Was it a lack of manpower? Was it geographic circumstances? Why couldn’t civilizations like, say, Babylon or Rome have an Industrial Revolution?
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You need to have a confluence of chemical power availability (coal), the need for chemical power (initially to pump water out of coal mines), and then a need for an unlimited amount of rotational power. The last part being industrial spinning of thread. All of these came together in Great Britain.
It didn’t happen in Rome because they didn’t have much of the precursor technologies needed to put this together: The basics of a useful steam engine, the need for industrial production of thread, and a large demand for coal.
A Roman Historian has a reasonable essay on what the industrial revolution was, and why earlier societies didn’t have an industrial revolution:
[https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/](https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/)
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