James Terry Duce

Most of us think of the oil industry as a modern development, but actually its roots lie far back in history. Noah, the tourist from Ur, pitched his Ark inside and out with tar from the seepages near his native city, and Herodotus reports that Alexander was astounded in Kirkuk by natives who wet down the streets with naphtha and then set fire to them. Bricks from Ur tell us that the ratio between the price of wheat and of asphalt was much the same three thousand years ago as it is today.