The history of human evolution is, in some defining ways, the history of man-machine relationship. It is captured, partly though not fully, by the evolution of the tools—technologies in the current idiom—that man has invented to satisfy his material, socio-political, knowledge-seeking, cultural, artistic and spiritual needs. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th century came a time when the man-machine relationship underwent a dramatic transformation, at once liberative and lethal. Breathtaking advances began to be made in science, creating products that quickened and broadened social change. However, they also violently altered the political map of the world. This is because machines, including war machines, became tools in the hands of colonisers, exploiters, plunderers and empire-builders. Traditional societies in Asia, Africa and America, which had created diverse and priceless intellectual, cultural and wisdom traditions of their own, were robbed of their freedom, resources and livelihoods. Worse, the colonisers claimed that they had a divine mandate to modernise and civilise the enslaved peoples.