What manner of soil is this?
July 18, 2021 7:11 PM Subscribe
What kind of soil is in this video of some people digging out a structure with simple tools?
I sometimes watch videos like the one above from the Primitive Unique Tool YouTube channel. In each one, one or two people construct pretty amazing structures, often partially excavated underground, using their hands, rocks, sticks, and a few very simple tools (although I've seen some debate in the comments as to whether there is heavy machinery involved during the camera cuts, since the scale of some of the projects are pretty staggering for simple hand tools, but that's neither here nor there).
What kind of soil is this, what is it made of, and how does it form? Where might it exist in the world? It is so different from any soil I've ever seen, I'm super curious. It seems to be this amazingly strong (yet still quite friable), highly uniform, dry clay-like stuff for at least dozens of feet down. There are no obvious soil horizons (to my untrained eye), rocks, organic material, or anything really. What the heck is it?
Thanks!
I sometimes watch videos like the one above from the Primitive Unique Tool YouTube channel. In each one, one or two people construct pretty amazing structures, often partially excavated underground, using their hands, rocks, sticks, and a few very simple tools (although I've seen some debate in the comments as to whether there is heavy machinery involved during the camera cuts, since the scale of some of the projects are pretty staggering for simple hand tools, but that's neither here nor there).
What kind of soil is this, what is it made of, and how does it form? Where might it exist in the world? It is so different from any soil I've ever seen, I'm super curious. It seems to be this amazingly strong (yet still quite friable), highly uniform, dry clay-like stuff for at least dozens of feet down. There are no obvious soil horizons (to my untrained eye), rocks, organic material, or anything really. What the heck is it?
Thanks!
That might be marl, which I have seen worked like that.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on July 18, 2021
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on July 18, 2021
What kind of soil is this, what is it made of, and how does it form? Where might it exist in the world?
According to this Reddit thread, fragipans and plinthite could vaguely behave like in the video, but the more likely answer is a) fake, b) concrete, c) it doesn't, d) nowhere.
posted by zamboni at 7:58 PM on July 18, 2021 [4 favorites]
According to this Reddit thread, fragipans and plinthite could vaguely behave like in the video, but the more likely answer is a) fake, b) concrete, c) it doesn't, d) nowhere.
posted by zamboni at 7:58 PM on July 18, 2021 [4 favorites]
Good Reddit thread! Which links to ?iriginal? excavations in what they agree are plausible oxisols.
I wish one of these threads had soil scientists actually from the tropics, though.
posted by clew at 8:40 PM on July 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
I wish one of these threads had soil scientists actually from the tropics, though.
posted by clew at 8:40 PM on July 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't know what kind of soil it is, but I know for sure it is soil proximate to a Home Depot or similar because the pigment made from leaves and steeped in an earthenware pot over a wood fire is in fact green porch paint and the adobe they smear over the bamboo poles to create the water slide is concrete. Sometimes they forage off camera and bring back handwoven baskets laden with cotton candy grapes and red delicious apples that all came from a Supertarget.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:43 PM on July 18, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Don Pepino at 8:43 PM on July 18, 2021 [4 favorites]
A long time ago I read a Scientific American article talking about the inadvisability of trying to cut down the Amazon rainforest and convert the land to agriculture because the soil beneath was thin, kind of a red ocher color, and lacked nutrients.
It called the soil lateritic, and said it was widespread throughout the tropics.
The Wikipedia article on Laterite has pictures of soil a lot like the soil in your video, and even has a shot of someone cutting it into bricks in India.
posted by jamjam at 11:01 PM on July 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
It called the soil lateritic, and said it was widespread throughout the tropics.
The Wikipedia article on Laterite has pictures of soil a lot like the soil in your video, and even has a shot of someone cutting it into bricks in India.
posted by jamjam at 11:01 PM on July 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
What's The Deal with these, for real?
