Civilization is formed by technology that provides great access to energy. As James Burk described in the final episode of Connections: This was the first

Civilization is formed by technology that provides great access to energy. As James Burk described in the final episode of Connections: This was the first great trigger of change: the plow. It appeared maybe 7000 years ago, and when it did it gave people the chance to grow enough grain not just to survive, but to provide a surplus to support craftsmen. That triggered the beginnings of civilization. With enough food, the population expanded every year. Small viliges sprang up, and they too grew larger with the population. In the spreading fields around the villages, the technique grew of irrigating the land from the nearby river. As the grain supply increased, it had to be stored. The potter's wheel solved that problem. Who it belong t demanded the development of writing, and building these irrigation ditches taught people the skills of engineering and mathematics, that gave them in turn architecture. The need to predict floods for irrigation brought realization that the flood was annual. That gave them a calendar their government could use to enforce law through a police force and an army who needed weapon makers to protect the wealth of the country from invasion. A country that was now an empire... all because of the plow. The various aristocracies of the past built their standard of living by exploiting the work of others, usually shaped by the available technology. To build a pyramid required a very large number of slaves. To wage war against the neighboring feudal lord required a large number of serfs providing food and practicing the longbow. In the west, we like to think that we grew out of feudalism into a modern representative democracy for various reasons usually relating to ideology or politics. In reality, we prospered because we quickly took advantage of the energy provided by technology and salve labor. Learning how to take advantage of the greater energy density of coal and oil was much more efficient at providing energy than slave labor. Every time society learns a better way to exploit energy, society quickly reshapes itself to take advantage of the energy. Modern society now depends on a large amount of energy, and we had better learn some way of sustaining those levels or we will learn the hard way that this ability of society to reshape itself works both ways. Without modern levels of energy that technology provides us, we will lose our freedom to specialize on topics not directly linked to survival.