The emergence of modern economic life with amenities such as electricity, sanitation and indoor plumbing, modern medicine, and transportation and communication networks, is a recent development in human history. In 1800, someone living in New York, London, or Shanghai experienced conditions that were closer to ancient Rome or Greece than to a mid-twentieth century city. Candles were the primary source of artificial light, modern medicines did not exist, food storage was primitive, and animals, wind, water, and humans supplied all the available power. The vast changes in living conditions since 1800 are the result of nearly two centuries of economic growth that came after several millennia of little or no cumulative progress in living standards. Significant changes did not begin until the 1800s and after approximately 1870 they accelerated further (Gordon, 2016: 1–18; Maddison, 2006: 29).