Homo erectus used and made fire at least 400,000 years ago. Proof of earlier use of fire is inconclusive, early humans probably first learnt how to maintain natural fires and later learnt to make fire, but it is difficult for archaelogists to distinguish between the remains from the two different types or fire.

People continued to live in "hunter - gatherer" small groups.

We often call this period the "Stone Age" because their stone tools are the most common remains, but other technologies also evolved slowly:

• Working the animal skin to serve as a vest

• Tools of wood, bone and born

• The bow and arrow (evolved at the end of this period)

• The use of pigments for paintings and body decoration.

The Neolithic Revolution was an Agricultural Revolution.

Thanks to agriculture the population settled and increased significantly, which generated huge cultural changes.

Irrigation and food storage technologies developed.

Cities appeared and labour diversified and specialised)

Archaeological data indicates that the start of agriculture happened in separate locations worldwide.

The first seed used were wild seeds gathered from nature, then, harvest after harvest, farmers selected the plants with the best crops.

Dogs were domesticated at least 12,000 years ago.

Sheep and goats: 9000 BC were the first animals domesticated as a source of food, this happened in Northern Iraq. Cattle and pigs were domesticated around 7000 BC.

The first cities were the Sumerian cities, about 5,500 years ago, in northern Mesopotamia. There were several building techniques using mud, wood, stone, thatch or a combination of these materials.

There are ceramic figures from 24,000 BC. But it wasn't until 10,000 BC that functional ceramics were made: bricks, tiles and pottery (in Mesopotamia and India)

Copper was first metal to be used. At the beginning it was a material to make little ornaments, so it wasn't really a technological tool, but its metallurgy was a technological process

From the start of mankind until the invention of agriculture,

people lived in small groups. They lived from hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants (fruits, etc.), occasionally also from fishing.

Some human groups had a territory, some were nomadic.

Thanks to the invention of agriculture the density of population grew very fast in the fertile valleys.

The population growth created the need to develop construction techniques to make homes. People constructed villages in the

centre or near their fertile land.

The village was the centre of social live.

History starts when there are written records

The date history starts varies enormously from region to region. For example, in Egypt history started around 3200 BC, but in New Guinea history started in the 16th century AD.

In the middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean (where history started) this is the period of the first civilizations, the "Ancient Empires" (Asirians, Egyptians, Persians, Greek and Romans).

Also thanks to agriculture not everybody had to work to obtain food, some people specialised in doing other jobs: There were people specialised in construction, other people specialised in making clothes...

• Steel metallurgy: There was a series of inventions during the Middle Ages in Europe that improved the quality of steel and reduced iots cost.

  Steel tools became common in agriculture, crafts, warfare, transport, etc.

Farmers and artisans sometimes could trade their products. At the start it was the farmers and artisans who traded, but soon the “trader” appeared as a specialised profession.

Traders did their job locally but also “long-distance”. The best known trader society were The Phoenicians.

The printing press incorporated "movable characters" to the press, making it easy to mass print books. Knowledge spread much more easily than before.

By measuring the sun's midday angle to the horizon (Meridian Altitude) or the Meridian Altitude of a known star, navigators could determine the latitude of a ship at sea.

The Middle Ages had been a time of fast technological development in Europe. At the start of the 16th century Europeans were capable of sailing across oceans.

During the modern age, scientific research helped in the technological race.

Now Europeans start to trade worldwide and conquer land in other continents. It is the start of colonialism. Europe imports raw materials and exports manufactured goods.

The use of machines to mass produce standardised products in factories substituted the work of the artisans. Industry boomed so fast that many farmers also changed their jobs to work in the factories.

In the industrial society most people work in factories. The job is repetitive, especially in the assembly lines.

We say a society is “industrial” when there are more people working in industry than in farming.

• In 1593 Galileo Galilei invents the thermometer. It was a glass bulb with water inside, the water moved up and down as the temperature changed

  
  

As the assembly lines became more and more productive, because of automation and many other advances, industry required less workers.

Now that society had enough food supply with few workers and industrial production with few workers, more and more people started to dedicate to services (shops, restaurants, banking, holidays ...)

We say a society is “post-industrial” when there are more people working in services than in industry.

Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile was the first "wet cell battery" that produced a reliable and steady electrical current.

The 20th century ended with spaceships, computers, internet, mobile phones...

Most of the inventions of 19th and 20th centuries are the result of work done by many individuals, the history of which is the history of patents and lawsuits

The information technology developments of the 20th century: Telephone, internet, television... Are the base for mass media

communication.

People have information about what happens far from them, because they watch the news, or communicate with other individuals or read blogs.

The use of search engines on the Internet gives people easy access to the information they want.

Aeroplanes use Newton's third law, also called "law of action and reaction". Engines push air back, so they suffer a force forward. Wings push the air down, so they suffer a force up.

The tail controls the direction of the aeroplane, it has a horizontal stabiliser and a vertical stabiliser.

We normally define our society as post-industrial or information or global society, because those are things that characterise it, but fishing is still a source of food, some people work in farming and in industry...

There is a bit of all types of societies in the modern world.

• Technologies that improve efficiency: for example more efficient engines, boilers, home insulation...

• Technologies that use a more sustainable source of

  energy: renewable energies such as the sun, the wind, the water dams...

• Through better design, we can reduce the need for material and substitute

  some non-sustainable materials for other more sustainable materials.

  This reduces waste and the need to extract materials from nature.

• Recycling technologies take the materials from waste and makes them

  useful for new products.

  The most successful recycling technologies recover metals, glass,

  cardboard, wood...

  This also reduces waste and the need to extract materials from nature.

Since the start of civilisation people have used harmful chemicals. This problem increased significantly in the Industrial Revolution. Now we use technologies that reduce the chemicals that can be dangerous to:

• Our health: For example we have eliminated lead from gasoline and

  paint. Also we have have eliminated mercury from thermometers.

• The environment: For example we eliminated the CFC gases from

  refrigerators (CFC’s harmed the ozone layer). Also we try to reduce

  CO2 emissions that are causing global warming.