Rock Bottom to Industrial Revolution — Needed Technologies

I wonder, what would be the least number of things/techs needed for an early-medieval village to achieve industrial-revolution levels of tech (even if not fully to that extent)?

For example, most metals are not needed. Bronze will do just fine, for most applications (i.e. stirling engines). The stirling engine allows the conversion of temperature difference into motion, and vice-versa, so it can be used both for getting power, and for heating or cooling an area. An Enstein Refrigerator (fridge using alcohol and heat for cooling without moving parts) can be used without metal, glazed terracotta doing just fine for that. Or an evaporative fridge, except for high-humidity environments, though you might want to add fans/bellows (with moving parts) or a wind catcher (without moving parts).

Then, bearings, reduction gears and pedals and/or treadles will be needed for high-speed transport by animal power (humans included). Rails would also be very useful for cheap transportation, since wooden rails, and then stone rails, can be used. An example would be using a properly-sized hamster wheel for an oxen (like how there were some for human-powering a cradle for building castles) to accelerate and decelerate a train/vehicle. You can have a gearbox and even clutch to change the speeds, to go (much) faster. Note that instead of 2 rails (left and right), you can use many more, depending on how wide you want the carriage to be (i.e. 5 rails for cross-continental transport), and you will need the rails closer together depending on the strength of the rails (i.e. wooden ones will be closer than stone ones, which will be closer than steel ones).

Windmills, waterwheels, archimede’s screws and wave power can be used to power things while only needing wood, and solar power can be done with glazed terracotta.

Paper and printing are also quite valuable, and seals (the kind used for molding the wax on letters for authenticity) were used for at least 1122 BC, with woodblock printing present in 200 AD, and there are copper plates used for printing since at least 1900 BCE. Paper existed since at least 1050 BCE, and textiles can be used instead, when needed to write things down. If metal is present, even imprinting on wooden blocks with hot metal or hot terracotta can be used, and wooden shingles were used for roofs for quite a long time. It would be quite interesting to see a book made of wooden shingles and kept together by rope. Sure, it uses a lot of space, and might be heavy, but it still lasts up to centuries in low-humidity climates, and at least a few years if not a few decades in high-humidity climates when properly maintained. Using multiple wood blocks, it is possible to print in multiple colors. Though gradients would be very difficult to almost impossible to make smooth without using a brush to spread the ink in the holes a board leaves for the gradients to be made in.

If you’ve got paper, you can use was or resin/tree_sap to waterproof it, creating greenhouses rather easily. Sure, not the direct sunlight the glass allows for, but might be easier and cheaper to make, at doesn’t needs as hot a flame. A fire for melting tree sap is a must, since mixing resin with something else can make a rather good hot glue, and even torches (i.e. tar pitch).

Wattle and daub, as well as wicker wood, textiles and making boats would be likely needed, as well. But rope is pretty easy to make, so it’s not difficult to figure out ways to make textiles and wicker wood can even be made before that. Wattle and daub is basically using the wicker wood for structural integrity and mud for not allowing wind to pass through. You would still need a few wooden beams for even a shack, but wood is plentiful, and it only needs to be cut.

Cement is another thing, since it allows one to make soilcrete/dirtcrete, for roads, grindstones, statues buildings and many more things. Even dams become sturdier by using cement. And adding textiles to the mix, you can make cement sheets for roofs and walls. For cement sheets you need a textile or wicker wood for tension strength, sandwiched in between two layers of cement/soilcrete/dirtcrete for compression strength.

You might need to have roller presses for making metal sheets for saws and the like, but you can also use big flat stones or chuncks of metal, possibly aided by hardwood or metal impact dampeners, to get sheets of metal.for circular saws. I mean, you can make the saws in a mold, but you would need to hammer them to compress the metal (copper, bronze, iron or steel) into being stronger.

And while it might seem like there’s a lot of things on this list, we had most of them by the time the time the roman empire was created (27 BC). BC = Backwards Chronology. AD = Ascending Dates.

One last thing…

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