Why no Roman industrial revolution?
An interesting precursor step to coal mining was peat mining and the transport networks that evolved around it, especially in the Netherlands. Lowtechmagazine as usual has an excellent article [0] about it.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-in-pre-industrial-times.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil...</a>