Trade Craft Card Library - 122 Historical and Speculative Crafts

What it is

122 cards spanning Stone Age flint knapper to speculative algorithmic exorcist. Each card covers a specific trade with:

• Historical accuracy rating (documented / borderland / speculative)
• Era tags
• Geographic notes
• Function and root mapping

The browser is a static HTML page with two animated filters:

• Rotating globe: geographic distribution lens
• Animated hourglass: era selection

Scope

Fully offline. No network calls. All 122 cards + manifest embedded in a single index.html.

Card spectrum

• Prehistoric: shell-bead driller, birch-pitch maker, cave-lamp maker
• Classical: scribe, garum fermenter, rope-maker, aqueduct engineer
• Medieval: illuminator, cooper, bell founder, relic custodian
• Industrial: radium dial painter, typesetter, match dipper, lamplighter
• Modern: UX designer, robotics technician, dental ceramist
• Speculative near-future: synthetic dream editor, orbital salvage worker, carbon removal operator

Why this matters

Unlike linear histories, the card library asks: “What trades emerged in response to similar problems across different eras?” Shows patterns of craft recurrence. Maps trades to root functions (provision/protection/meaning) instead of timeline.

What This Demonstrates

How to organize human knowledge by function rather than era. Decision geometry applied to labor history. That understanding craft patterns across time reveals invariant problems that keep reoccurring, even as tools and contexts change.

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