Can anyone recommend a book (I'm imagining sort of 'coffee table' style picture book, but not necessarily) on technological advancements through human history, ideally roughly chronologically but more organised around what needed to happen before the next was possible?
A history of technology, edited by Singer, several volumes and many authors. It's old historiographically (from the Fifties) but very detailed and comprehensive; I have a recent Italian paperback edition but you should be able to find it in English easily enough. Lots of fascinating details.
I'll see if I can come up with something with more up to date scholarship / better pictures (the work above is effectively but simply illustrated).
I started reading Josephine Quinn's book "How the world made the west" and I can recommend it. It goes quite into detail and is not of the sort "coffee-table"-style picture book. It explains the origins of technologies, trade between groups and challenges the common view how civilizations evolved.
Based on reading the Guardian review (that predictably praises it and seems to be written by someone who doesn't know much history) and a much better review on a website run, weirdly enough, by Christians (written by someone who does know history), I would agree.
The first half of the quality review praises the good parts of the book, the second half is where the meat is.
It is probably a useful book if you don't know much about the classical world but it doesn't seem like one should take one's politics from it.
The author is a professor of ancient history at Oxford University. What makes you think it is political? A book can specialise in Western history without having a hidden agenda.
James Burke's Connections (companion to his 1978 television series of the same name) does this in fair part, though it tracks a number of distinct (and somewhat idiosyncratic) paths through time.
