Excerpt from Key Theme 6: Science, Technology and the Environment
About 10,000 years ago, when agricultural societies started to appear, the pace of scientific and
technological change sped up sharply. So did human effects on the environment. Early farming was
based on new forms of knowledge and new technologies. Agriculture involved a whole set of new
techniques for planting, irrigating, harvesting, and processing, as well as a lot of knowledge about how to
manage and spread domesticated plants and animals. In order to increase the production of those plants
and animals that they found most useful, humans began to remove other plants and animals that they did
not need. They got rid of weeds, killed wolves and foxes, and poisoned vermin. They also began to
transform the landscape by clearing trees and shrubs, digging irrigation ditches, terracing hills, and
draining swamps.
The appearance of agriculture marks one of the most fundamental changes in history, for it allowed
people to extract more energy and resources from a given area. As a result, human populations began to
rise rapidly. With more people exchanging ideas, knowledge of how to manage the environment
accumulated faster than ever before. Humans developed many new technologies. These included new
ways of coping with cold environments (for example, making warmer, closer -fitting clothing, or building
houses from snow and ice), irrigating land in arid environments, and domesticating new species such as
the camel and the ox. As millions of people shared their ideas and techniques, they began to develop
new ways of handling materials, learning how, for example, to make textiles, pottery, bronze weapons,
and large buildings, such as palaces and pyramids. They also found ways to exploit new forms of energy,
harnessing domesticated animals to carry goods and transport people, tam ing the power of the wind to
propel boats, and using streams and rivers to drive water wheels.
Knowledge systems also became richer and more powerful. In larger-scale societies, leaders had to find
ways to coordinate religious rituals, markets, or tax-collecting in many villages and towns. In other words,
leaders needed accurate calendars. To invent them people had to acquire more systematic knowledge of
the movements of the stars and planets. As wealth piled up in societies, leaders also had to devise new
techniques for surveying land and keeping accounts. This need stimulated development of writing
systems and mathematics. And, all societies came up with coherent ways of thinking about the world in
general, ideas that were usually embedded in religious traditions. Even animism, the idea that most
things on earth are animated by spirits of different kinds, can be thought of as a kind of early form of
science because it helped people explain the mystery and unpredictability of the real world.
New technologies of transportation and communication were particularly important because they
encouraged people to exchange ideas and knowledge over large areas, and stimulated collective
learning. In Afroeurasia, people began about 6,000 years ago to use animals for transportation, allowing
a great increase in the number, variety, and extent of commercial and cultural contacts among
communities. Shipbuilding and sailing technologies multiplied the possibilities for contacts across wide
seas, most spectacularly in the Pacific Ocean, where mariners sailed huge distances to settle the islands
of Oceania. The ancient Chinese invented the magnetic compass for navigation, and by the thirteenth
century this simple device was in use from the East China Sea to the Mediterranean. Inventions such as
paper permitted people to communicate in words or pictures over longer distances and to store greater
quantities of information.
As knowledge reached larger areas, it tended to become more general. For e xample, it was no longer
sufficient for a farmer to ask how large a particular field was. It became necessary to compare it with
other fields, and that required the construction of abstract units of measurement, leading to early forms of
geometry and mathematics. As people encountered many different types of societies, they had to begin
asking what it was that all humans had in common. Did they have the same gods? Did they believe in the
same values? What, in short, was it that all humans shared? Early notions of economic value reflected
the spread of markets and the need to develop uniform monetary values. In some regions, such as
ancient Greece, or the early Islamic world, the search for general ways of describing reality led to forms
of philosophy that begin to look remarkably like modern forms of science.
Technological advances contributed to the emergence of more complex social inequality because not
everyone benefited equally—or benefited at all—from technological change. Control over sophisticated
technologies, such as writing systems, the manufacture of metal tools and weapons, or the flow of
irrigation water, granted great power to some. Those who controlled those technologies typically
dominated those, usually the great majority, who did not. Access to advanced technologies, particularly
for military or commercial purposes, goes a long way to explain why some groups managed to conquer
and repress others. As a general rule, those leaders who possessed the most advanced technologies
were likely to have the greatest impact on historical change in a region. In some times and places those
leaders used superior weaponry and communication networks to build great empires.
In the millennia following the invention of farming, advances in science and technology h ad increasing
effects on the physical and natural environment. These advances allowed humans to populate the earth
in much larger numbers, raise agricultural production, build great cities, and experiment with many new
forms of social and political organization. The spread of farming and metal-working industries, however,
also contributed to forest cutting on a larger and large scale, and with it erosion and loss of productive
hunting and crop-growing land. In some places humans caused environmental changes that led to social
catastrophe. In Mesopotamia in the late third millennium BCE, too much irrigation and buildup of salt
deposits (salinization) undermined the productivity of the soil, leading to sharp decline in population in
much of the region. In Mesoamerica towards the end of the first millennium CE, the Maya civilization
collapsed, probably also as a result of over-exploitation of the land. In towns and cities around the world,
the burning of wood and other fuels, as well as tanning and metal-work industries created extremely
polluted environments, which seriously reduced life-expectancies.
Source: World History For us All – Key Theme 6: Science, Technology and the Environment.