Well, the landing of Columbus was certainly significant in the immediate fortunes of the Taíno peoples and the ultimate history of the Americas, certainly for the native populations who were devastated by plagues, suppression, slavery, and forcible religious conversion, and if you want to then extend that to the conquest and exploitation of the “New World” then that has a global impact but that is also expanding the scope of the answer to a much broader context than a single event, and one that would have occurred regardless of whether Columbus made the discovery or someone else did. Columbus himself was just trying to make a fortune and a reputation.
If we want to confine the discussion to a localized development (although most other answers have been very broad), then I’d argue that the invention of calculus is the most significant ‘thing’ insofar as it gave fundamental insight into every area of physics and astronomy, and ultimately all of the physical sciences which underlay modern industrial society. Of course, that was also ‘inevitable’ (mathematicians had been nibbling away at the edges for centuries, and both Newton and Leibniz came to analogous systems nearly simultaneously) but it came at a time when observations and technical developments needed it, and the lack of calculus would have been a serious hindrance to “natural philosophy”.
1380 In the aftermath of the Black Plague, Europe’s slave trade thrives in response to a labor shortage. Slaves pour in from all over the continent, the Middle East, and North Africa.
1444 Portuguese traders bring the first large cargo of slaves from West Africa to Europe by sea—establishing the Atlantic slave trade.
1444: Lançarote de Freitas, a tax-collector from the Portuguese town of Lagos, forms a company to trade with Africa.
8 August 1444: de Freitas lands 235 kidnapped and enslaved Africans in Lagos, the first large group of African slaves brought to Europe.
1452: Start of the ‘sugar-slave complex’. Sugar is first planted in the Portuguese island of Madeira and, for the first time, African slaves are put to work on the sugar plantations.
18 June 1452: Pope Nicholas V issues Dum Diversas, a bull authorising the Portuguese to reduce any non-Christians to the status of slaves.
8 January 1454: Pope Nicholas V issues Romanus Pontifex, a bull granting the Portuguese a perpetual monopoly in trade with Africa. Nevertheless, Spanish traders begin to bring slaves from Africa to Spain.
1461: The first of the Portuguese trading forts, the castle at Arguin (modern Mauritania), is completed.
1462: The Portuguese colony on the Cape Verde Islands is founded, an important way-station in the slave trade.
1462: Portuguese slave traders start to operate in Seville (Spain)
1470s: Despite Papal opposition, Spanish merchants begin to trade in large numbers of slaves in the 1470s.
1476: Carlos de Valera of Castille in Spain brings back 400 slaves from Africa.
1481-86: Diogo da Azambuja builds the castle at Elmina (modern Ghana) which was to become the most substantial and the most notorious of the slave-trading forts in West Africa.
1483: Diogo Cão discovers the Congo river. The region is later a major source of slaves
1486: João Afonso Aveiro makes contact with the kingdom and the city of Benin.
1486: Portuguese settle the West African island of São Tomé. This uninhabited West African island is planted with sugar and populated by African slaves by the Portuguese. The settlement thus extended and developed the sugar-slave complex that had been initiated in Madeira.
On 1 August, Columbus and his men arrived at a landmass near the mouth of South America’s Orinoco river, in the region of modern-day Venezuela. Columbus recognized from the topography that it must be the continent’s mainland, but while describing it as an otro mundo (‘other world’),[125] retained the belief that it was Asia—and perhaps an Earthly Paradise.[126] On 2 August, they landed at Icacos Point (which Columbus named Punta de Arenal) in modern Trinidad, narrowly avoiding a violent encounter with the natives.[127] Early on 4 August, a tsunami nearly capsized Columbus’s ship.[128] The men sailed across the Gulf of Paria, and on 5 August, landed on the mainland of South America at the Paria Peninsula.[129]
I can tell you that of the 10 houses I’ve lived in, none ever had a lightning rod, and none were ever struck by lightning. My neighbors never had a lightning rod either, none of them ever reported a lightning-related injury. Drive by any residential neighborhood and have a look around; most structures don’t have lightning rods. Lightning rods may have some marginal value, but they are not in any sense “critical” for residential structures, and never have been.
Ben Franklin did not invent anything “critical”, he made a few interesting trifles and a few interesting observations that others were working on at the same time. American science of the time was limited to solving the problems of stealing labor from slaves and land from Indians. There was little serious science being done in America until European scientists began immigrating there after the revolutionary war.
I have to go with fire first. The ability to create it is huge. It gives much more flexibility on being able to pick up the village and move to new hunter/gatherer grounds. If you can make a fire anywhere, you can cook anywhere. And climate is not as much as an issue.
Cooking meat allows for other things too. Better nourishment.
Next agriculture. It allows a people to stay more settled without the constant need to move to hunt. Without constantly needing to move, more time is allowed for developing tools.
Why Don't Houses Have Lightening Rods? | Bray Electrical Services. Lightning rods are not a thing of the past, and there are many installed on homes across the country. In fact, proper lightning protection systems have multiple lightning rods spread out across the top of the structure. You don’t see them because they aren’t the tall monstrosities that they once were. Most people won’t notice or recognize them because they are very inconspicuous.
