination

From ceramics to steel, paper to plastics, certain basic substances have long propped up civilization.

Materials That Changed History

From Roman times to the present, follow an illustrated time line on the separation of the diseased from the healthy.

A Short History of Quarantine


<div class="rich-text">Jewish scholars in Lithuania risked death in WWII to save their literature from the Nazis.</div>
<div class="rich-text"><p>During World War II, the Nazis wanted to use Jewish texts to prove their racial theories about Jews correct. So they forced a group of Jewish intellectuals, who called themselves the Paper Brigade, to find these documents by sorting through the vast libraries of Vilna, Lithuania. All other materials were sent to be destroyed. Risking their lives, the Paper Brigade smuggled some of the books they found back into the ghetto in an effort to rescue the culture and spirit of Vilna.</p>
</div>
<div class="rich-text"><p>
 <strong>
  David Fishman
 </strong>
 : It may seem surprising but the Germans aspired to have the greatest Judaica library in the world. They developed a whole field of
 <em>
  Juden Forschung
 </em>
 —study of the Jews—which they thought would prove to the world, you know, the depravity of the Jews, the evilness of the Jews. And they wanted to do it scientifically based on primary sources in books. So they needed the books to prove that their racial theories and their genocidal designs were correct. So the slogan of this field was
 <em>
  Juden Forschung ohne Juden
 </em>
 —study of the Jews without Jews. The paradox is when they came to Vilna they discovered so many books from so many libraries. Great libraries, middle and small libraries, personal libraries. And they had to figure out what to do with them, how to sort them, what to send to Germany. You can't send everything to Germany. And they don't need twenty copies of a single book.
</p>
<p>
 And they ended up needing to have Jews who can go through the, and do the sorting but pick out. And that's how they created this slave labor brigade, which got the nickname in the ghetto among Jews—Jews called it the paper brigade. You know, most laborers worked in factories, mines, railway station. But these people just work with paper. So they were called the paper brigade. They were all intellectuals. That is, they were educators, scholars, poets, artists, musicians. They were given a quota: 30% will be sent to Germany, 70% will be sent to destruction, actually a kind of a recycling. They'll be sent to paper mills where they'll be re-pulped into new paper. So that's it. And nothing in between.
</p>
<p>
 They decide that they must rescue this material. And rescuing the material means putting it on your body at the end of the workday and smuggling it back into the ghetto, past the guards at the gate. This was impermissible on every ground. First of all, it was stealing property from their workplace. Second of all, there were strict rules. No books or papers may be brought in the ghetto. So they were breaking all the rules, and were risking their lives by smuggling the papers usually into the ghetto.
</p>
<p>
 There were ghetto inmates that said, You're crazy. You know, this is a time of danger. This is a time of life and death. You should be smuggling in potatoes. You should be smuggling in food. What are you smuggling books in?" But one of the leaders of this brigade, the scholar Zelig Kalmanovich, replied, "Books don't grow on trees. We have to preserve this for posterity." I think there was a lot going on here. One was, yes, they believed the core, the essence of Vilna is in these books. It may be that the Jews won't survive. But if the books survive, if the papers survive, if the documents survive, then the spirit of Vilna will survive. So they really saw it as an act of not rescue of individual items but rescuing a whole culture and a whole spirit.
</p>
<p>
 In spare time when the Germans had left for lunch and they were left to their own designs at the lunch hour, the workers would spend that spare time reading. A lot of books around. Not only religious books—poetry, novels. And that was a very both, one of the rare pleasurable moments in the ghetto. To be able to peacefully read poetry and escape. And it was also a poignant moment because they say in their memoirs, "This may be the last book I'm reading."
</p>
<p>
 And it might be for the book that I'm their last reader. We might both might be destroyed very, very soon. So they relished that. So what developed was a very intimate relationship between these workers and the books that surrounded them.
</p>
<p>
 I see the paper brigade as the culmination of the ethos of Vilna, the spirit of Vilna under those terrible conditions of mass murder. Not forgetting who they are. "We may die but culture is eternal. And it must be preserved, even at the cost of our life." I mean, that's not something they realized in the ghetto. That's what they were raised with and then acted upon in the ghetto.
</p></div>




<div class="rich-text">Jewish scholars in Lithuania risked death in WWII to save their literature from the Nazis.</div>

Saving Jewish History





  
      <p><i>Editor’s Note: This article was</i> <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/es.aspx?s=2531&amp;e=1129793&amp;elqTrackId=87bceb0e8d45455b8e6ff9d7c932edc8&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1"><i>originally published</i></a><i> in an edition of NOVA’s email newsletter, NOVA Lens, and has now been repurposed for NOVA Next. Sign up for NOVA Lens</i> <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newsletters.html"><i>here</i></a> <i>(select “NOVA Newsletters”).</i></p><p>This week, the death toll of California’s “Camp” and “Woolsey” wildfires rose to at least 66; swift and furious flames in the Northern and Southern regions of the state have destroyed more than 200,000 acres. Camp Fire alone has forced at least 52,000 people to evacuate the town of Paradise and the surrounding Butte County—and more than 600 people are still missing.</p><p>By this past Sunday night, Camp Fire had become the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/us/deadliest-california-fires-history.html?elqTrackId=53E9E2F80EA50F1EEEFE1AD71E057027&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1&amp;elqCampaignId=2854">deadliest single wildfire in California’s history</a>.</p>
  

