# Why Did It Take So Long for the 'Industrial Revolution'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 28, 2010, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618 "2010-10-28T02:47:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/61 "2010-11-02T17:21:33Z")
I have a hard time believing any wave of inventions is due to a general rise in intelligence. Most of us just happen to be living during a time when a small handful of people are inventing things. We just have access to more information because somebody else invented the printing press, the telegraph, or the internet. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/62 "2010-11-03T20:56:25Z")
Seems to me that the installation of William and Mary, along with the changes to the British monarchy and parliament in the late 17thC were also influential. This is almost the exact time that the Royal Navy began its rise, its also the same time that Dutch colonial power declined, whilst France and Austria were embroiled in disputes, which would draw in some German states. Spain’s power had been on the wane for a long time. A good deal of the Dutch financial traders also decamped to London around this time too.Perhaps the creation of the Bank of England and the issuing of Gilts by government to raise money for its own purposes was the spur, it started London off as a financial centre. France would soon undergo its own revolution which would be a huge distraction, and then fall into a series of wars with much of Europe, but by this time many constitutional matters in Britain had already been defined, and the relationship between Parliament and Monarchy had been tilted decisively away from the ruler. This sets much of the platform that allowed the Industrial revolution to take place in England first, the country had been turned into a constitutional monarchy, rather than an absolute one, finance systems were emerging - which would set the seeds for capitalism, knowledge was becoming more easily transmitted through print, and overseas markets were slowly emerging as colonialism began to work. England simply got there first, but that was enough, not having to expend huge amounts of resources on unproductive defence - defending and siezing colonial assets is, cynically speaking, one way of expanding your economy, whereas having to commit to defending your own territory is simply a burden, a necessary one for European states, but an ultimately unprofitable one. So there you have it, money, entrepreneurial outlook, a settled constitution free from regal interferance and no ‘non productive’ wars along with an emergence of technology that could be consumed by anyone with the will and wealth, and plenty of natural resources - these seem to have come together in one country within a certain relatively short period, other countries may have had some combination of these, but not all at once. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/63 "2010-11-03T22:11:31Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > So there you have it, money, entrepreneurial outlook, a settled constitution free from regal interferance and no ‘non productive’ wars along with an emergence of technology that could be consumed by anyone with the will and wealth, and plenty of natural resources - these seem to have come together in one country within a certain relatively short period, other countries may have had some combination of these, but not all at once. I find it much more plausible that their genes, in just two generations, suddenly changed to make them smarter. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/64 "2010-11-04T10:07:40Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > I find it much more plausible that their genes, in just two generations, suddenly changed to make them smarter. Why?:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/65 "2010-11-04T10:55:28Z")
Well, it’s just so obvious and sensible. Really. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/66 "2010-11-04T20:41:52Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > My impression was the agricultural revolution which occured a few decades before the industrial revolution. Supposedly that resulted in a higher population and fewer laborers in farming, which basically meant more demand for manufactured goods and more idle hands. So that eventually led to advances in mechanical productivity. > > Thus spake wikipedia > > [British Agricultural Revolution - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution#Effects_on_history) This also lead to genetic changes which may have increased the prevalence of some traits: > [@](#): > > Could the Industrial Revolution’s explosion in affluence have been made possible in Great Britain by genetic changes in human nature? > > That’s the controversial theory of Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis. > > As described by the New York Times, Clark shows that, from 1200 to 1800, the English were “locked in a Malthusian trap,” with each advance in production quickly offset by population growth that devoured the surplus wealth. As a result, the average English person ate fewer calories in 1790 than a hunter-g atherer a millennia before. But at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, productivity increases outpaced population growth and average incomes rose. The origins of the jump have perplexed historians. > Clark developed his theory while testing Jared Diamond’s argument that British success was rooted in their evolution of disease resistance. He combed through ancient wills, looking for a relationship