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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All major societal/industriial transformations area result of various “inventions”, or ways to manufacture more cheaply, resulting of a congruence of these discoveries. E.g. the explosion of the printed word was in line for using linen as a basis for making paper so making the process both automated and very cheap in comparison.
as for the industrial revolution. This required raw materials (coal, iron,) great advances in manufacturing more robust iron steel. Transport revolutions to easily transport these materials (canals/train). Goods that actually wanted to be made. Machinery requires lubriction or it doesn’t work. Discovering that whale oil, a fine oil, that is perfect for machine lubrication drove the explosion of the industrial revolution. The IR was, in effect, built upon whale oil.
The increasing innovation in machinery drove agricultural advances (drilling machines).
This huge IR explosion of science and research made possible by transporting goods was not really possible in earlier times As advances in the past were very slow and not really “joined up”. These transformations rely on raw materials, transportation, engineering, trade, innovation, money making, creation of new solutions to problems (canals), Empire et al
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