The recently concluded AI Summit left a mixed afterglow, thanks to the Galgotia University fiasco. The event saw almost all major companies raising their hats in appreciation of India’s potential and strength first as a market and then as a major player in the growth of AI. The power and spread of AI as a technology cannot be ignored, although the risks it poses may not be sufficiently recognized. The development of AI as a disruptive new tool is similar to many other inventions or technical innovations that have driven human progress over at least the past 10,000 years, and it’s worth taking a moment to delve into the past.
Any brief history of technological progress and its spread throughout the world must begin with the wheel, which not only makes the world go round, but enables the transmission of energy more efficiently, making it indispensable in every field of modern life; Including and especially silicon semiconductors which are essential for all computing and artificial intelligence processing.
The economic transmission of power and the earliest evidence of it through the use of a brakeless chariot wheel takes us back 60,000 years to Iraq and Mesopotamia who first used a chariot-like vehicle on solid wheels. We know from carbon-dated clay seals that the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization used what existed: bullock carts.
Excavations at Mehrgarh in Pakistan show the existence of a potter’s wheel in 4000 BC, used by a Chalcolithic community that lived in the plains below Quetta. Hence, the Indian subcontinent can claim priority over other parts with regard to wheel-turned pottery. Soon after, the use of the spoked wheel spread from Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and other parts of the world. The axel was invented but its origin is impossible to be certain of, it was most likely one of those logical ideas that are difficult to patent.
Without surplus food, no civilization can advance. The cultivation itself was enabled by the use of the ox plow, which improved the efficiency of sowing seeds in the furrows. Likewise, a simple hole in the ax blade, into which the wooden handle rests, made the ax more effective and helped clear forests faster for agriculture. Indus Valley sites have provided ample evidence of the cultivation of barley, millet, wheat, rice, ragi and cotton. Professor B. B. Lal discovered furrows in Kalibangan that prove the spread of the ox plough, especially thanks to the natural hum of the Indian bull. The use of a shaft hole ax is seen at both Mohenjodaro and Chanhodaro around 1500 BC. In the Ganges plains, evidence of the ax hole dates back only to 900 BC, leaving the question of what delayed its adoption in what later became the cradle of Brahminical Hinduism.
Many other tools for transmitting power such as the mortar pestle and the pull rod transformed the grinding process over the following centuries and millennia. It is safe to surmise that with cross-migrations from one geographic region to another, these tools and technologies spread not only across their countries of origin, but also to neighboring regions and beyond.
Ancient India was an important source of cotton, it was widely cultivated, and its fabric was made with colorful patterns. From Buddhist to Greek and Roman Jatakas, numerous accounts describe the vitality and high quality of this fibre, which was known in Sanskrit as karpas and appears to be related to the Greek karpos and the Latin karpasus. The history of cotton spinning covers many innovations brought in various ways from China and then West Asia. The word cotton itself comes from the Arabic qatun which means soft.
The spinning wheel or charkha used to make cotton thread is generally believed to be of Indian origin due to its presence as a major symbol of self-government during the independence movement. However, the spinning wheel was most likely a Chinese invention, and evidence for it in that country dates back to the first millennium BC during the Zhou Dynasty. In India, the first evidence of cotton thread making was through hand-spinning which is described in literature beginning in the 11th and 12th centuries. Irfan Habib writes in a follow-up history of Indian technology: pre-modern energy transmission methods,
“In 11th- and 12th-century texts, we have the carding bow (pinjana), and the spindle (tarkuh, kartanbandha), but no wheel. In 1301-1302, in Delhi, Prince Khusrau, advising his young daughter, insisted that she remain content with only two things: the needle and the spindle.”
Another poet writing fifty years later echoes this patriarchal view. “Sovereignty is not suitable for a woman,” says Isami, mocking Razia, the only Sultana of Delhi, “because she is essentially of defective intelligence. That woman is better, who sits with her charkha all the time; for the position of dignity will make her immoral. Let the cotton be her companion, the pitcher of water her cup of wine, and the tune of the spindle her singer.”
An interesting question has remained: Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in Western Europe of all places in the world? It should be clear that such a phenomenon does not occur suddenly and requires a continuing series of cultural acceptance of knowledge and learning, not just of the high-level kind that ancient Indian texts so well illustrate, but also technological and craft knowledge. India and other parts of the world were at similar levels of development be it in marine or land-based technology. It now appears that the Renaissance was partly responsible for: a) the rising status of artisans and their access to education, and b) the educated elite taking up crafts and crafts.
The latter was also present in China where literati addressed topics such as mining in their works. This did not happen in India, where informed scholars or critics remained devoted to astronomy, astrology, and mathematics, along with literature and other arts. The earlier development led to the education of craftsmen and the eventual production of two major mechanical devices, which would become crucial to technological growth in later centuries. Two major inventions that occurred in Europe before the 15th century appear to have laid the foundation for subsequent technological developments. These breakthroughs were the humble helical spring and the grooved screw. Only Europeans had it, not China, Iran or India. When Europeans brought these devices to India, craftsmen here tried to reproduce them by wrapping wire around wooden screws but were unable to replicate the same force. The absence of the spiral spring in India meant that we were unable to produce a quality watch until recently.
In Europe, these two basic but crucial devices enabled the development of complex machinery that eventually led to the Industrial Revolution which was itself a result of surplus capital as well as the democratization of knowledge. When the educated elite began to explore technology and crafts in a serious way, and the craftsmen themselves became literate, it created the intellectual and material condition for developing machines according to scientific principles.
“It is true that in any culture, the attitude of the educated towards craft technology must influence its progress. Ideology may, therefore, matter. In India one misses even that curiosity which the Chinese literati and Greek and Roman citizens showed in craft techniques. This means not only that our craft history is much less documented; “It means that the spread through means of official or aristocratic support would have taken place on a limited scale in pre-modern India.”
(HistoriCity is a column by Valai Singh that tells the story of a city that appears in the news, going back to T Its documented history, legends, and archaeological excavations. The opinions expressed are personal.)