between wealth and offspring, and found that the rich consistently had more surviving children than the poor. > > That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded. > > As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. He has documented that several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped. […] > > Dr. Clark says the middle-class values needed for productivity could have been transmitted either culturally or genetically. But in some passages, he seems to lean toward evolution as the explanation. > > “Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution, man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world,” he writes. And, “The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality.” [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/a-genetic-expla/](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/a-genetic-expla/) [http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/capitalism%20genes.pdf](http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/capitalism%20genes.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/67 "2010-11-04T22:20:38Z")
> [@](#): > > He combed through ancient wills, looking for a relationship between wealth and offspring, and found that the rich consistently had more surviving children than the poor. This is so dimwitted that I have to seriously ask myself if this is a genuine academic at all and not some spoof. Has it not ocurred to this loon that the reason that there were more surviving records of wills from the relatively wealthy is because they had something to leave, and also took some care to record what was to be distributed? The poor, especially in medieval times were not freed men, and were often the property of the land owning classes, in fact if any of the lower order had any assets, it was wise of them not to disclose these as there was frequently a ‘death fine’ based upon the value of the deceaseds’ estate and this would be paid to the holder of the manor. This was effectively a law of primogenacy for the lower orders since the eldest male would be allowed to take up the rented holdings of the deceased upon payment of that death fine. I must also add this, that in 1840, in industrial towns, the averaged life span for various classes was as follows Gentry 44 years Tradesmen 27 Workers 19 This was largely as a result of infant mortality, where fully 30-40% of children did not make it to their teens. The problem was seriously exacerbated by malnutrition, and poor sanitation.Something that had obviously a less signficant risk to the higher orders. These are figures arrived at by Dr Baker, a practising and pioneering physician of the day who produced a chart map whose dimensions related the ocurrance of cholera and scarlet fever across Leeds City and was used as evidence in a Royal Commision some years later to support legislation to allow sewage systems to be constructed, even against the land holders of area under which such systems were to be constructed - which was very much a significant change against the land owner toward the general public interest. It should be noted that similar figures for London, Manchester were worse, and in Bradford they were just about worst of all. In fact during the industrial revolution, average lifespans fell for the lower classes, and in the period examined by Mr Clark, lifespans were actually better, but still no great shakes. If the views of Mr Gregory Clark were to hold any logic whatsoever then it would have been the survivors of the poor who would have become genetically more resistant to such conditions and the middle to upper classes would have died out, social movement would have been up, not down. Its also true to say that due to the high mortality rate, city population birth rates were not adequate replacements, just to maintain numbers, let alone support the expansion of industry, and as a result there was an inward migration from the countryside, along with significant movements of peoples from Scotland and Ireland - on such a scale that some UK towns had Irish and Scottish quarters. That inward migration would not have been possible without improvements to the agrarian system, part of which - if it can be called improvement at all - was the Enclosures Acts which effectively forced workers from the land especially in marginal areas, but did allow farms to become larger estates and did allow for more efficient methods than had been possible under the ancient 3 and 4 field systems. One could suppose that the inward migration caused a lot more mixing of populations, but somehow this does not seem to be the point that is being made by the good Dr. There is simply no way on Gods green earth that the birth rates of the middle and upper classes could have even begun to scratch the surface, Mr Clark is an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/68 "2010-11-05T02:51:36Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > I must also add this, that in 1840, in industrial towns, the averaged life span for various classes was as follows > > Gentry 44 years > Tradesmen 27 > Workers 19 > > This was largely as a result of infant mortality, where fully 30-40% of children did not make it to their teens. The problem was seriously exacerbated by malnutrition, and poor sanitation.Something that had obviously a less signficant risk to the higher orders. > > These are figures arrived at by Dr Baker, a practising and pioneering physician of the day who produced a chart map whose dimensions related the ocurrance of cholera and scarlet fever across Leeds City and was used as