  
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      <p>That tragic distinction signifies a new era, according to Crystal A. Kolden, an associate professor in the Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences department in the College of Natural Resources at the University of Idaho.</p><p>“We now have mass-fatality wildfires—specifically civilian fatalities,” she said, noting that this is a recent trend. Prior to about two years ago, most wildfires in the U.S., except for a few outliers, didn’t kill civilians. And the fires were smaller, too—a fire that burned tens of thousands of acres was considered huge. Now, seething scorchers in the West zip through parched shrubbery at 80 acres per minute, often near what is called the urban-wildland interface: regions close to forests where people make their homes.</p><p>The fact that most fires in the U.S. have been destructive but not deadly is both a Catch-22 and a sign that a well-intentioned but ill-fated (at least in many regions) strategy called <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7555&amp;elqTrackId=D2CB464A41D794C21CCD6B78FEEE4F85&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">fire suppression</a> has worked… temporarily. Although fewer people died in the past, the <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7556&amp;elqTrackId=77E02E6D2258C6BFB44E3298E4BA391B&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">United States’ history of putting out fires</a> has permitted additional plant growth—flammable material that we didn’t allow to burn and is now vulnerable to catching fire en masse. That means bad news for fires that occur today, particularly since climate change now figures into the picture—and because little thought was ever put into wildfire death prevention.</p><p>“For most natural hazards in the U.S., we’ve actually done a really great job reducing fatalities through planning, predicting, developing warning systems, and improving our infrastructure,” Kolden said. “We haven’t done that for wildfires because we haven’t had a lot of fatalities.”</p><p>Now that wildfires are becoming worse due to <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7557&amp;elqTrackId=84CADE754C9DC7C72506A54CEAF63D19&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">a confluence of factors</a>, Kolden says scientists are trying to figure out what the sweet spot is when it comes to controlled (a.k.a. prescribed) burns: intentional manmade wildfires that help reduce the intensity of future fires by limiting the accumulation of flammable fuels.</p><p>“Prescribed fire is used for two different purposes,” she said. “The first purpose is to reduce the amount of brush and the amount of fuel that’s available for the fire in the understory [beneath the forest canopy]. The other purpose is that it reintroduces fire in places where fire burned frequently historically.”</p>
  

  
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      <p>Scientists know from <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7558&amp;elqTrackId=0674A241C79D5C672900AFD95AE5FEAC&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">tree ring records</a> that certain regions experienced wildfires as often as every three to five years; taking out understory brush removed competition for water and nutrients among the bigger trees. Today, these areas are not used to combustion-less living. In other words, the land misses the fire.</p><p>As much as 20 to 30 million acres a year used to burn prior to the West Coast European settlement period. “If you look at the Lewis and Clark journals, there’s an enormous amount of discussion about how smoky the air is,” Kolden said. This is no longer the case—but perhaps more important is the particular pattern that’s been lost. Frequent fires allowed for a patchwork quilt of landscape ages to materialize, since fires would come up against recently scalded land and stop. Now we have a lot of old brush and a lot of new brush—but not a lot of in-between brush. “That sort of homogeneity in the lack of a patchwork is really problematic for an ecosystem,” Kolden explained.</p><p>While the expected role of forest management agencies in helping resurrect a foregone period is contentious and <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7559&amp;elqTrackId=405DFEAD94BAB5BFDAB2B7A20C8258BC&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">misunderstood</a>, Kolden says that one thing they can do is thin out smaller vegetation and underbrush to allow large trees to get bigger and better-spaced again.</p><p>“Unfortunately, that’s not very profitable,” she noted. “It costs more to do that type of work than they will make for the value for the timber.”</p><p>Ultimately, the sheer force of these climate-change-buffered fires is wreaking immediate havoc on old, under-prepared communities. And though many modern homes were built under more stringent fire codes, older homes literally become fuel for the flames. “They’re the primary fuel, not the forest itself,” Kolden said. What makes matters worse is that many of the people who live in these old, urban-wetland interface homes were priced out of more expensive urban regions. They can’t afford the necessary fireproof updates to their homes.</p><p>It’s a vicious cycle that has few escape routes, either locally or globally. <a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7560&amp;elqTrackId=3B2059DD68196AF847A618266C5AB17F&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">In <i>Slate</i></a>, Stephen Pyne, a professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University specializing in the history of fire, writes, “We used to think fire history was a subset of climate history; now climate history is becoming a subset of fire history.” Kolden explains that, from a science perspective, this is what’s known as a positive feedback loop: “As we have ignitions from fires going into the atmosphere, it alters the climatic system. As it alters, it promotes [the atmosphere] generally toward warming, which promotes more fire.” At a broader level, what we’re seeing in the changing climate is, according to Pyne, a mere symptom of what he calls the “<a href="http://app.nationalproduction.wgbh.org/e/er?s=2531&amp;lid=7561&amp;elqTrackId=603E80BF92984D0D5A498EB6E7D6D517&amp;elq=627c5d4c74c34541a45c564aa5c61b67&amp;elqaid=5513&amp;elqat=1">Pyrocene</a>,” or the era in which humans have fundamentally altered how things burn on Earth.</p><p>&quot;Our fire history used to be about finding new stuff to burn,&quot; Pyne told NOVA. &quot;Now, it’s more about dealing with the effluent of all that burning.&quot;</p>
  

  
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      <p>The Pyrocene didn’t necessarily <i>start</i> when fire suppression began, but the practice was certainly a turning point. “At the end of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century,” before fire suppression methods took hold, Kolden said, “people did die in wildfires—by the thousands.” Fewer people died once fire suppression techniques gained popularity, but now we’re looking at a return to the past because of it.</p><p>“We are moving back toward that if we don’t change the way we approach wildfires.”</p><p><i>Editor&#x27;s Note: This article was updated on November 17 to include a direct quote from Stephen Pyne.</i></p>
  



An aerial view of a neighborhood destroyed by the Camp Fire on November 15, 2018 in Paradise, California. Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

<p>“We now have mass-fatality wildfires—specifically civilian fatalities.&quot;</p>

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