Single most significant event in all human history. (USA, language, how)
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I would say the most significant event(s) in world history is the massive brainwashing of so many gullible human beings to have them believe there is an invisible man in the sky who knows everything and is all powerful and loves everybody. It's more mind boggling than putting a man on the moon. For all the educated 21st century people out there to be suckered into accepting so many supernatural events and to let superstitious control their minds is truly the single greatest event in human history.
Interesting thread. I don't think I could put my hand on a single event, but there are a few that stand out and I think definitely changed humanity big time. I realize some of these happened over time.
Agriculture (domestication of crops and animals). This changed us from hunter gatherer nomads and allowed us to stay put and build our first cities and civilizations.
Writing. For the first time we were able to capture words and retain / share them. Before this, knowledge was shared through story telling, but once we learned how to write, knowledge could actually be stored outside of human heads and passed on even after the person with the knowledge passed away.
Discovery of bacteria. Led to the introduction of vaccines and medication, allowing us to battle diseases that had previously killed hundreds of millions of people.
The invention of the atomic bomb. Gave us the power to wipe out the entire planet in minutes.
The internet. I think this one is much more significant than we realize. Since the internet, average people can have nearly immediate access to just about all of the world's knowledge. It's like having all of the world's libraries, news, and information at our fingertips, available within seconds anytime we want.
This is a good list but the cornerstone is missing. Before all that, came the use of fire, especially being able to make it. If you can burn a fire you could sleep safely knowing beasts would not ambush you. You could warm an cave or a leanto and gain control of your interior climate. You could cook your food. This has immense repurcussions in that the teeth needed to chew raw meat were lost and the jaw got smaller and the ability to make specific sounds increased. It also opened up the night and changed your band from the hunted who hoped to survive the night to much higher up the food scale.
If you could sit around the fire and eat your cooked meal, and make more specific sounds, thus have better language, you became more social. You had more ways of communicating available. There is a theory that we are generally much more peaceful than our relatives who tend to run in tribes controlled by the strongest male. When we are not being provoked, humans are remarkably peaceful and cooperative without being guided that way. But if you had a means of protecting yourself you had the opportunity to form a society where meanness and brute force was not the most important factor in your safety. Thus women would have looked at men in terms of mates who could bring food and provide rather than chase away the wild animals. And with the smaller jaw and greater contact language facilitated more communication.
I agree the other things are all very important but if we didn't have that community, which fire made possible, they would not be.
Interesting about the discovery of bacteria and viruses... Its being seriously said that we've been selelectively breeding them to a state where we have a growing number of conditions where drugs don't work. What do we do when we've perfected the agents of infection to the point that people once again begin to die from them and just creating more drugs will not fix it anymore?
And the internet. Those who have always had it do not have any concentp of the world without it. When I was 20 having friends scattered all over the world and it being nothing unusual would be unthinkable. Being able to talk to people half a world away as if they were next door would have been science fiction. Carrying around your "communicator" because someone might want to talk to you would have been rediculas. But we do. Maybe those of us on the cusp, who have known both worlds, have a far greater understanding of how much it has changed things. I got my first real job in the 80's writing Cobol programs and it was every so impressive to people who had not clue what I was talking about. In 30 years we've gone from being impressed by large boxes with computing power to carrying at least one around with you and calling it a phone and not even blinking at the things it does, but wishing for more. Quantum leap in the level of communications and something which will be a fundamental change.
Fire was a discovery, not an invention. I know: Picky, picky, picky.
I have to come down on the side of Jesus not being a candidate. I was never much into fairy tales, especially ones that were written two thousand years ago and were then mangled by men who were, apparently, afraid of women to the point that they turned them into whores in their story.
It can be argued that humans and prehumans knew about fire so they didn't have to discover it. Prehumans, it had been discovered, actually used fire before fully humans developed. If they collected it and used it or made it themselves is unknown. But when devices like the flint were made where if there was no fire around you could make your own then the invention of the fire making device is a next step. Its kiind of like water. We need water. When we drank from a stream or a rolled leaf or a shell it was a find. When we created a cup deliberately it was an invention.
Fire was a discovery, not an invention. I know: Picky, picky, picky.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightbird47
It can be argued that humans and prehumans knew about fire so they didn't have to discover it. Prehumans, it had been discovered, actually used fire before fully humans developed. If they collected it and used it or made it themselves is unknown. But when devices like the flint were made where if there was no fire around you could make your own then the invention of the fire making device is a next step. Its kiind of like water. We need water. When we drank from a stream or a rolled leaf or a shell it was a find. When we created a cup deliberately it was an invention.
I agree. The inventions are those items created to use a discovery.
The back scratcher. Instead of backing up against a tree, man with his prehensile hand and opposable thumb could grasp a portable branch and scratch his back. Probably the first hand-held tool that man ever used, and he realized the awesome power of tools, and the rest is history.
It would seem to me that this almost has to be the answer to the OP question, without this event there would have been no other human events.
How about the Big Bang? Certainly no human history would have been possible without it.
This is what happens when you don't define the terms. Exactly what the span of time that we are talking about here?
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