Alright Carl, we all know the cosmos is within us and we are a way for the universe to know itself. No need to keep going on about it.
But isn’t solar deferred nuclear?
So nuclear wins!
Also as mentioned above, tidal which is deferred kinetic.
Sorry I misread, please delete
If you really want to make something from scratch, then you really need to go back to the Big Bang. Same holds for energy useable by humans:
So, assuming what you mean by “energy” is the term “useful work” in physics, the earliest “useful work” exploited by humans (that needed minimal previous work) were :
- Animals / Beasts of Burden
- Other Humans
- Windmills
- Water mills
- Steam Engines …/