Medieval technology, like that of the Romans, was based on wood and iron. Its primary energy source remained the muscle power of humans or animals, though by the eleventh century water mills were universally employed for the grinding of grain. The water wheel had been used in Anatolia as early as the first century, but it was apparently unknown in the west until the brewers of Picardy adopted it around 820. By the mid-thirteenth century water power was also used in the fulling of cloth and to drive the hammers and bellows of forges. Wind provided assistance for ships at sea, but windmills, a Persian invention introduced to Europe at the end of the twelfth century, did not become common until the fifteenth century.

Fuel was limited almost entirely to wood and charcoal and was rarely used to generate power. Wood was burned for cooking and to supply heat. In western Europe, interior heating was usually accomplished, if at all, with residual heat from cooking. Charcoal, an expensive commodity, was used primarily in the smelting and forging of metals, while coal, first mentioned in European sources around the year 1200, did not come into general use for another four hundred years. This was largely because mining techniques remained primitive. In the absence of effective pumps the pits could not be kept dry, and the development of effective pumps depended upon metallurgical techniques that were as yet unknown. Mine pumps also require a cheap, reliable source of power because they must be worked continuously. Windmills, used from the fifteenth century onward to drain the tidal wetlands of Holland, were a possible solution, but they proved ineffective in hilly country or in regions where wind strength was inconstant. None of these problems was fully solved until the age of steam. In the meantime, coal and ores could be mined only from shallow pits, and transportation costs ensured that coal would be used only in the immediate vicinity of the mines. The scarcity of metals made ore worth transporting, but it was always best if deposits were located near abundant sources of charcoal so that smelting might occur on the spot.

Tools tended to be made of wood or of wood tipped with iron. Alloy steel was unknown, and the handwrought carbon steel used in knives and edged weapons was expensive. The process required great skill and enormous quantities of fuel. Even implements made from lower grades of iron represented a major capital outlay for farmers and artisans.

The high cost of iron resulted in part from the limitations of mining technology, but skilled iron workers were few in number, and the making of charcoal for use in the forges consumed large quantities of wood. Wood had long been scarce in the Mediterranean basin. By the end of the Middle Ages its availability was limited in northwest Europe as well. Only in the Baltic regions and in eastern Europe was timber plentiful, and even there prices increased steadily throughout the Middle Ages in response to increased demand from other regions. Given that wood was a primary building material as well as the major source of fuel, this is hardly surprising. . .

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