Cordage/string. Way more useful than fire and arguably predates it.
Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
Not the just important invention, but definitely the best invention: plumbing.
Y'all try going a week without running water and wiping with leaves or newspaper and you'll quickly see that while other things are definitely important, plumbing is the best to have
Written language. It lets us speak to people across time.
Sliced bread. Before sandwiches what was the point?
Delicious drippings, stews and gravies on hunks of bread.
The sandwich was a downgrade.
Screw the running water and antibiotics. I don't need no machinery or amenities, give me cheese!
Computers are cool though
I don't know if this counts, but I'd say the Enlightenment. It was a discovery in that we discovered a new way to interpret the world.
I think there is kind of a glass ceiling when you talk about fire, plumbing, electricity and so on. Each one was a necessary stepping stone to get us where we are, but without any one of them, we wouldn't be here.
The Enlightenment gave us a brand new sense of autonomy as a species, which in turn has given us a greater amount of control over "Destiny."
I'm not sure about the greatest invention but the second greatest is sliced bread!
The Tamagotchi - for obvious reasons.
The ability to shape steel. Sounds basic but blacksmiths make the tools for everything else.
Electricity
Microwave. Being able to heat up a hot pocket in just minutes is legendary.
I believe argiculture and trade were massive parts of history
Literature, Writing, Written Word. If we couldn't document and share ideas, we'd be nowhere.
The printing press. It allowed us for the first time to share knowledge at a scale we only dreamed of.
Electricity
The wheel and the derivatives of the circular shape in general; they powered all human innovations from abstract mathematics to real life applications and everything in between.
Medicine. Would be right fucked without it
Irrigation. But Iron Working and Celestial Navigation are good shouts too.
Spray cheese
Copper. Because without copper, most of the named things wouldn't be possible to create!