For millennia, advances in human progress have been tied to our ability to protect ourselves from the harmful effects of the wastes we produce—ranging from human waste to the organic and inorganic by-products of everyday living. Across the world, cultures learned to bury their dead away from their homes and to burn their waste or make certain that it was carried away by streams and rivers flowing downstream from their homes. Those cultures that learned this most effectively thrived. When the industrial revolution took place in the nineteenth century, rivers again enabled progress. They provided water needed for power and energy, and they carried away the waste materials.