Great article. Thought provoking. Maybe an industrial revolution could not have happened in the times of the Romans, but I think maybe, just maybe, it could ha

Great article. Thought provoking. Maybe an industrial revolution could not have happened in the times of the Romans, but I think maybe, just maybe, it could have happened 1000 years before them. The bronze age was followed by the iron age not because iron is a better metal (initially it was not), but because bronze requires trade routes (copper comes from some mines, tin from some other mines), and those disappeared after the Bronze Age collapse. Now, imagine that the Bronze Age had lasted a few hundred years longer. Just one hundred years before the Bronze Age collapse there was the battle of Kadesh [1], where tens of thousands of soldiers squared off. There were 5000 to 6000 chariots altogether. Which means the late Bronze Age empires needed huge quantities of weapons, therefore of bronze. Egypt does not have a lot of trees, and trees are quite scarce in other places in the Middle East. Just like Britain ran out of trees and needed to resort to coal, a few hundred years more of bronze age would have forced Egypt to look for a substitute for charcoal. It would not have been coal, because there are no easily accessible veins of coal in the Middle East. It would have been petroleum. Petroleum was known during those times [2]: More than 4000 years ago, according to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, asphalt was used in the construction of the walls and towers of Babylon; there were oil pits near Ardericca (near Babylon), and a pitch spring on Zacynthus. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, one of the tributaries of the Euphrates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kadesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kadesh [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Early https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Early