Block of the Week: Cobblestone

What material did you use to build your first house in the world of Minecraft PE? I would bet a hundred dollars or a ton of diamonds that among your initial blocks was dirt, or perhaps our block of the week – Cobblestone!

Cobblestone, as you might guess if you’ve played Minecraft Pocket Edition for more than ten seconds, is the block that drops from the stone you just mined. Consequently, it’s one of the substances in this game that fills chests faster than a diamond pickaxe can gather all the sugar cane growing in the world of Minecraft Pocket Edition!

You will accumulate cobblestone in abundance only if you stick to normal gameplay while building houses, as it is one of the blast-resistant blocks! This is why it’s preferable to construct your homes using such material; functionality takes precedence over aesthetics in MCPE!

An interesting fact: cobblestone was actually one of the first two blocks in Minecraft Pocket Edition, alongside grass. In fact, it existed before Minecraft PE, as it was created for RubyDung – a construction game developed by Notch before he began working on “Cave Game,” which eventually became Minecraft.

The first version of “Cave Game” featured cobblestone blocks, grass blocks, a player, and almost nothing else. Players couldn’t even place or destroy blocks. “The player will have more control over resources and materials overall when I finally finish the project,” noted Notch in the description of a YouTube video showcasing it in action.

Cobblestone quickly became one of the most recognizable elements of the thriving game – it was used in the game’s first logo, and when color was added in January 2010, cobblestone was a key component for most tools and weapons in the game. Over time, more recipes utilizing cobblestone were introduced, ranging from brewing stands to observers. Today, there are 19 different items you can craft with cobblestone – can you name them all? (Don’t hold back our readers, do your work for you, Duncan, you lazy oaf – Tom).

Cobblestone, like most blocks in Minecraft, also exists in the real world – although it’s not as commonly found there. You’re most likely to encounter it in old parts of towns and villages where it has been used for road construction over centuries. Cobblestones offer several advantages compared to other paving materials – they don’t create dust in dry weather nor become muddy in wet conditions. They prevent ruts from forming.

They provide good traction and make quite a noise when wheels and horses pass over them. The latter may not seem like an advantage, but in the fogs of Victorian London, the clattering of cobblestones helped many pedestrians avoid being crushed by an approaching carriage! So they could run away just in time from a speeding carriage. As a Brit, without cobblestones, one of my ancestors might never have found a family and married, meaning I would never be born. Which (more importantly) means there wouldn’t be a block of the week. Wow! Thank you, cobblestone!

Typically, cobblestones are quarried from sand or gravel by people, but they can also form naturally – in which case they are usually referred to as “conglomerate.” Conglomerate forms when a collection of rocks settles in one location and is then surrounded by sand, silt, clay, or other finer materials that harden into rock over time.

Wannabe Martian travelers will be pleased to hear that we’ve even discovered conglomerate on Mars, believed by researchers to be ancient riverbeds. So, when we inevitably end up destroying Earth, don’t panic – you’ll be able to apply all those cobblestone-building skills you honed in Minecraft on the Red Planet. Good luck!