It is true, in many areas of the USA, they are not that common on homes- because there are plenty of trees higher than the houses, and that area may not be prone to lighting storms.
But high rise building- skyscrapers, etc have them and they are needed.
These buildings are protected by a lightning rod. Lightning rods are designed to protect a building from the damage that a direct lightning strike can cause. Unprotected buildings can experience electrical fires as the current travels across any conductive materials that exist. These can include electric wiring or even just plumbing.
We aren’t talking about dispirit events spread out of 100s of years, the Spanish conquest of the Americas. that was started by Columbus was complete in a lifetime, and directly followed from Columbus’ invasion of Hispaniola (and much of it was was carried out by people, like Cortez, who took part in that occupation with Columbus). Unlike examples like the “Invention of Mathematics” or the “Agricultural Revolution” its not something only postulated later by modern historians, it was a distinct (historically speaking) very quick event, that would have been very obvious (and very obviously an epoch defining event) to those taking part in it.
It is perfectly reasonable to consider the Spanish Conquest of the Americas a thing, that started in October 12, 1492 when Columbus crossed the Atlantic, and within a few decades had completely changed the fate of the human race.
one that would have occurred regardless of whether Columbus made the discovery or someone else did.
That is not true at all. The nature of the Spanish Conquest (the fact it was spanish, for example, the fact it could draw on troops from the best armed forces in Europe who had just completed the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula. and as you point out above his personal love of slavery amongst other things) is the direct result of Columbus crossing the Atlantic when he did, who he was. and who he was working for. Regardless of ahistorical “what ifs” in this timeline Columbus’ arrival in the Americas was absolutely earth shattering, and definitely a contender for one of the most significant events in human history.
It sounds like he means that from an anthropological point of view. Human DNA in North America was totally cut off from DNA in the rest of the world for ten thousand years. I can see where that would be huge from a scientific viewpoint. Overall, though, I don’t agree with the assertion.
No, I promise you that my house doesn’t have a lightning rod and that nobody on my street has one either, and none of us have been injured or killed because of a lack of a lightning rod.
Anyway all of this sidesteps the question is “were lightning rods a critical invention in colonial America” and the answer is “no, of course not.” They are helpful, they are notable, but not in any sense critical or consequential.
Speaking of the Black Death, that too should be counted as one of the most significant events to happen to the human race. While it wasn’t caused by humans, it was certainly exacerbated by them.
Some effects of the Black Death are:
It caused a massive decline in population, both human and animal, which resulted in labor shortages, reduced trade, and lower agricultural productivity.
It weakened the authority and influence of the Catholic Church, as many people lost faith in its ability to protect them from the plague or explain its causes.
It led to the persecution of Jews and other minorities, who were blamed for spreading the disease or poisoning the wells.
It increased the demand for medical research and innovation, as well as the interest in classical learning and humanism.
It fostered social mobility and egalitarianism, as the scarcity of workers increased their bargaining power and wages, and the nobility lost some of their privileges and wealth.
It stimulated artistic and literary expression, as many writers and artists reflected on the themes of death, suffering, and the meaning of life.
I still believe this pales in comparison to the potential effects of the Holocene Mass Extinction (caused by humans) which I mentioned earlier. Wiping out our species, along with ~75% of all species on Earth, is a pretty significant event.
Though did those repercussions happen outside Europe? It clearly wasn’t just confined to Europe, but did it cause those wider permanent social changes, beyond just the number of people who died, outside Europe?
The Black Plague originated in China (or central Asia) and had global effects:
It weakened the authority and influence of the Islamic and Mongol empires, as well as the Chinese dynasties, which faced rebellions and political instability.
It led to the persecution of Christians and Muslims, who were blamed for spreading the disease or being punished by God.
It increased the demand for medical research, classical learning and humanism, especially in the Islamic world.
No doubt it had some effect on the future explorations of the Americas, too.
I think that what is significant about the European conquest and colonization of the Americas, especially the temperate belt of North America, is that while it lasted it was one of the most non-equilibrium situations the human species ever experienced.
Euro-Asian civilization had built up for millennia in a near-steady state with only a relatively slow trickle of innovations. Then with the invention of trans-oceanic ships, European civilization advanced to the Renaissance level discovered continental land masses that had previously only been exploited on a far smaller and more primitive level. The “frontiersman”, a hybrid of civilization and wilderness and living at the boundary between the two, from Daniel Boone to the old west cowboy, is as far as I know unique in human history. Perhaps second place goes to the African explorer, when in the nineteenth century a combination of guns and quinine made the interior of Africa open to outsiders on a large scale for the first time.
Except, is fire an invention of “our human species”? Our predecessor species H. erectus made use of fire. Of course, maybe it’s a matter of when to split that species from ours.
Well, some of the Americas had been exploited on a pretty large and civilized level, including parts of North America. Of course by the time the Brits were colonizing America, plagues had killed off up to 90% of the resident people, and that maybe a hundred years prior, so to them it looked unexploited and “primitive”.