# The most mission-critical human invention? (The mission being civilization) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 27, 2025, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521 "2025-08-27T08:13:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/41 "2025-08-27T16:21:37Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > By our civilization I’m referring essentially to the line drawn between us and the rest of the animals on earth. While some animals do alter their environments both for themselves and incidentallytheir neighbors (beavers for instance) no animal comes within screaming distance of doing the kind of wholesale alteration of the world for its own use and pleasure that we have done since pretty much the beginning. > > So that in mind what early invention made that possible? What was the thing upon which all other things were built, had to be built? > > I came up with the answer (and I do mean the answer not an answer… After I tell everybody what it is I think anybody would have a hard time arguing against it) a few years ago and I cracked myself up because it is absolutely the answer but hardly anybody else would’ve ever thought of it because it’s so much part of the fabric of our existence while being exceedingly low-key and unassuming (if those words can be used) that we don’t think about it as An Invention I feel like you’re going to say the invention is “human civilization.” ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/42 "2025-08-27T16:27:22Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Ah, finally, a logical argument that explains why the Incan empire didn’t exist. How well did they do? 300(ish) years and a thousand miles of western South America? Conquered by what…200 Spaniards? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/43 "2025-08-27T16:28:24Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Should we maybe go back a little bit further, and say that _language_ was the invention that underpins everything else? Writing is just a way of using symbols to represent it in some fashion. I agree that writing needs language as a pre-requisite. But I tend to lean with those who see language as an evolved characteristic of human beings rather than something human beings invented. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/44 "2025-08-27T16:30:41Z")
Prior to the arrival of the conquistadors, with their guns, horses, and armor, they were doing pretty well. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/45 "2025-08-27T16:30:58Z")
And, it’s a means of communication. Animals have numerous means of communication. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/46 "2025-08-27T16:33:01Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > I feel like you’re going to say the invention is “human civilization.” Maybe it’ll be tool use. Which I also tend to see as an evolved characteristic of human beings rather than a human invention. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/47 "2025-08-27T16:42:55Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Which I also tend to see as an evolved characteristic of human beings rather than a human invention The wheel and the lever would fall into the same category. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/48 "2025-08-27T16:43:47Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > I’m a little surprised nobody’s mentioned fire. You can have a civilization without paper but I’m hard pressed to imagine one without the ability to create fire when and where its needed. Nobody tell Prometheus we’ve forgotten his wonderful gift. I would put fire as well as it allows us to transform material. Clay becomes ceramics. Sand becomes glass. Iron ore becomes iron ingots becomes steel. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/49 "2025-08-27T17:08:11Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > How well did they do? Way, way, way better than isolated tribes stuck in caves with their campfires. 🙄 ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/50 "2025-08-27T17:10:25Z")
IMO, cultivation/agriculture is by far the most critical human invention towards civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/51 "2025-08-27T18:29:23Z")
Civilization as a word has the [opposite meaning](https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=civilization) of what @Stoid is using it as. > The meaning “civilized condition, state of being reclaimed from the rudeness of savage life” is recorded by 1772, probably from French _civilisation_, serving as an opposite to barbarity and a distinct word from civility, as if from civilize. > > The sense of “a particular human society in a civilized condition, considered as a whole over time,” is from 1857. Related: _Civilizational_. The term, to everybody but anthropologists and their ilk, is part of a progression, from animal societies to “savage” human societies to “non-savage” human societies. The people who developed and spread the term meant specifically cities as opposed to nomadic life. Cities were themselves equated with agriculture until recently, when closer study revealed what could be called cities being founded by various other purposes. Like the evolution of humanity itself, the line of progress has been replaced by a bush of branching growths. SO, two things. The separation of humans from animals and the growth of what we term cities. If we go back far enough, I’d guess that the unassuming thing that separated humans was the upright stance. Other animals can walk upright on hind legs and use the forelegs for short periods of time, but humans are unique in making it a lifetime posture. That appears to have given them advantages that would otherwise have doomed them, given their lack of claws and thick hides. Large brains came much later than erectness, and we don’t really know how large they had to be to make the big difference. If agriculture is tossed out as a progenitor to cities, I’d put defenses as the turning point. Weapons surely preceded defensive walls but they necessitated a nomadic society. Staying in one place without defenses would attract enemies, both animal and human. Long-term permanent communities required protection for, again, otherwise defenseless beings. I’m not aware of any early cities, based on agriculture or not, that didn’t have some sort of walls, earth, mud, stone, whatever was technological feasible. Long-term survival led to everything else that we associate today with a “civilization.” ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/52 "2025-08-27T18:47:19Z")
