ABSTRACT
The age of the irrigation civilization was preeminently an age of technological innovation. The historian of ideas is prone to go back to Ancient Greece, to the Old Testament prophets, or to the China of the early dynasties for the sources of the beliefs that still move men to action. It is our contention in the Society for the History of Technology that the history of technology is a major, distinct strand in the web of human history. Without a shadow of doubt, major technological change creates the need for social and political innovation. Impersonal bureaucratic government had to arise in all these civilizations; without it they could not have functioned. Organized defense was a necessity for the irrigation civilization. If an educated man of those days of the first technological revolution, an educated Sumerian perhaps or an educated ancient Chinese, looked at us today, he would certainly be totally stumped by our technology.
