how has water shaped the course of history of mankind (the elixir of life)
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HOW WATER SHAPES HUMAN HISTORY
Steven Solomon, a journalist who has written for The New York Times, Business Week, and The Economist, explains in his latest book that oil may not be the resource we need to worry about exhausting. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization captures water’s crucial importance to the rise and fall of empires past, and the conflicts it may spark today. In the excerpt below, Solomon, a past Zócalo guest, starts with the invention of the steam engine to show how water has driven human innovation and the collapse of civilizations for centuries.
Water, by Steven SolomonIn 1763 a twenty-seven-year-old instrument maker named James Watt repaired a model of a Newcomen steam engine owned by the University of Glasgow. Britain was in the grip of a dire fuel famine resulting from the early deforestation of its countryside, and many of the primitive engines invented by Thomas Newcomen a half century earlier were working to pump floodwater from coal mines so that more coal could be excavated as a substitute fuel. While repairing the Newcomen machine, Watt had been startled by its inefficiency. Filled with the spirit of scientific inquiry then going on in the Scottish Enlightenment, he determined to try to improve its capacity to harness steam energy. Within two years he had a much-more-efficient design, and by 1776 was selling the world’s first modern steam engine.
James Watt’s improved steam engine was a turning point in history. It became the seminal invention of the Industrial Revolution. Within a matter of decades, it helped transform Britain into the world’s dominant economy with a steam-and-iron navy that lorded over a colonial empire spanning a quarter of the globe. Britain’s pioneering textile factories multiplied their productivity and output by shifting from waterwheel to steam power and relocating from rural riversides to new industrial towns. Steam-driven bellows heated coke furnaces to produce prodigious amounts of cast iron, the plastic of the early industrial age. Watt steam engines helped overcome Britain’s fuel famine by pumping excess water out of coal shafts – and put the discharge to use by supplementing the water supply of the inland canals that had sprung up to expedite the growing shipments of coal from the collieries to the markets. Watt steam engines abetted the rise of urban metropolises, and improved the health and longevity of their residents, by pumping up freshwater from rivers for drinking, cooking, sanitation, and even firefighting. From Watt’s steam engine, a new industrial society took hold that launched human civilization on an altogether new trajectory. World and domestic balances of power were recast, and mankind’s material existence, population levels, and expectations increased more in just two centuries than they had in all the thousands of preceding years.
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Water is a very important natural resource which is required for every activity. it is known as the elixir of life due to its importance in the life of the living organisms. The sources of water are depleting and so there is need to save the reserves.
In the essay 'Water – The Elixir of Life' Sir C V Raman praises the importance of water, which is the lifegiving force to all. The scientist says that man attempted to seek an imaginary elixir of life, the divine Amrita, to confer him immortality. ... According to him, water is the true elixir of life.
Humankind has always searched in vain for an imaginary elixir of life, the divine amrita. A draught of this elixir was thought to confer immortality. But Raman feels that the true elixir of life is water. This single liquid can change the entire scene.
Water's extensive capability to dissolve a variety of molecules has earned it the designation of “universal solvent,” and it is this ability that makes water such an invaluable life-sustaining force. On a biological level, water's role as a solvent helps cells transport and use substances like oxygen or nutrients.