Slavery was likely a prerequisite to civilization ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/53 "2025-08-27T18:48:14Z")
How about the ability to make a splint for a broken leg? Before we started doing that, legs would heal poorly causing gangrene, or the person injured wouldn’t live long enough for it to heal before getting torn apart by a predator. But once we started taking care of each other, we could have a civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/54 "2025-08-27T18:56:09Z")
HoneyBadgerDC has proposed that control of water resources is basic to all civilizations. I agree with that. Poverty Point LA is an excellent example of a hunter gatherer society with major water control facilities. However if you draw the dividing line as between humans and plants/animals, their are numerous examples of plants and animals controlling water for their benefit. The same is true of farming. Both plants and animals cultivate others for their benefit. Civilization predates writing though perhaps not art. But it does not predate the boiling of water, Somewhere in there with the control and use of fire and water you get civilization. We could nit pik the point. So, enlighten us - what’s your take? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/55 "2025-08-27T19:04:06Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Which is why my money is on paper as the critical invention. Sure, you need language to use it but not sure language is an invention. And without paper language helps but doesn’t really do the heavy lift of building a global civilization. If there was no paper to help disseminate ideas and pass knowledge to future generations we’d all still be living in caves in isolated groups each with their own language and telling stories around the campfire Sure, but cuneiform on clay tablets did that job prior to paper or papyrus. It’s the idea that you can record information like that which is the important part. And further back, being able to use language to communicate and think that enables all of the above. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > ISTM it is akin to the question of did we invent math or discover math? I think discover. I don’t know… I think that it’s really blurry on stuff like that. Did we discover, or invent the wheel? Probably depends on whether Og the caveman saw a tree trunk roll around after he kicked it or if he thought it up on his own. And really, in light of that, isn’t it the _axle_ that’s the key part? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/56 "2025-08-27T19:51:11Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > what category of invention or single invention was the one thing without which our civilization could never have arisen? Cordage. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/57 "2025-08-27T22:08:08Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > While some animals do alter their environments both for themselves and incidentallytheir neighbors (beavers for instance) no animal comes within screaming distance of doing the kind of wholesale alteration of the world for its own use and pleasure that we have done since pretty much the beginning. Nah, even with global warming, we’re still a distant second to [cyanobacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria). > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But I tend to lean with those who see language as an evolved characteristic of human beings rather than something human beings invented. I think the difference between something being an invention, as opposed to an evolved trait, is that its something humans will always develop, regardless of outside influences. Isolate a hundred babies on an island with no other human contact (while somehow preventing them from all dying) and they’ll develop their own language. They _might_ figure out fire, or the wheel, or whatever, but they _will_ figure out a way to communicate with each other. That puts it pretty firmly in the “evolved characteristic” category, not the “invention” category. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/58 "2025-08-27T22:46:52Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > ISTM it is akin to the question of did we invent math or discover math? I think discover. That is a question that mathematicians spend a lot of time on. Did exact categories exist before I invented them? Of course they did. What I did was _reify_ (make a thing of) them. Getting back to the OP, before agriculture there was no society. With agriculture, society developed. My first answer was language, particularly recursive language with subordinate clauses. For all animals appear to have language-like capability, there seems to be no evidence for a recursive language, a sentence like: “This is the whale that ate the shark that ate the bear that ate the wolf that at the dog that ate the cat that ate the rat that ate the mouse that ate the mosquito that ate the malaria parasite that infected the child that ate the date that ate the date bug.” ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/59 "2025-08-27T22:52:46Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Getting back to the OP, before agriculture there was no society. Is a tribe of hunter-gatherers not a society? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/60 "2025-08-27T22:58:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The fundamental thing that enables us to alter our environment large scale as the OP suggests, and that separates us from the brute beasts is language. Language enables cooperation. Language enables stories. Language enables writing. Whatever language whales or dogs have, it’s a pale ghost of communication compared to what even early H Sapiens could do. That’s my vote, too. Although, > [@LSLGuy](#): > > Some might argue we didn’t so much “invent” language as “discover” it. Or evolve it, or a combination of all three. The development of language had to be a parallel process of both our brains evolving to be able to use it, and us learning how to use it. But if language as a whole is disqualified, I’d say writing is a solid second place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521.md?page=4)