14 DAY TRIAL // A crucial element is responsible for the many achievements, social structuring or other factors of historical importance related to humankind's evolution, although it is constantly and unfairly neglected. It is the same element that also helped life emerge – water. Scientists all over the world and from a very wide range of fields only begin to comprehend the tremendous role that water and nature in general have played in our becoming.
A more specific example is the recent study developed by a Norwegian writer and film maker by the name of Terje Tvedt, also a professor at the Universities of Oslo and Bergen. During a last month's conference held in Sicily and supported by the European Science Foundation and the European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST), he stressed on the importance of water in shaping human societies along the ages and pointed out the error of not taking natural resources into account in historic research.
He insisted on two of the element's most important features - firstly, it is vital for life; secondly, it always finds a way to resist our negative impact on it, "You can destroy or create rivers and lakes, but you cannot destroy water itself," he stated, as quoted by Eurekalert . In order to support his bold affirmations, he gave an alternative explanation for the reason the industrial revolution took place in Europe (namely England) and not elsewhere.
While the politics and social tectonics (slavery and colonialism) may have provided the human factor, it was water that took care of the rest. Britain's rivers (low-silted, running in all directions and spread throughout the country at the time) provided a unique goods-transportation medium and a healthy water mill system. Both crucial for the following revolution, these conditions were not met in any other part of the world at the time, he said.
This proves that nature should really be taken into consideration as having a major influence in any event. "Since World War II, the dominant theories relating to the international aid system have, without exception, disregarded the role of nature. Modernization theory has told us that all societies could develop modernism in the same way, if they just find the right economic instruments," which is just not true, explained Tvedt.