evidence in a Royal Commision some years later to support legislation to allow sewage systems to be constructed, even against the land holders of area under which such systems were to be constructed - which was very much a significant change against the land owner toward the general public interest. > > It should be noted that similar figures for London, Manchester were worse, and in Bradford they were just about worst of all. > > In fact during the industrial revolution, average lifespans fell for the lower classes, and in the period examined by Mr Clark, lifespans were actually better, but still no great shakes. > > If the views of Mr Gregory Clark were to hold any logic whatsoever then it would have been the survivors of the poor who would have become genetically more resistant to such conditions and the middle to upper classes would have died out, social movement would have been up, not down. > … > There is simply no way on Gods green earth that the birth rates of the middle and upper classes could have even begun to scratch the surface, Mr Clark is an idiot. I take the point about the wills, but don’t the lifespan figures support Clark’s argument? If the gentry were living around twice as long then you would also expect them to have more offspring. Another thing Clark identifies is surname frequency from census data: > [@](#): > > I can then look 250 years later, in the census of 1851, for the frequency > of these rare surnames which will be held by the genetic descendants of > the men we observe in 1600 or their close relatives. We can compare the > frequency of the names of the rich versus the criminal of 1600 in the same > area of England. Table 1 shows the frequency of the occurrence of these > names in 1851 in the south east of England. At the median the richest testators > left more than seven times as many descendants 250 years later than > did those indicted in the criminal courts. Survival of the richest was a very real > phenomenon in pre-industrial England. > **[Social Darwinism: 21st century edition](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/social-darwinism-21st-century-edition.html)** > > This is a nice summary of economic historian Gregory Clark's views on recent human evolution. See related posts . I think one standard devia... ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/69 "2010-11-05T03:16:36Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > I take the point about the wills, but don’t the lifespan figures support Clark’s argument? If the gentry were living around twice as long then you would also expect them to have more offspring. 1. Why would you expect that? Is there any correlation at all between adult lifespan and number of surviving offspring? A man could be a flaming homosexual and live to 120 and have no offspring, while his neighbour could be an extremely attractive heterosexual and dirt poor and die at 35 and leave hundreds of legitimate and illegitimate children, couldn’t he? Alexander the great died at 33 and in some parts of the world most of the population are descended from him. Even at the most basic level, poor people tended to marry earlier and produce more children because they had nothing to lose. In contrast the wealthy often married for strategic reasons and the middle class men put off marrying until they had sufficient fortune to support a wife. So I will need to see evidence before I buy the supposed correlation between lifespan and surviving offspring. > [@](#): > > I can then look 250 years later, in the census of 1851, for the frequency of these rare surnames which will be held by the genetic descendants of the men we observe in 1600 or their close relatives. We can compare the frequency of the names of the rich versus the criminal of 1600 in the same area of England. Table 1 shows the frequency of the occurrence of these names in 1851 in the south east of England. At the median the richest testators left more than seven times as many descendants 250 years later than did those indicted in the criminal courts. Survival of the richest was a very real phenomenon in pre-industrial England. Please tell me that you can see the obvious flaws in this nonsense. 1. Is it impossible for Henshall the goat thief to be related to a Henshall the banker? 2. Do you think that it is possible that, between 1600 and 1850, there might have been some degree of, I don’t know, [migration from rural areas](http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/IndustrialRevolution/migration.htm) that predominantly mobilised the poor and left only the wealthy living in their ancestral areas? Because if something like that could conceivably have happened then these results would be utterly meaningless nonsense. I won’t bother to list the numerous other fatal flaws in this “science”. I will repeat **Casdave** ’s sentiment: Mr Clark is an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/70 "2010-11-05T04:03:03Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > 1. Why would you expect that? Is there any correlation at all between adult lifespan and number of surviving offspring? A man could be a flaming homosexual and live to 120 and have no offspring, while his neighbour could be an extremely attractive heterosexual and dirt poor and die at 35 and leave hundreds of legitimate and illegitimate children, couldn’t he? Alexander the great died at 33 and in some parts of the world most of the population are descended from him. Even at the most basic level, poor people tended to marry earlier and produce more children because they had nothing to lose. In