Most Important Invention in the History of Mankind

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Most Important Invention in the History of Mankind

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:05:27 PM EDT

Ok vote

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:08:08 PM EDT

[#1]

Atomic Bomb

I think that counts as an explosive.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:08:19 PM EDT

[#2]

Air conditioning.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:09:22 PM EDT

[#3]

fire or the wheel

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:09:56 PM EDT

[#4]

germ theory and modern sanitation.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:10:49 PM EDT

[#5]

i didnt know man invented boobies.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:12:26 PM EDT

[#6]

Bewbies!!!

Without bewbies we wouldn't have lived long enough to put meat on a stick, let alone the a-bomb.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:13:17 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
i didnt know man invented boobies.

+1 Reason I voted for explosives.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:13:18 PM EDT

[#8]

Transistor - the old N-P-N junction has changed the world more than any of those "inventions" that you listed

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:13:57 PM EDT

[#9]

The best invention ever was by Al Gore, the Internet

Second best is probably MANBEARPIG.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:19:08 PM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:
Quoted:
i didnt know man invented boobies.

+1 Reason I voted for explosives.

Who said man invented boobies?

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:19:39 PM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:
Transistor - the old N-P-N junction has changed the world more than any of those "inventions" that you listed

Thus the "Other" vote.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:22:31 PM EDT

[#12]

Language.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:22:40 PM EDT

[#13]

the metric system........

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:25:19 PM EDT

[#14]

Written language.

Being able to pass knowledge on to the next generation.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:25:34 PM EDT

[#15]

I would have chose boobies, bad man didn't "Invent" them.

Second choice, is explosives.

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:26:16 PM EDT

[#16]

Plastic

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:28:54 PM EDT

[#17]

Women.

Damned glad to give up a rib for that invention!

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:37:30 PM EDT

[#18]

ARFCOM!

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:37:57 PM EDT

[#19]

wheel

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:40:05 PM EDT

[#20]

What? No option for bra?

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:40:37 PM EDT

[#21]

Birth Control Pill

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:48:26 PM EDT

[#22]

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:50:57 PM EDT

[#23]

booze and the fleshlight

Posted: 6/17/2006 4:53:11 PM EDT

[#24]

steel

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:00:18 PM EDT

[#25]

Beer maybe.

I read civilization might have gotten started because stone age people liked drinking beer. Beer is made from fermented grains, so people started farming grain when they couldn't find enough wild grain for beer. Farming is of course hard work, so humanity quickly invented slavery. It was also easier to rob people of their grains/beer than making the stuff itself, so walled communities and a warrior class evolved to protect farms and granaries from thieves, and to keep the grain producing peasants in their place.

ETA runner up choice tight female sweaters.

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:01:25 PM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:
booze and the fleshlight

A fan of BTLS to huh

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:03:32 PM EDT

[#27]

Pie!

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:07:39 PM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:
Beer maybe.

I read civilization might have gotten started because stone age people liked drinking beer. Beer is made from fermented grains, so people started farming grain when they couldn't find enough wild grain for beer. Farming is of course hard work, so humanity quickly invented slavery. It was also easier to rob people of their grains/beer than making the stuff itself, so walled communities and a warrior class evolved to protect farms and granaries from thieves, and to keep the grain producing peasants in their place.

ETA runner up choice tight female sweaters.

I suppose you read that on a beer bottle

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:09:16 PM EDT

[#29]

toilet paper

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:10:01 PM EDT

[#30]

Popeyes chicken..." Its the SHIZZNET"

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:10:45 PM EDT

[#31]

Wheel and axle.
Lever.
Inclined plane.
Block and tackle.
Screw.

He said screw!

efxguy

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:11:16 PM EDT

[#32]

Between boobies, porn, beer and the screwdriver, I can't decide.

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:13:59 PM EDT

[#33]

Explosives. We didn't invent boobies, porn just sort of invented itself, meat on a stick hasn't been all that exciting since we invented the wheel, etc.

But explosives. Ah, explosives make it all possible! Explosives gave us cannons, guns, rockets, internal-combustion engines, fireworks, and huge-ass craters for us to scream "DID YOU SEE THAT?!" over.

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:16:20 PM EDT

[#34]

beer...

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:24:02 PM EDT

[#35]

birth control ;)

Actually I always did like the beer/grain theory of civilization.

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:28:11 PM EDT

[#36]

Aspirin and penecillin.

Roy

Posted: 6/17/2006 5:39:10 PM EDT

[#37]

internet

Posted: 6/17/2006 8:10:37 PM EDT

[#38]

.

Posted: 6/17/2006 8:19:23 PM EDT

[#39]

Without a doubt: Farming and agriculture.

Farming and agriculture allowed a society to have artisans, and inventors. Look at the cultures that did not have farming and agriculture, (like Africans) they never invented shit, and their cultures where stuck in the stone age. Hell, today they still can't feed themselves. Africa has a shitty climate and soil, for agriculture, hence, the people that stayed their were never able to develope on their own past a hunter and gatherer society.

Side note. If you draw a latitude through Europe and the Middle East a thousand or so years ago, those places that fall on that line or near that line were able to grow crops, and herd animals in abundance so other members of their society could work on other things, like; mathematics, engineering, languages, and inventions of all sorts.

Edit: The "Fertile Crescent" area was able to support wheat, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs. These crops and animals where able to be stockpiled and used by the whole community, but the whole community was not need to produce it all, hence, specialty jobs could be viable and a people could commit time to invent stuff. Cultures that had early agriculture were able to flourish. Even if you drew that latitude line all the way to Asia, you will notice that, chicken, oxen, and rice could be used for agriculture for the Asian cultures. And the Asian cultures where not to far behind the West. They were also very easy to assimilate into Western Culture. (the Japanese for example)

Posted: 6/17/2006 8:20:52 PM EDT

[#40]

Printing Press. Everything else followed.

Posted: 6/17/2006 8:24:10 PM EDT

[#41]

Writing.

Posted: 6/17/2006 8:30:10 PM EDT

[#42]

corn dogs

onion rings

edible underwear

..actually it would be the airfoil

Posted: 6/17/2006 8:47:19 PM EDT

[#43]

Are we talking physical inventions only, or are ideas/concepts allowed as well?

I was going to say the glass lens, because it allowed microscopes and telescopes, greatly increasing our knowledge in areas where we previously could not go, but really I guess this doesn't qualify as the most important.

In the running, in my mind:

Metalworking
The wheel
Sails
The printing press
The first steam engine

The problem is that each of these builds on others; you can't have the steam engine without metalworking, you can't have sails without some kind of cloth-making.