Question: When civillisation of humans started, how did people create or get energy without any machines?

Steven Gardner answered on 27 Jun 2013:

Usually they used animals, or sometimes people power.

Before electricity any device was a so called ‘mechanical’ device that needed the input of energy from something else. Long ago that usually involved using an animal to move heavy things or maybe even enslaving people to do it. Then along came the steam engine and everything changed, with a steam engine you could use fossil fuel to heat water very fast and turn it into steam, the stream would then drive a motor and you connected the motor to something (like the wheels of a car for instance) and you have motion without any effort.

We still do this really, it’s just now we burn the fossil fuels in power stations and transport the energy as electricity instead of having to lug a big sack of coal or drum of oil everywhere you go.