Prior to the Industrial Revolution

This chapter is about the sustainable development of humanity from the beginnings of recorded history until the year 1800. The quest for sustainable development during all of these centuries was always a struggle between unsustainable environmental practices, unsustainable economic contexts, and heavy prices to be paid for most of the world’s people in terms of longevity, poverty, and famine. Despite some improvements in the great civilizations of antiquity in their economic and social contexts in the cases of ancient Greece, Italy, and China, the progress they achieved was washed away in the Middle Ages for the West, and a few centuries later, for China. Economic growth (but not social or environmental improvements) began to change in the west, but only very slowly, from the Renaissance forwards. Although environmental and social sustainability were not being solved at this point, one part of the equation, showed glimmerings of progress.