“Imagine giving a medieval peasant a rock from the ground that you could burn for fuel.”

Okay, I’m imagining it. It would be like handing him a big, dry, well seasoned log. Humans have been using coal since around 4,000 BC in China, and there was a trade in it in the Roman Empire. By the Middle Ages, most of the coal that was easy to get at was gone, but it was still in use. Serious coal mining began with the Industrial Revolution, and the first commercially successful steam engine was on a pump for coal mines which have a tendency to fill up with water because they are underground. Without coal and the power it produced and the technology that used that power, most of us would still basically be ignorant serfs like our friend with the lump of coal. The stratification of society between those that had swords, the religious who could read, and the rest of the herd of human chattel would make today’s inequality look pretty benign. Women would be baby making machines and beasts of burden. Far from being a product of Hades, coal created the modern industrial world.