Earliest plausible Industrial Revolution?

What is the earliest plausible Industrial Revolution starting from the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens? First, when was that? The Toba Eruption bottleneck, perhaps? That would give us a history of about 75000 years. Or was it at the time of "Eve" c.200000 BC? Do we need an interglacial to start agriculture, or could the Cro-Magnon people have begun the process in the last Ice Age? If we need an interglacial, why did we not have agriculture in the previous one 125000 years ago? If we had to wait for the Holocene, how quickly could we have gone from first agriculture to steam engines (and then electronics, etc.)?

How about the "Old Kingdom" period of Egypt? There are those pictures on the tombs that look like the workers where using floresent lights?

Or you could have Leonardo da Vinci usher in the Industrial Revolution?

I just finished reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. He claimed China was on the verge of an Industrial Revolution in the 13th or 14th century, but apparently cultural conservatism or something stopped this. He didn't go into detail.

I just finished reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. He claimed China was on the verge of an Industrial Revolution in the 13th or 14th century, but apparently cultural conservatism or something stopped this. He didn't go into detail.

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Yes. I was reading that same thing. They were making cast iron and using almost the same processes that ushered in the industrial revolution for Europe way back then.

There is Evidence that the Minoans Had hand powered Factories. Some kind of a POD replacing the Hand power with Wind or Water.

So you pretty much feel that agriculture had to wait till the Holocene, and Industry until historically recent times? Is that the consensus...it could not have happened 50000 BC?

So you want to go right from the first farms to the first factories. Interesting.

The reason that Progress like we've seen recently is so rare in human history is that its painful to do. It involves a lot of effort, particularly thought, which most people really hate. It also involves lots of change, which always hurts as many or more as it improves. Things are better for everyone as time goes on, but not at first.

And things may not be really be better after all. Recent studies have shown that primitive people have much more leisure time than we sophisticated civilizeds. We have so much more to take care of, we NEED labor saving devices.

The price savages pay is that their children die in childhood much more often than ours. It grieves them, but they know no solution and no better so they go on with their lives. They also don't live quite as long but again, don't know they could. As a consequence their population stays low and they don't need to take more from the land than it gives easily. Life, if you live, is easy.

Have deaths from childhood diseases decline drastically. This will give you more mouths to feed which will motivate the requisite changes.

One possible mechanism here is found in the book "Diseases from Space", a collaboration of Chandra Wickramasinghe and no less than Fred Hoyle. This book posits the idea that most disease on Earth is due to microbes from Comets. As such, the overall prevalence of disease varies over time. I know that sounds ridiculous, but the book makes an interesting case, particularly when it explains the Middle Ages.

Psychomeltdown said:

Yes. I was reading that same thing. They were making cast iron and using almost the same processes that ushered in the industrial revolution for Europe way back then.

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Indeed. The Song Dynasty (960-1279) was a period of technological breakthroughs in China, with such inventions as gunpowder, the printing press and the blast furnace coming in fast succession. By the 11th century, China's steel output was as high as Britain's in 1850. Add to that a thriving economy with high levels of agricultural surplus, a dynamic merchant class, widespread literacy (around 30% of the Chinese could read and write) and a stable political environment, and almost all the conditions were met for an early industrial revolution. So why didn't it happen? The short answer is: the dominant class at the time was the bureaucracy, which had no interest in change; and all the potential of Song China was destroyed by the invading Mongols.
One possible way to make technological innovation translate into industrialization might be to have the Empire become divided into several kingdoms, the way it had been under the late Zhou and after the fall of the Han. Political competition may have created a vested interest for innovation.

Umm.

Song China was part of a divided China.

Maybe I should have titled this earliest possible agricultual revolution. I want modern tech as many millennia ahead of now as possible, not just centuries.

Faeelin said:

Song China was part of a divided China.

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Technically true, with the upstart Jin to the North.
But it was a case of the self-styled legitimate dynasty being gradually encroached by a superficially Sinified semi-barbarian regime initially propped up as a buffer zone with the northern steppes. I was thinking more along the lines of what happened in the Spring and Autumn period, when the weakening Zhou devolved into independent kingdoms, each vying with the others to restore unity. Such a political context would probably have been conducive to large-scale application of the aforementioned technological discoveries, as each contender tried to get an edge over its competitors.

That Song information is really interesing. What is especially intriguing about it (at least IMHO), is that a Song china in the early stages of an industrial revolution would not neccessary have access to modern weapons. Muskets are not really better than bows they just require less training and rifles are not early industrial age tech.
So we might still end up with the mongols taking over China. So mongol empire + railroards - could be interesting!

During the recent Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, SE Asia and Indonesia were connected, and there was a lot more land in the area, where a civilization might have arisen, and we wouldn't know about it because it's now all under water. The only problem is keeping them from colonizing the rest of the world and digging up all the minerals.
But they might exist in an ATL.

Neroon said:

That Song information is really interesing. What is especially intriguing about it (at least IMHO), is that a Song china in the early stages of an industrial revolution would not neccessary have access to modern weapons. Muskets are not really better than bows they just require less training and rifles are not early industrial age tech.
So we might still end up with the mongols taking over China. So mongol empire + railroards - could be interesting!

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Actually Song China had lots of cutting-edge weapons, but never bothered to put them to widespread use. Here again the problem comes from the hegemony of the civilian bureaucracy, whose members were wholly uninterested in military matters. So such weapons as the repeating crossbow, the flamethrower and the multiple rocket launcher were there, without anyone to bother figuring out how to use them effectively. So, yes, it's perfectly possible for the Mongols to overrun a quasi-industrial China, then take stock of the available technology (they were very pragmatic in that regard) and use it for their own expansionist purposes.

