After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe became a rather insignificant continent for nearly a millennium. However, a combination of factors, among them technical innovations, the Catholic Church and the small scale of political units, made it into the engine of Modernity.

• Industrialization had its roots in medieval Europe. Population and economic activity started to grow exponentially, in interdependent feedback loops. Industrial capitalism spread across the globe in waves of colonialism, migration, urbanization, trade and post-colonialism;
• European populations went through the demographic transition; its economies through structural change. Other countries followed, at different speeds. It characterized the last centuries, notably the second half of 20^th century, as a time of acceleration. Humanity entered the Anthropocene;
• Large parts of human populations underwent a change from the agrarian to the industrial socio-ecological regime. The exponential growth of population and economic activities, in the form of massive expansion of cropland, irrigation, fishing and deforestation. It had large impacts on landscapes and it polluted soils, air and water bodies and reduced biodiversity (sink side). Populations and economies became also dependent on large flows of fossil fuels and minerals (source side).
• Humanity lives on a finite planet and human populations and their activities cannot grow forever. A proper framework is the larger system of solar inflow of high-quality and outward radiation of low-quality energy.