Culture of heliotechnology

Madanjeet Singh

Renewable Energy, 1998, vol. 15, issue 1, 224-229

Abstract: The history of heliotechnology — which means the useful conversion of one form of solar energy into another — began with the use of muscle power of the prehistoric Paleolithic or the Old Stone Age communities who instinctively related the sun to nature — stones, mountains, trees, plants, flowers, birds, beasts, water and fire. The successive Neolithic or New Stone Age societies, while identifying solar energy with deities and cult objects of agriculture and fertility rites, linked technology with science by the time of the first Sumerian astronomers plotted the motion of the heavenly bodies, based calculations about the calendar and irrigation systems, and invented the wheel. The emergence of these skills in Mesopotamia (3rd millennium before Christ) literally laid the foundation stone of scientific heliotechnology, just as scientific development took another leap forward with the accidental discovery of lodestone in the 13th century. A paradigm attributed to the Akkadian priestess Enkheduana, one of history's earliest known authors (c. 2300 BC.), envisages “paradise as the place where the sun rises”. Perhaps the time has come to recreate the paradise of solar energy by using the peaceful, participatory and environmentally friendly associations of heliotechnology which may be able to repair the long-standing divorce between science and culture which the use of fossil fuels created since the Industrial Revolution.

Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:15:y:1998:i:1:p:224-229

DOI: 10.1016/S0960-1481(98)00163-3

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