Basically, if I help myself to the common (but certainly debatable) assumption that “the industrial revolution” is the primary cause of the dramatic trajectory change in human welfare around 1800-1870, then my one-sentence summary of recorded human history is this:
Everything was awful for a very long time, and then the industrial revolution happened.
Freedom and prosperity
An amateur tries to sum up history using trends in five metrics for human well-being:
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There was a book over a decade ago, The Escape From Hunger and Premature Death 1700-2100 that covers a lot of this territory. It wasn't a fascinating read, but the information was good.
His strongest point was that consistent childhood nutrition was more important WRT later medical conditions than was consistently medical care throughout the lifespan. Once people had just a few more spare calories and did not have traumatic interruptions in their eating that drained physical resources from their bodies, they were able to do more work and make good stuff.
Potatoes.
There are indications that the Divine Counsel began routinely intervening in human sociological, spiritual, and technological pursuits from the early 1800s.
Many people descended, such as Wild Card Tesla.
A Course in Miracles is one of the more recent channeled workings, a sort of god speaking through man (or prophesying as described in the bible).
But many people have claimed in the past to do similar workings, although the occult have a different variation of workings via Aleister Crowley and Theosophical society (which is modern not ancient). One of the ways to verify them is to use standard interrogation methods to see if stories match and to separate witnesses from collaboration and contamination.
I second AVI's comment. It's a very good book, but it is rather dry.
LittleRed1
Peter Drucker identified clean water and DDT as two cheap commodities which had major effects on human health and lifespan.
For city dwellers, at least, clean water probably was largely dependent on some level of the industrial revolution and specifically the steam engine...some early systems used waterwheel-powered pumps, but these were probably limited in their scope.
David, it really depended on the system. Sienna, in ITaly, and New York City both have pure gravity feed systems. That in Sienna has lasted over 2000 years without problem, and functions very well without power. There were other ancient, medieval, and modern cities with pure gravity feed.
Once the system gets onto a long run of flat land, and once you start trying to get water up from ground level, then yes, steam pumps are better, unless you can pre-fill a number of water towers. And fire-fighting was and is the big problem.
LittleRed1
AVI
His strongest point was that consistent childhood nutrition was more important WRT later medical conditions than was consistently medical care throughout the lifespan.
From 1973 to 1989, Chile's rank in Life Expectancy went from 8th best to 3rd best in Latin America. Tarsicio Castañeda's Combating Poverty: Innovative Social Reform in Chile During the 1980s informs us that the primary reason for this outstanding improvement in Life Expectancy was a Pinochet regime program that provided nutritional assistance to the poorest (Chapter 3). As Chile's Physicians (per 1,000 people) rank in Latin America was 10th best in both 1970 and in 1984, and 8th by 1990, the nutrition program appears to have had a greater influence in increasing Life Expectancy during the Pinochet regime.
World Bank: Life Expectancy.
In this vein, a good follow on twitter is HumanProgress.org- @HumanProgress
"Documenting the improving state of the world with data, charts & maps. A project of the @CatoInstitute."
A bit of an antidote to the constant 'the sky is falling' you get on twitter.
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