Excuse me, Hendryk, but what does your signature say? Babelfish renders it as:
The road may say that, extremely said. May, extremely famous.

The problem is that an industrial revolution needs lots of things in place before it can happen. Just off the top I can think of:

1. An agricultural revolution to increase food output and release workers from subsistence agriculture.

2. Wealth concentrated in a few entrepreneurial hands who are willing and able to invest in the development of new ideas. Before industry, such wealth was commonly garnered by trading so you also need:

3. A thriving and long-distance market economy which rewards risk-taking and innovation.

4. A cultural, social and religious milieu which accepts innovation, rather than regarding it as blasphemous or something, which itself requires;

5. A relatively enlightened and cultured population who have grown beyond regarding the priesthood as the source of all knowledge and authority.

That's just the background. You then need lots of technological things to come together: mining for the minerals required (and finding out which ones are useful), accurate metal working, the whole concept of engineering as a subject area, and the motivation to innovate.

That last part is important. People didn't just decide to invent something, they identified a need and considered how it could be met. Also, one development sparked off another. So the first steam engines of the industrial revolution were designed to make it possible to pump water out of deep mines so mining could continue. It was then observed that smaller versions could pull ropes attached to trucks full of minerals to tow them around the works. It then occurred to some to put the engines on a truck, to get more flexibility, and only later that this might be used to tow carriages full of passengers around the countryside. Which presumes that there are enough passengers with a need to travel long distances and the means to pay for it. And so on, and on.

Industrial revolutions are hard work, and are the result of building loads of small developments in technology and culture on top of each other. Harry Turtledove wrote about taking AK47s back to the ACW, but as been observed here before the technology to produce the ammunition was well beyond the world of 1860, and that's hardly very high tech. Furthermore, the Knowledge Revolution (of which the Industrial Revolution was one phase) continues to gather pace. A modern laptop PC contains such a range of innovations that even if you presented one, complete with the instructions for how to make it, to scientists in WW2 they couldn't have copied it for decades - too many advances had to be made in too many fields.

None of which answers your question. But the fact that homo sap was around for a vast stretch of time before making any steps towards agriculture, and had an efficient agricultural system for millennia before properly developing industry, should tell you how difficult it was.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion
forum

tom said:

Excuse me, Hendryk, but what does your signature say? Babelfish renders it as:
The road may say that, extremely said. May, extremely famous.

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That's Babelfish for you It probably gets it wrong because, in modern Chinese, the two characters éž(fei1) and 常(chang2) form the word "extremely", whereas they were two separate words in classical Chinese.
Those are the opening words of the Daodejing, written by Laozi. In translation, it sounds like:
"The Way that can be named is not the enduring Way.
The Name that can be named is not the enduring Name."
The Way is how é“(dao4) usually gets translated, although it is one of those words whose meaning can't be accurately conveyed from one language to the other. é“ is the Tao, the fundamental principle of reality; it is ubiquitous, dynamic, and impossible to pin down, much like subatomic particles in quantum physics. (So much so, in fact, that when pioneer of quantum physics and Nobel prizewinner Niels Bohr had his coat of arms designed, he chose Taoism's yin/yang symbol).
What Laozi meant, in a nutshell, is that trying to get a purely language-based, intellectual grasp of the Tao is pointless; it can't be pigeonholed into a neat, static concept. It can only be experienced by breaking free from the bonds of the ego and becoming one with the flow of reality. It's a sobering reminder, especially for us Westerners, who always think we can pin things down with language. Our whole philosophical and spiritual tradition is based on the idea that language can order reality, and in fact create it (after all, the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim God used words to create the world); and here is a philosophy that tells us, "you think you can figure things out with words? well, until you manage to break down the difference being subject and object, between you as an individual and the universe at large, reality will forever elude you."

Hendryk said:

So, yes, it's perfectly possible for the Mongols to overrun a quasi-industrial China, then take stock of the available technology (they were very pragmatic in that regard) and use it for their own expansionist purposes.

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I once had an idea like this, on a prior discussion of an industrial Song China.

I'd think that the result would be that, through the Mongols, the technology is spread throughout the old world.

The problem is that an industrial revolution needs lots of things in place before it can happen. Just off the top I can think of:

I don't think I agree with some of your points. I think they are useful but not necessary for an IR to take place. The AR frees up people to work on the science necessary for the IR. The IR needs a "middle" class of workers who are adequately skilled in several scientific areas (e.g. mechanics & textiles, chemistry & metalcraft) to come up with the ideas and to have the time to implement them.

I can imagine this being accomplished THROUGH religious orders rather than in spite of them. For instance, suppose that a Christian sect appears in the 4th century that emphasized acquisition and entrepenurial use of resources to feed the poor. As part of the manastic teaching, science & economics become integrated into religious teaching. The Church also provides capital for businesses to start-up both within the confines of the Church as well as for parishiners. As the Vikings start invading mainland Europe, and while everyone else presses toward a feudal system, the countries that have adapted this flavor of Christianity will develop weapons and systems to defeat the Viking invaders. Early crossbows and development of "mines" and projectiles will help drive mathematics & science as well as mechanics.

jclark said:

I can imagine this being accomplished THROUGH religious orders rather than in spite of them. For instance, suppose that a Christian sect appears in the 4th century that emphasized acquisition and entrepenurial use of resources to feed the poor. As part of the manastic teaching, science & economics become integrated into religious teaching. The Church also provides capital for businesses to start-up both within the confines of the Church as well as for parishiners.

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