contrast the wealthy often married for strategic reasons and the middle class men put off marrying until they had sufficient fortune to support a wife. > > So I will need to see evidence before I buy the supposed correlation between lifespan and surviving offspring. > > … > > Please tell me that you can see the obvious flaws in this nonsense. > > 1. Is it impossible for Henshall the goat thief to be related to a Henshall the banker? > > 2. Do you think that it is possible that, between 1600 and 1850, there might have been some degree of, I don’t know, [migration from rural areas](http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/IndustrialRevolution/migration.htm) that predominantly mobilised the poor and left only the wealthy living in their ancestral areas? Because if something like that could conceivably have happened then these results would be utterly meaningless nonsense. > > I won’t bother to list the numerous other fatal flaws in this “science”. I will repeat **Casdave** ’s sentiment: . It’s not impossible, but criminals tended to come from the low socio-economic groups. Clark discusses the surname frequency analysis in more detail here. > **[Clark%20-Surnames.pdf](https://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Farewell%20to%20Alms/Clark%20-Surnames.pdf)** > > 280.72 KB ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/71 "2010-11-05T04:52:00Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > It’s not impossible, but criminals tended to come from the low socio-economic groups. And rich people didn’t? Is that Clark’s position, that rich people never came from low socioeconomic groups and poor people never came form high socioeconomic groups? This is all nonsense. The whole idea that people in a feudal society were poor because they were genetically incapable of being rich is an idea that anybody who isn’t an idiot rejected two centuries ago. The industrial revolution put paid to the idea that people couldn’t rise above their station of birth, when all these inconvenient poor people got very rich, and the most of the wealthy became very poor. Clark is probably the only person in the world who still believes that poor people can only beget criminals and never beget millionaire industrialists, and hence every person who shares a surname with a criminal must be descended from the criminal and not from his wealthy brother, and that everybody who shares aname with a wealthy man must be descended from that wealthy man and not his criminal brother. Tell me, Chen, do you believe any of this, and can you respond to these criticisms? Or is this going to be another thread that you shit in with your genetic racism nonsense by posting innumerable links but never actually addressing the points you raise? ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/72 "2010-11-05T08:08:40Z")
This point is sheer nonsense, > [@](#): > > At the median the richest testators left more than seven times as many descendants 250 years later than did those indicted in the criminal courts Just remember that the rich were far more likely to leave a recorded will in the first place, this point simply ignores the fact that so many poor folk died intestate so this person is not looking at anything like a complete picture. As for the rarer surnames surviving, well this also ignores the rare surnames of those who were not recorded, and of course there was always an incentive for people to marry upwards. It was a frequent occurrance for mobile populations to drop their own family names and pick up a convenient local name to try fit in with the local population, also remember that as folk in pre 1600 society were named for their trades, when those trades changed or died out, those names would naturally become less frequent. Dr Clark is putting his position in terms of a static population, which it certainly was not, there was a constant inflow and outflow, from the countryside and to the colonies. He also neglects to mention any population numbers here which is pretty critical, the ratio of wealth to the poor was more than it is today - the wealthy formed such a small percentage of the population that it is inconcievable that they could have sustained the growth of the cities, the reality of migration into the cities demonstrates this. Even if you were to seriously consider this as an argument, you must realise, surely, that as the descendants of the wealthy dropped in class and became part of the labouring classes, then their mortality rate would increase to the same as the rest of the lower orders, thereby curtailing their rate of increase. He has not, as far as I can tell, examined the social demographics at all, he simply has not considered this. None of the arguments posed by this person work when you try to explain why the industrial revolution spreading internationally, are we trying to say that the entire human race across all continents suddenly received a genetic uplift? Especially when many of the colonies were heavily seeded with populations of the lower orders (criminals) of colonial power. If you ask, then I can provide exact figures of population growth and deaths for Leeds, since I have plenty of peer reviewed material avalaible. