In Asia the combination of good agricultural land, growing populations and rich empires led to a period of great creativity. Many of the most historically important inventions, including silk, paper, gunpowder and the horse collar, made China a technological leader. Another factor in the development and spread of technology was the establishment of a well-educated bureaucracy who could develop, spread and use new forms of technology. These characteristics allowed Chinese rulers to take on large projects such as the Great Wall and the Magic Canal, which involved tens of thousands of workers. China’s wealth and technological strength was unrivaled, but that contributed to a period of lower technological development since there was no need to innovate and society became more rigid. This was supported by Taoist and Confucian philosophies that favored social stability and discouraged change. As a result, Chinese technologies tended to get bigger and more refined rather than introducing innovations.

To be human is to use technology. Everything we do, from telling stories around a campfire to examining the farthest reaches of the universe, is done using technology. The web of technology that makes human life possible is so pervasive that we are often only aware of it when it breaks down or suddenly changes. It is so closely tied to human existence that we identify groups of people by their access to technology, comparing “industrialized” countries to “developing” countries. We even classify vast periods of human history on the basis of technology such as the Neolithic period or “New Stone Age,” followed by the “Bronze Age.”

Some scholars have described technology as the ability to make tools, while others see it as a kind of framework that surrounds us. This book argues that technology does not exist on its own as something separate from people and the societies we create. At a fundamental level, we are our technology.

There is always a danger when discussing the earliest developments in technology that any observation will be made obsolete by a new discovery. Archeologists and anthropologists continue to build the picture of the lives of our ancient ancestors, and each discovery makes our common history richer and more robust. For example, recent discoveries have pushed back the date for the appearance of tool use among our hominin relatives, have found entirely new settlements, and with the help of DNA evidence have started to create a much more detailed chronological and geographic map of the spread of humans across the globe. As work continues, we will know more about the distant past in the future than we do today. Thus, the historian must write with a certain caution, recognizing that a discovery made next week or next year could radically change our understanding of the past.