Written language.
The Greatest Human Invention?
- Thread starter Jax
- Start date
Penicillin
The printing press
The ability to cheaply and in masses produce exact copies of a text and distribute it is priceless. Without it knowledge wouldn't have spread as fast and as accurate.
With handwritten copies (in the middle ages mostly the bible and a few other religious texts) there's bound to be human errors in it and that just won't do with scientific texts so printed language is far superior.
The ability to cheaply and in masses produce exact copies of a text and distribute it is priceless. Without it knowledge wouldn't have spread as fast and as accurate.
With handwritten copies (in the middle ages mostly the bible and a few other religious texts) there's bound to be human errors in it and that just won't do with scientific texts so printed language is far superior.
Birth control -- not used enough IMHO.
Nubians were making a tetracycline laced beer thousands of years earlier.
Again, another point for beer. What can't it do?
Make you drive better.
Wow, I didn't know that! What else did the ancients know that is now lost forever? Perhaps a few things we have yet to discover ourselves...
Thanks for the linky.
OK. Minus one for beer.
Wow, I didn't know that! What else did the ancients know that is now lost forever? Perhaps a few things we have yet to discover ourselves...
Makes you wonder doesn't it? Think of the contents of the Library at Alexandria that were lost.
Makes you loose faith in humanity, doesn't it? Perhaps all is not lost, there may well be a few more sites of ancient knowledge... if the Hall of Records is found within my lifetime... what an important moment to be alive. I do hope things remain stable in Egypt, it is not the type of place which should be treated in so cavalier a fashion.
I can't pick between facebook scrabble and Charlie Sheen
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Seriously, I would rate all of the following as having equal importance:
The making and use of fire
The wheel
Agriculture and animal husbandry
Written language
Printing from movable type
The telegraph
Why the telegraph? For thousands of years, people who were any distance from one another could communicate only as fast as the fastest available method of transportation. The telegraph made instantaneous or near-instantaneous communication possible over long distances. It revolutionized commerce, trade, warfare, the spread of news and information -- just about every aspect of human culture. All communication technologies that followed are basically extensions of the telegraph.
You realise this issue would be quickly and speedily resolved if you could define 'greatest' and how it pertains to inventions. How is a fire greater than the internet, for example?
Fire burns internet. Water puts out fire. Internet, um, covers water. Yup.
I'd argue that fire is a discovery, not an invention, therefore it doesn't count.
I take it that you never had to make fire in the wild without a lighter or matches? Trust me, it's a technique that had to be invented.
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