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/73 "2010-11-05T11:57:02Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > This point is sheer nonsense, > > Just remember that the rich were far more likely to leave a recorded will in the first place, this point simply ignores the fact that so many poor folk died intestate so this person is not looking at anything like a complete picture. > > As for the rarer surnames surviving, well this also ignores the rare surnames of those who were not recorded, and of course there was always an incentive for people to marry upwards. > > It was a frequent occurrance for mobile populations to drop their own family names and pick up a convenient local name to try fit in with the local population, also remember that as folk in pre 1600 society were named for their trades, when those trades changed or died out, those names would naturally become less frequent. > > Dr Clark is putting his position in terms of a static population, which it certainly was not, there was a constant inflow and outflow, from the countryside and to the colonies. > > He also neglects to mention any population numbers here which is pretty critical, the ratio of wealth to the poor was more than it is today - the wealthy formed such a small percentage of the population that it is inconcievable that they could have sustained the growth of the cities, the reality of migration into the cities demonstrates this. > > Even if you were to seriously consider this as an argument, you must realise, surely, that as the descendants of the wealthy dropped in class and became part of the labouring classes, then their mortality rate would increase to the same as the rest of the lower orders, thereby curtailing their rate of increase. He has not, as far as I can tell, examined the social demographics at all, he simply has not considered this. > > None of the arguments posed by this person work when you try to explain why the industrial revolution spreading internationally, are we trying to say that the entire human race across all continents suddenly received a genetic uplift? Especially when many of the colonies were heavily seeded with populations of the lower orders (criminals) of colonial power. In terms of your last point, that is more an argument made by Henry Harpending & Greg Cochran in ‘the 10,000 Year Explosion’ - that areas with long histories of agricultural living with increased population density & state control may have selected for traits that were later conducive to more complex economies. I think Clark has suggested the IR would probably have occurred elsewhere within a few hundred years if it hadn’t occurred in England. For another perspective, I think Joel Mokyr’s new book ‘the Enlightened Economy’ which considers the IR an outgrowth of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, looks quite interesting. [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575396112998790810.html?KEYWORDS=mokyr](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575396112998790810.html?KEYWORDS=mokyr) ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/74 "2010-11-05T12:54:31Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > And your evidence is…? If you are using the industrial revolution as evidence, that’s a little circular. > > I don’t think anyone or any group or any country got smarter, if you mean an increase in raw intelligence.[sup]\*[/sup] I think it was more due to accumulated knowledge and faster trade of that knowledge with goods and books. In other words, more nurture than nature. > > * * * > > - Of course the genus Homo got gradually smarter in the raw sense over millions of evolutionary years, but I don’t think the increase took a jump in the last 300 that would explain the IR. Agreed that there isn’t much evidence we got smarter as a group species average over the past few hundred years…I was referring to the past 30K years or so. I was trying to correct the impression I inferred from the OP that humans had been around a couple hundred thousand years. That’s true, but humans today are not unchanged from humans 200K years ago. Greater mobility (trade) certainly helped enormously, although it seems to me like the more capable groups benefited from trade more than the less capable ones did–it’s not always a two-way street, and in recent times this mobility led to disparities such as colonializers versus colonialized. [From Wikipedia, e.g. as a shorthand summary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence) and as a source for one reason not all groups are of equal average intelligence (or any other trait, for that matter): “\*\*Between 170,000 to 120,000 years ago Homo sapiens first appears in East Africa. It is unclear to what extent these early modern humans had developed language, music, religion etc. They spread throughout Africa over the following 50,000 years or so: around 100-80,000 years ago, three main lines of Homo sapiens diverged, bearers of mitochondrial haplogroup L1 (mtDNA) / A (Y-DNA) colonizing Southern Africa (the ancestors of the Khoisan/Capoid peoples), bearers of haplogroup L2 (mtDNA) / B (Y-DNA) settling Central and West Africa (the ancestors of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speaking peoples), while the bearers of haplogroup L3 remained in East Africa. **The “Great Leap Forward” leading to full behavioral modernity sets in only after this separation.** Rapidly increasing sophistication in tool-making and behaviour is apparent from about 80,000 years ago, and the migration out of Africa follows towards the very end of the Middle Paleolithic, some 60,000 years ago. Fully modern behaviour, including figurative art, music, self-ornamentation, trade, burial rites etc. is evident by 30,000 years ago. **The oldest unequivocal examples of prehistoric art date to this period, the Aurignacian and the Gravettian periods of prehistoric Europe** , such the Venus figurines and cave painting (Chauvet Cave) and the earliest musical instruments (the bone pipe of Geissenklösterle, Germany, dated to about 36,000 years ago).[3]” ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/75 "2010-11-05T14:09:53Z")
