Had he/she not lived, which historical persons contribution to the world would be missed the most?
I say Shakespeare. I have seen no collection of words coming even close to matching the brilliance of that mans pen.
Complex question.
Any of the major religious figures (Jesus, Mohammad) never existing would of course mean said major religion never would have existed. That would have both sweeping effects politically and culturally, I think even the most anti-religious can’t deny the historical and cultural significance of Islam or Christianity (or any of the other major religions, although aside from Buddhism most of them couldn’t be fundamentally done away with just via removing one person from the timeline.)
However I’m not sure how much would be “missed” because of this. If Christianity had never developed, I’m positive there would be another religion in its place. Perhaps a mix of the Roman/pagan religions that were popular throughout Europe at that time.
So I think it would be a different world, but it’s just impossible to tell if it’d be for the better or for the worse, 2,000 years and a million different things being changed is too hard to calculate imo.
Some of the major inventors rank up there, one popular choice as most important person in history is Gutenberg, because the printed word being available in mass quantities revolutionized society and fundamentally altered both the course of history and the nature of government. But Gutenberg, while important, wasn’t working on something that was completely unknown, there were other inventors who would have put together a printing press around the same time as well independent of him. And plus there’s also Laurens Coster who some claim actually beat Gutenberg to the invention of the printing press.
I’m going to have to with Hitler for showing us once and for all that the world can be a really nasty place. He is in a large part responsible for the death of modernism. The war he spawned reshaped the world, cemented the end of colonialism, and seems to have changed the nature of warfare.
Probably the person who invented gunpowder.
All of a sudden castles were not viable any more, the old feudal system didn’t last too long in major European nations after that.
Also changed warfare at sea dramatically and allowed maritime empires to be founded.
Difficult. I’m pretty sure we can discount any scientists, because brilliant though they were, someone else would probably have discovered the principles they did instead - might have set us back a few years/decades, though.
How about Christopher Columbus? Say he’d never taken his voyage, it’s possible the whole period of naval trade, warfare, and colonization wouldn’t have taken place. We’d have a very different Europe and no America (at least not in it’s present form). I realise i’m putting a lot of influence on him that he might not have had, but it would have resulted in a considerable change.
I believe the official ranking is:
- Mohammed
- Jesus
- Newton.
My personal vote would be for Luca Pacioli, inventor of double-entry book-keeping. Without him, there would be no banks, no capitalism, no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no Industrial Revolution, and no Internet.
When I took my Accounting 101 course, it was amazing to me how beautifully the system worked. It was almost mystical, like it wasn’t something invented, but something discovered, much like Franklin discovered electricity. It was there all along, waiting for someone to figure it out.
I’d probably spin the first to around, based on total number or religious adherents globally. I think Christianity still has the edge on Islam, doesn’t it?
I’m an agnostic, but I certainly think Jesus of Nazareth stirred the pot a bit more than anybody else to date.
Gorbachev. Without him bringing the Soviet Union to a relatively soft fall, I think it’s quite likely they might have lashed out in desperation, or fell into civil war. Either way, millions could have died, and it’s quite possible we’d all be huddling in the ruins, daydreaming of the days when we had electricity and clean water.
I’ll go with Mitochondrail Eve.
There may (or may not) be an “Mitochondrial Adam” who would be 1a- but he is theoretical at this point.
You can postulate that no “Eve” another Eve would be in her place but that is true of any figure.
Michael Hart argued that while Christianity has had a bigger impact on history than Islam, Mohammed was more important to Islam than Jesus was to Christianity. Mohammed combined the roles that Jesus, Paul, and Constantine played in Christianity.
Ever lived? I think any of the inventors mentionede someone else would have done it.
In todays world?
Mikhail Gorbechev.
Plato?
::blink:: ::blink:: Mitochondria are passed from mother to child. Mitochondria in the sperm do not contribute to the child’s mitochondria. You may be thinking of Y Chromosome Adam, a different concept.
But Mitochondrial Eve is simply the maternal ancestor of all living humans. There were certainly other humans living at the time, and they almost certainly had kids. Her existance is simply an a priori fact. Here’s a family. Mom, Dad, Brother and Sister. Dad and Son will never pass on their mitchondria. Mom has passed hers on to sis. One woman can have many biological daughters. One woman cannot have many biological mothers. Therefore, the mothers all living people is a much smaller group than the number of all living people. Each generation of mothers is smaller still. It’s just inevitable that way back when, there was a woman who happened to be the female ancestor of all living humans. If she or her descendants had all bit the dust at some point, humanity would not have ended.
/hijack
Scientists, messiahs and politicans are definately important, but someone’ll come along with a religion, invention, or war eventually. The people who really matter are the daring and creative people. The world might truely be a different place without Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Confucius, Christforo Colon, Karl Marx and, as much as I hate to say it, Sigmund Freud. These people did things, and came up with ideas that were sweeping, original, and weren’t part of some inevtiable progress of technology, science or world events.
The last sentence sounds a bit odd, but it makes sense after a fashion. I know that textbooks about 20th Century history usually begin serious coverage of events with the Great War, giving short shrift to events like the Spanish-American War and the Boer War, which are probably regarded mostly as continuations of late 19th Century power and racial politics.
So depending on how important you consider the 20th Century in the bigger picture, Gavrilo Princip could be in the running for Most Important Ever.
which was entirely contained within 1898.
:smack:
Ooh! How about Stanislav Petrov ?
Whatever fellow first started making metal tools.
What about Einstein?
Do you think anyone else would have come up with the Theory of Relativity?