This book offers a comprehensive history of technology—spanning not only the vast sweep of time suggested by its title, but also the breadth of human civilization across the globe. Although our lives have become increasingly dependent on technology, its history remains surprisingly little known.

Rather than presenting mathematical formulas or technical detail, the book focuses on facts, stories, and reflections that often lie beyond common knowledge. Its aim is to reveal unexpected connections, stimulate critical thought, and illuminate the often hidden interactions between technological innovation and the political, economic, cultural, and religious forces that have shaped human societies.

Covering the major technological developments from prehistory to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, this first volume explores how innovations emerged, spread, and evolved. It examines why some technologies transformed the world while others disappeared, how different civilizations adopted similar inventions in different ways, and why identical technologies often produced profoundly different consequences across places and periods.

Looking ahead, the book also reflects on the technologies that appear most promising today—while reminding us that every technological advance carries both opportunities and risks. Since the first chipped flint could serve either to secure food or to take a human life, technology has remained neither inherently good nor evil. Two million years later, that fundamental dilemma is unchanged. Its consequences still depend on the choices of those who create and use it.

Massimo Guarnieri was born near Venice, Italy, in 1955. He received the Laurea (Hons.) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Padua in 1979, the Diploma in Plasma and Thermonuclear Fusion Research in 1982, an MBA from CUOA Business School in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Science from the University of Rome in 1987. He joined the Italian National Research Council in 1982 and the University of Padua in 1983, where he has served as Full Professor of Electrical Engineering since 2000. During his academic career, his research initially focused on electromagnetic systems for magnetic-confinement fusion experiments and later expanded to electrochemical energy-storage and energy-conversion technologies, including hydrogen systems, fuel cells, flow batteries, and lithium-ion batteries. For more than three decades, Professor Guarnieri has also been actively engaged in the history of technology and engineering. For twenty-five years, he taught History of Technology in engineering programs at the University of Padua, introducing generations of students to the historical development of technological innovation and its impact on society. He currently chairs the History Activity Committee of the IEEE Italy Section and has authored more than fifty scholarly articles on the history of technology published in peer-reviewed international journals, including numerous publications issued by IEEE. He has presented his research at many international conferences on the history of technology and served as Co-Chair of HISTELCON 2023, the IEEE Conference on the History of Electrotechnology, held in Florence. Professor Guarnieri is the author of several books on the history of technology. The present volume is the revised English edition of Da Habilis a Jobs – Due milioni di anni con la tecnologia (Esculapio, Bologna, 2019), a comprehensive work of more than one thousand pages tracing the evolution of technology from prehistoric toolmaking to the digital age. Combining the perspectives of engineer, researcher, educator, and historian of technology, Professor Guarnieri explores the complex interactions among technological innovation, scientific knowledge, economic development, and social change throughout human history.