It was the tea that made us smarter. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/76 "2010-11-05T14:21:51Z")
You could readily posit the case that the industrial revolution was delayed, after all , there is no particular definition of it being late or early. We could argue that many of the scientific investigation tools were available far sooner, however having theroretical tools and a practical means, along with a genuine purpose are not the same thing. In between we could argue that city states did not have the critical mass to develop international scales of industry, or that demand was too low, and that break ups of empires and conglomeration of city states were also essential, even if only to ensure a set of standards that were widespread enough to make transmission of knwoledge possible, so that language and literacy had to have enough practitioners to generate the intellectual capacity. We could also argue that the dead hand of organised religion, especially in Europe, but you might consider China, pretty much stopped the scientific method due simply to dogma. The thing is, that none of these arguments rely on genetics, if you were going to debate that IR was somehow dependant upon genetics, then you are into the territory of master races - good luck in trying to explain that away. As for the idea that had the Industrial Revolution not ocurred in England, it would have happened elsewhere within a few hundred years is not what I call evidence, that is just sheer speculation.We tend to seperate out the industrial revolution in a convenient timescale, when it is part of a continuum of development, we could attribute any organised collective production to the beginnings of inductrialisation, and that could include building the Medieval Cathedrals as this was a massive undertaking. The expansion of agricultural production was based upon observation and experimentation and this continued throughout all the period of IR and continues through to today, we have just arbitarily decided what is industrial and what is not, yet the mass production of ale, or of cloth, or even of flints is still industrial activity. Before the accepted period of industrial revolution, there was no incentive to change and it was not until capitalism began to rise that the idea of increasing the size of markets for goods came into being - prior to this it had been accepted that markets were finite and the only way to expand was to take from someone elses markets - a zero sum game. Industrialisation changed all that, all of a sudden the name of the game was growth and expansion, now you can create wealth not by waiting for demand, you can now create and stimulate demand - you can expand the economy. None of this relies upon genetics. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/77 "2010-11-05T15:14:21Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Why did it take so long for the Industrial Revolution to start? As I understand it, humans have been around for about 200,000 years. Isn’t this _“long enough”_ for an industrial revolution to begin? > > Actually, I have to confess, this question is partly inspired by hearing Carl Sagan once muse what would happen if, e.g., the Greeks started the Industrial Revolution thousands of years ago. He said (presumably in an alternate quantum reality) there might be intergalactic ship, with a Greek geometric figure on it (I forget exactly what). > > BTW, I have another question concerning this. What would have happened to human rights movements (like the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century) if the Industrial Revolution started earlier? Would we still have them? > > 🙂 I would say (before reading the rest of the thread) that you would need three major inputs before getting an Industrial Revolution: 1. A means to accurately reproduce information on a mass scale 2. A basic understanding of scientific principles 3. A society stable enough to warrant long-term investing ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/78 "2010-11-05T15:23:17Z")
> [@Baboonanza](#): > > It was the tea that made us smarter. You joke, but this has seriously been proposed–before clean water, people used to drink beer and wine, which make people slow and stupid. Switch to coffee and tea, and suddenly they’re active and alert. So the beginnings of finance and global trade started in coffee houses, rather than taverns. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/79 "2010-11-05T15:27:23Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > You joke, but this has seriously been proposed–before clean water, people used to drink beer and wine, which make people slow and stupid. Switch to coffee and tea, and suddenly they’re active and alert. So the beginnings of finance and global trade started in coffee houses, rather than taverns. In England, maybe, but the Italians had finance and global\* trade long before coffee and tea made it to Europe. \*“Global” as defined as a pan-Asian trade that didn’t impact the (as yet) undiscovered Americas. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618/80 "2010-11-05T15:43:11Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > Like most everything else, we didn’t invent it until we needed it. Invention historically occurred well in advance of need. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-the-industrial-revolution/558618.md?page=5)