Single most significant event in all human history. (years, civilization, document)
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So then by your increasingly odd standards, the eruption of a volcano would not be a historical event.
I guess that could depend whether we are talking about world history or human history, the two not necessarily being the same, though often in this thread people have conflated them. Certainly an Etna or Thira or St. Helens is part of human history. Of course, a volcano that existed before humans could still have shaped human history, as could any earthly geology, thus I find the line rather difficult to draw with any precision.
If there is one single event in human history that changed everything about humanity what would it be?
I would say the Resurrection of Christ over two thousand years ago.
How about when the first group of people got together and decided to worship a man that was supposedly resurrected 2000 years ago? The world has never been the same since.
So then by your increasingly odd standards, the eruption of a volcano would not be a historical event.
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Actually,I had thought about that. The eruption of Krakatoa had a negligible and transitory effect on mankind's progress, and the same for the meteor in Siberia. No such events in human times have been anywhere near as significant as what man has done himself. So I discounted them as events, whether historical or not, in terms of the high-ranking significance any of them have ever had.
You can call the Ice Age a significant event if you like, but mankind just went on as it would have, but in different geographical venues. If you're going to go that far, you'd have to consider the condensation of solar gasses into rocky planets, or the capture of the moon which gave us essential tides, which is why I felt a line had to be drawn, and I drew it at "the end of 'pre-history". Which is probably called that for a reason. That's when pre-history ended, and history started.
I guess that could depend whether we are talking about world history or human history, the two not necessarily being the same, though often in this thread people have conflated them. Certainly an Etna or Thira or St. Helens is part of human history. Of course, a volcano that existed before humans could still have shaped human history, as could any earthly geology, thus I find the line rather difficult to draw with any precision.
In judging the impact of volcanos on humanity I think one should distinguish between those that had local or regional impact and others that had global impact. Thera, Etna, Vesuvius and St Helens had regional impact and had little impact on peoples in the Americas or Asia. In fact Vesuvius and St Helens had little effect on the Roman Empire or the United States. This isn't to say the peoples of those nations didn't consider them a tragedy. Now there are other volcanos that do have global impact and may be large enough to threaten the stability of the Earth's ecosystem. These are now called Supervolcanos and there is an active one in the United States. It is Yellowstone National Park and it last eruped about 650,000 years ago. Another is called Toba and it is in Indonesia. It last eruped 70,000 years ago and may have played a role in the near extinction of Homo Sapiens. Recent mitacondrial-DNA studies of man indicate all humanity shares the m-DNA from a single female who lived coincidentally 70,000 years ago.
For those who don't accept this new fangled science stuff you can take this as proof of Genesis (take your pick of Eve or Noah's wife).
The development of agriculture, domestication of animals and the specialization of labor. These things allowed the development of towns, cities and all of civilization. The whole basis of our recorded history rest upon these acheivements of 10000-8000 BC.
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