The architect behind them has almost irresistibly cool ideas. The people who build them, especially the pole and lash things, have mad skills. The structures are always insanely charming and beautifully conceived and the people a joy to watch. Where is it happening? Do they knock everything down and start over in the same spot a week later? Are these people carving fanciful structures out of dirt making as much money off YouTube as the people contouring their faces with mineral make-up? Is the wildly obvious fakery deliberately obvious? Like, when they go mine cement out of a water buffalo hollow or make paint out of leaves or wander off into the new growth forest with a fake bow-and-arrow and come back with a CAFO chicken on a spit and a basket of something that grew in probably The Netherlands, or when they create perfectly level crisp straight lines in concrete supposedly with their hands: the simulacrum is for me an integral part of the appeal. The "Wilderness" of YouTube. There are so many Larger Questions, you could spawn three or four doctoral dissertations off these things.
I desperately want the builders to be making truckloads of money off these but I as desperately fear they're being exploited.
posted by Don Pepino at 5:39 AM on July 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
The architect behind them has almost irresistibly cool ideas. The people who build them, especially the pole and lash things, have mad skills. The structures are always insanely charming and beautifully conceived and the people a joy to watch. Where is it happening? Do they knock everything down and start over in the same spot a week later? Are these people carving fanciful structures out of dirt making as much money off YouTube as the people contouring their faces with mineral make-up? Is the wildly obvious fakery deliberately obvious? Like, when they go mine cement out of a water buffalo hollow or make paint out of leaves or wander off into the new growth forest with a fake bow-and-arrow and come back with a CAFO chicken on a spit and a basket of something that grew in probably The Netherlands, or when they create perfectly level crisp straight lines in concrete supposedly with their hands: the simulacrum is for me an integral part of the appeal. The "Wilderness" of YouTube. There are so many Larger Questions, you could spawn three or four doctoral dissertations off these things.
I desperately want the builders to be making truckloads of money off these but I as desperately fear they're being exploited.
posted by Don Pepino at 5:39 AM on July 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
As someone who has dug lots of holes in different types of soil (but not a soil expert) they don't strike me as particularly impossible to do by hand, even if they are fake. Cement is used to make holes permanent, not to make them to begin with. My father did dirt work in the SE and south central US and I spent plenty of time running around in un-reinforced ditches 10-12 feet underground and made plenty of my own (grave size -6X8 ft) at GI Joe scale. Carving things like steps and arches isn't very difficult. And if you spend a few minutes at GI Joe scale (again) you can make extremely smooth and straight lines. I could probably have done it at kid-scale too, but I wasn't that patient. Rain and weather ruins bare dirt - but weather is dependent on location.
My only question is what they do with all the dirt removed. And where i live there is a root layer that is tougher to dig through than the actual soil, but again that could be different in different places.
Many have mentioned the turbidity of the pool water - no comments there.
And that tool they are using. - two guys who replaced my sewer line used the electric version of those to dig a ditch 40 feet long by 4 ft wide by 8 ft deep in about 6 hours in clay soil, with a stop for lunch.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:38 AM on July 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
My only question is what they do with all the dirt removed. And where i live there is a root layer that is tougher to dig through than the actual soil, but again that could be different in different places.
Many have mentioned the turbidity of the pool water - no comments there.
And that tool they are using. - two guys who replaced my sewer line used the electric version of those to dig a ditch 40 feet long by 4 ft wide by 8 ft deep in about 6 hours in clay soil, with a stop for lunch.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:38 AM on July 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Laterite quarries, that’s an interesting possibility for the more plausible early videos. Laterite bricks have historically been excavated without power tools and can be stable enough to stay sheer-sided even after filling with rain - a problem in Goa. I wonder if some of the excavations were fancying up existing quarries.
posted by clew at 4:05 PM on July 19, 2021
posted by clew at 4:05 PM on July 19, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
Someone asked this on the Earth Sciences stack overflow, but the question got shut down for being insufficiently scientific. I thought "what is that soil and does it really behave as they make it seem to?" was a good question, myself.
posted by clew at 7:33 PM on July 18, 2021