Imagine you were alive just over a century ago living in a small village in the countryside

and then for the first time in your life you hear this.

Hello, I'm Justin Rolak and welcome to part three of my Pyra Technic History of Humanity

here on the BBC World Service. Now starting your car in the morning may seem mundane, but

the arrival of fossil fuels took our sleepy agrarian way of life and exploded it. After

10,000 years of agriculture relying on the daily influx of the sun's rays to meet all our

energy needs, suddenly a new form of combustion was revolutionising our lives, propelling

our population growth and our living standards.

Hello. Vatslava, is that you? He asked me out. Hello, Justin Rolak.

Now when I first set out to make a radio series about the history of energy, the number

one person I wanted to speak to was Vatslava Smil. He's a Czech Canadian professor at

the University of Manitoba and a hugely respected expert on the subject. But at the age of

77, he's also notorious for not giving interviews. So when he agreed to let me call him, I jumped

at the chance. Without fossil fuels, I wouldn't be talking to you.

You know, certainly 150 years ago I would have been long that the average life expectancy

was less than 50 years. We would not have civilization as a superior. So without fossil

fuels, no rapid mass transportation, no flying, no sapas, consumer food production, no

cell phone made in China brought to Southampton by giant container ships, 200,000 containers.

All of that is fossil fuels. Everything you will get.

So we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's turn the clock back again to around 1800. We're

hardly burning any fossil fuels yet, but without ballooning population, advances in metal

farm tools and the breeding of powerful new horses, the West was beginning to run up against

...