Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and Scotland's ecology isn't obviously in need of them. If you've visited Scotland's countryside, you might have noticed the sweeping vistas of grassy green fields, yellow bushy marshes, and purple heather -- and a conspicuous absence of any trees. It's a very unnatural landscape, historically speaking. Scotland (along with the rest of the UK) cut down most of their old growth forests in the industrial revolution,…
The Caledonian Forest disappeared long before the Industrial Revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caledonian_Forest >An examination of the earliest maps of Scotland suggests that the extent of the Caledonian Forest remnants has changed little since 1600.
To put that in some perspective, a Roman legion (roughly 5,000 men) in the Late Republic might have carried into battle around 44,000kg (c. 48.5 tons) of iron – not counting pots, fittings, picks, shovels and other tools we know they used. That iron equipment in turn might represent the mining of around 541,200kg (c. 600 tons) of ore, smelted with 642,400kg (c. 710 tons) of charcoal, made from 4,620,000kg (c. 5,100 tons) of wood. Cutting the wood and making the charcoal alone, from our figures above, might represent something like (I am assuming our charcoal-burners are working in teams) 80,000 man-days of labor. For one legion. https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-...