The History Of Bamboo Flooring
The history of the usage of bamboo by humans dates back to more than 5000 years ago. Its longevity speaks for its functionality and efficiency.
Bamboo Pioneers - The Early Years of Bamboo Flooring
By the late '90s, bamboo flooring had begun to gain popularity - which lasts to this day! The first 10 years (1996-2006) were the formative years of bamboo flooring, when some of today's best loved brands were formed. As people recognized the huge benefits of bamboo floors, many new companies started selling bamboo flooring. There came to be more than a dozen bamboo flooring brands on the market (maybe more?), with widely varying quality and pricing among them.
Bamboo Has Been Around for Ages!
Bamboo has been in continuous use by us crafty human beings for eons. There are Chinese records that date as far back as 7,000 years that mention items as varied as paper, arrows, building materials and even books, that our ancestors made from bamboo. We tend to think of bamboo as an Asian or a Polynesian plant, but in fact bamboo grows nearly everywhere in the world save the coldest places on the planet. Most historians agree that it probably originated in China, where the ancient Chinese used it to make numerous everyday items, including tree houses!. After all, it was a rapidly renewable resource that was readily available to them. During the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to 221), it was used primarily to make paper and books, and by the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Chinese were using bamboo to make bedding and rudimentary floors.
Bamboo Use as a Building Material
In Philippines and Polynesia, bamboo became a popular building material because of its ability to hold up well in a wet environment. Polynesian natives have used bamboo for hundreds of years to build inexpensive hurricane-proof housing. It worked because bamboo is an elastic material that would sway in the wind without breaking. Originally, most people would leave the bamboo whole and tie it together to make bundles that would form walls, roofs, and floors, but the native people in both the Philippines and Polynesia would do something a little differently when creating their Nipa huts splitting the bamboo and weaving it together to create a stronger material.
Important Bamboo Factoid: Don't worry, no pandas were starved in the creation of beautiful bamboo flooring. Bamboo flooring is only ever made from the Moso bamboo, which pandas don't eat.
Magical houses made of bamboo
Today, bamboo houses exist all over the world, from temporary huts to massive bamboo houses. They even inspired a song by Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian which made it to number 30 in the UK charts and have been the subject of several Ted Talks, like the one below- can any hardwoods boast that?
Bamboo as Food
The tall, resilient grass that we call bamboo likely evolved from prehistoric grasses thirty to forty million years ago, which was long after the age of dinosaurs. It was a food source for plant-eating animals for thousands of years. The giant panda still relies on bamboo as its primary source of food. (An average panda will eat up to 40 lbs of bamboo per day!)
Believe it or not, people also use bamboo as a food. In China, bamboo shoots which are rich in fiber and potassium are popular ingredients in Chinese cooking and bamboo leaves are used to make Chinese Vodka! It also tastes delish!
In North Africa or the Far East, it’s not surprising to see people indulge in a glass or two of bamboo wine, some of which is created in Tanzania from a species of bamboo called Oxytenanthera braunii.
Why Bamboo Flooring Became So Popular - It's Many Advantages
The green building movement led to greatly increased demand for materials that were rapidly-renewable, which was a contributing factor to the growth of the bamboo flooring industry. Since bamboo flooring is designated a "Rapidly Renewable Material" by the U.S. Green Building council, and thus qualifies for LEED Credits for architects, it is often used in "green" construction. Here are just a few more of the advantages of bamboo flooring:
- Eco-Friendliness
With Al Gore as VP and Lisa Simpson turning vegetarian, most people in the US were becoming more aware of environmental issues, thus a flooring material that was "earth-kind" was in high demand. (bamboo biomass regenerates about 8-15x faster than hardwoods used for flooring)
- Durability / Hardness
While solid "flat grain" and "edge grain" bamboo floors always ranked alongside traditional hardwoods in terms of strength, it was the breakthrough of strand woven bamboo flooring (2-3 times harder than oak flooring) that drove the explosive popularity of bamboo flooring. Strand woven bamboo flooring, which is made by weaving bamboo strips and fusing them together using heat and pressure, ranks as the hardest of hardwoods on the Janka Scale - the definitive floor hardness rating for the wood (or grass) flooring industry. Did you know that bamboo also has the tensile strength of steel!? This means that the flooring can withstand decades of regular family use - even if you do have a big, energetic dog - and will add value to your home.
- Affordability
While the '90s was a time of great economic prosperity in the US, many wise people still saw the benefits of installing floors that were much cheaper than the traditional hardwoods. The unbeatable value, beauty and toughness of bamboo flooring is now known across the world and enjoyed by homeowners, architects and designers by the millions!
- Attractiveness
Bamboo flooring is one of the most beautiful floors that you can buy and it's easily customizable to your desired decor through stains, varnishes, and textures.
What products are made from Bamboo?
Most experts agree that bamboo originally came from China, where it is still widely grown today, and was used by the people there to create many items to improve their everyday lives, including, but not limited to:
- Hats
- Shoes
- Clothing
- Fabric
- Vases
- Baskets
- Vases
- Baskets
- Fishing Poles
- Furniture
- Drills
- Ropes
- Scaffolding
- Building Materials
- Tree Houses
- Paper and Books (during the Han Dynasty, 206-221 BCE)
- Floors (during the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644 CE)
- Musical Instruments, including flutes and drums
- Water pipes for Irrigation
There are records - probably on bamboo paper - from as far back as 5000 BCE that mention the creation of these items using bamboo. It seems that the ancient Chinese used bamboo in much the same way that the early Europeans would have used trees, which is understandable because you have to use what's around you, but it also probably did a lot to benefit China's environment, given what we know about the eco-friendly benefits of bamboo now.
As people from other countries travelled to China, they no doubt saw the benefits of using bamboo to create these items as opposed to trees - after all bamboo plants can reach full maturity in just five years, compared with 50+ for trees - and so took the plants back with them in an attempt to grow and benefit from them elsewhere.
Now, bamboo is grown in all but the coldest countries on earth - your neighbor might even have a plant in their garden.