Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals,

especially in a reproducible way.[1] The word technology can also mean the products
resulting from such efforts,[2][3] including both tangible tools such as utensils or machines,
and intangible ones such as software. Technology plays a critical role
in science, engineering, and everyday life.

Technological advancements have led to significant changes in society. The earliest

known technology is the stone tool, used during prehistory, followed by the control of
fire—which in turn contributed to the growth of the human brain and the development
of language during the Ice Age, according to the cooking hypothesis. The invention of
the wheel in the Bronze Age allowed greater travel and the creation of more complex
machines. More recent technological inventions, including the printing press, telephone,
and the Internet, have lowered barriers to communication and ushered in the knowledge
economy.

While technology contributes to economic development and improves

human prosperity, it can also have negative impacts like pollution and resource
depletion, and can cause social harms like technological unemployment resulting
from automation. As a result, philosophical and political debates about the role and use
of technology, the ethics of technology, and ways to mitigate its downsides are ongoing.

Etymology
Technology is a term dating back to the early 17th century that meant 'systematic
treatment' (from Greek Τεχνολογία, from the Greek: τέχνη, romanized: tékhnē, lit. 'craft,
art' and -λογία, 'study, knowledge').[4][5] It is predated in use by the Ancient
Greek word tékhnē, used to mean 'knowledge of how to make things', which
encompassed activities like architecture.[6]

Starting in the 19th century, continental Europeans started using the

terms Technik (German) or technique (French) to refer to a 'way of doing', which
included all technical arts, such as dancing, navigation, or printing, whether or not they
required tools or instruments.[7] At the time, Technologie (German and French) referred
either to the academic discipline studying the "methods of arts and crafts", or to the
political discipline "intended to legislate on the functions of the arts and crafts." [8] The
distinction between Technik and Technologie is absent in English, and so both were
translated as technology. The term was previously uncommon in English and mostly
referred to the academic discipline, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[9]

In the 20th century, as a result of scientific progress and the Second Industrial
Revolution, technology stopped being considered a distinct academic discipline and
took on the meaning: the systemic use of knowledge to practical ends.[10]

History
Main articles: History of technology and Timeline of historic inventions
Prehistoric
Main article: Prehistoric technology

A person holding a hand axe

Tools were initially developed by hominids through observation and trial and error.
[11]
Around 2 Mya (million years ago), they learned to make the first stone tools by
hammering flakes off a pebble, forming a sharp hand axe.[12] This practice was refined
75 kya (thousand years ago) into pressure flaking, enabling much finer work.[13]

The discovery of fire was described by Charles Darwin as "possibly the greatest ever
made by man".[14] Archaeological, dietary, and social evidence point to "continuous
[human] fire-use" at least 1.5 Mya.[15] Fire, fueled with wood and charcoal, allowed early
humans to cook their food to increase its digestibility, improving its nutrient value and
broadening the number of foods that could be eaten.[16] The cooking
hypothesis proposes that the ability to cook promoted an increase in hominid brain size,
though some researchers find the evidence inconclusive.[17] Archaeological evidence
of hearths was dated to 790 kya; researchers believe this is likely to have intensified
human socialization and may have contributed to the emergence of language.[18][19]

Other technological advances made during the Paleolithic era include clothing and
shelter.[20] No consensus exists on the approximate time of adoption of either
technology, but archaeologists have found archaeological evidence of clothing 90-120
kya[21] and shelter 450 kya.[20] As the Paleolithic era progressed, dwellings became more
sophisticated and more elaborate; as early as 380 kya, humans were constructing
temporary wood huts.[22][23] Clothing, adapted from the fur and hides of hunted animals,
helped humanity expand into colder regions; humans began to migrate out of Africa
around 200 kya, initially moving to Eurasia.[24][25][26]

Neolithic
Main article: Neolithic Revolution
 An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads,
chisels, and polishing tools

The Neolithic Revolution (or First Agricultural Revolution) brought about an acceleration
of technological innovation, and a consequent increase in social complexity.[27] The
invention of the polished stone axe was a major advance that allowed large-scale forest
clearance and farming.[28] This use of polished stone axes increased greatly in the
Neolithic but was originally used in the preceding Mesolithic in some areas such as
Ireland.[29] Agriculture fed larger populations, and the transition to sedentism allowed for
the simultaneous raising of more children, as infants no longer needed to be carried
around by nomads. Additionally, children could contribute labor to the raising of crops
more readily than they could participate in hunter-gatherer activities.[30][31]

With this increase in population and availability of labor came an increase in labor
specialization.[32] What triggered the progression from early Neolithic villages to the first
cities, such as Uruk, and the first civilizations, such as Sumer, is not specifically known;
however, the emergence of increasingly hierarchical social structures and specialized
labor, of trade and war among adjacent cultures, and the need for collective action to
overcome environmental challenges such as irrigation, are all thought to have played a
role.[33]

The invention of writing led to the spread of cultural knowledge and became the basis
for history, libraries, schools, and scientific research.[34]

Continuing improvements led to the furnace and bellows and provided, for the first time,
the ability to smelt and forge gold, copper, silver, and lead – native metals found in
relatively pure form in nature.[35] The advantages of copper tools over stone, bone and
wooden tools were quickly apparent to early humans, and native copper was probably
used from near the beginning of Neolithic times (about 10 kya).[36] Native copper does
not naturally occur in large amounts, but copper ores are quite common and some of
them produce metal easily when burned in wood or charcoal fires. Eventually, the
working of metals led to the discovery of alloys such as bronze and brass (about 4,000
BCE). The first use of iron alloys such as steel dates to around 1,800 BCE. [37][38]

Ancient
Main article: Ancient technology

Ancient technology
 Egyptian technology
 Indian technology
  Chinese technology
 Greek technology
 Roman technology
 Iranian technology

The wheel was invented c. 4,000 BCE. Ljubljana

Marshes Wheel with axle (oldest wooden wheel yet discovered as of 2024)
After harnessing fire, humans discovered other forms of energy. The earliest known use
of wind power is the sailing ship; the earliest record of a ship under sail is that of a Nile
boat dating to around 7,000 BCE.[39] From prehistoric times, Egyptians likely used the
power of the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to
regulate much of it through purposely built irrigation channels and "catch" basins. [40] The
ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia used a complex system of canals and levees to
divert water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for irrigation.[41]

Archaeologists estimate that the wheel was invented independently and concurrently in
Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture), and
Central Europe.[42] Time estimates range from 5,500 to 3,000 BCE with most experts
putting it closer to 4,000 BCE.[43] The oldest artifacts with drawings depicting wheeled
carts date from about 3,500 BCE.[44] More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in
the world as of 2024 was found in the Ljubljana Marsh of Slovenia; Austrian experts
have established that the wheel is between 5,100 and 5,350 years old.[45]

The invention of the wheel revolutionized trade and war. It did not take long to discover
that wheeled wagons could be used to carry heavy loads. The ancient Sumerians used
a potter's wheel and may have invented it.[46] A stone pottery wheel found in the city-
state of Ur dates to around 3,429 BCE,[47] and even older fragments of wheel-thrown
pottery have been found in the same area.[47] Fast (rotary) potters' wheels enabled
early mass production of pottery, but it was the use of the wheel as a transformer of
energy (through water wheels, windmills, and even treadmills) that revolutionized the
application of nonhuman power sources. The first two-wheeled carts were derived
from travois[48] and were first used in Mesopotamia and Iran in around 3,000 BCE.[48]