pre-Industrial Energy

There have been many advances throughout society. One major advance in societies was energy advances. There have been so many different sources of energy used throughout time that has allowed societies to be more efficient and resourceful. The earliest of these societies were the hunter gather. They had many different advances, which included the use of horses to do work in the field. Animals were much stronger than humans and could do twice the amount of manual labor. After the advancement to animals came the waterwheel, windmills, and eventually the machinery that we use today.

Blast furnaces- a smelting furnace in the form of a tower into which a blast of hot compressed air can be introduced from below. Such furnaces are used chiefly to make iron from a mixture of iron ore, coke, and limestone.

1) The ultimate form of energy in the pre-industrial times was the use of animals especially cattle. They could do more amounts of work in the fields such as harvesting, fertilizing, plowing, etc. than manual labor could.
2) An example of innovation would be the windmills. The windmills were able to produce massive amounts of energy in one day than any human or animal combined. It allowed for more work to be done more efficiently in societies.
3) The disadvantage of the energy sources that were available was that not all of them were available to everyone. If you still lived in a primitive society the chances are that you would not be exposed or able to build the alternative energy resources. It depended on where you lived and what type of group you lived in.

1) What are the differences between pre-industrial windmills and waterwheels and the ones that we have now?
2) How long did it take for windmills and waterwheels to catch on to the rest of the world?
3) How did a group decide if they were going to use alternative energy sources or not? Were they all accepting of the changes or did one person just decide?