# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/61 "2025-08-28T02:01:51Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > I have believed for years that the single most impactful invention in human history is the _story._ The ability to organize events into a linear situation-change-consequence chain, a cause-and-effect narrative, and then to relate that sequence to others, is what enabled us to understand our surroundings and organize ourselves in pursuit of large-scale and long-term collective projects far beyond the capabilities of our pre-human ancestors. > > It’s fundamental to our wiring. We constantly look for stories > [@Stoid](#): > > By our civilization I’m referring essentially to the line drawn between us and the rest of the animals on earth. I think that’s pretty clearly Cervaise’s answer. Other animals communicate. We might be the only storytellers. — although every time somebody comes up with a nice clear distinction, we find other creatures doing it too. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/62 "2025-08-28T03:14:14Z")
It was the woolly mammoth dish washer, especially the model that sighed and said “It’s a living.” ---
**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 28, 2025, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/63 "2025-08-28T03:28:53Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Other animals communicate. We might be the only storytellers. There was that university test where the researchers wore masks and captured local crows to tag them. Years later they would still "dive bomb” anyone wearing that mask. Just them…loads of others people walking around were not bothered by the crows. Did the older crows tell the story of the creepy humans that would capture them? How else did the young crows know? [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/bOkj7lJpeoc/hqdefault.jpg "John Marzluff Shows How Crows Will Recognize You") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOkj7lJpeoc) ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/64 "2025-08-28T03:29:26Z")
I’ll go with the needle. I forget where I first heard that argument made but it makes sense. The needle allowed for clothing which allowed for exploration and colonization of formerly inhospitable environments: migration. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/65 "2025-08-28T03:30:54Z")
OK thank you all for playing… And people are coming closer to my thinking on it and I think there might actually be a bit of debate. But first I’m definitely in the camp that says there’s a big difference between the evolution of a characteristic and an invention. Language was the evolution of a characteristic, writing was an invention. Are you ready? Drumroll please…fasteners. Fastening. The invention of fastening things to other things… If you removed all of civilizations fasteners in the blink of a magical eye, we would all be naked standing on a giant pile of trash. Take away the strings the tie things… Probably the very first fasteners and all the rest in the modern world: tape, glue, nails, stapler, zippers, thread, needle and thread, and so forth. Our ability to stick things together with chemicals, tie things together, melt things together, bang things together with hard pieces of other things… Fasteners. Fastening is the foundation of human civilization without which absolutely nothing else could exist. You’re welcome. 😎 ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/66 "2025-08-28T03:36:27Z")
Dude! High-five! ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/67 "2025-08-28T06:50:37Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I guess there is little use for paper if there is no writing. You could make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl… ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/68 "2025-08-28T15:34:41Z")
You do have a good point there @Stoid. There are darn few animals that do toolmaking at all. But of those that do, it amounts to subtractive manufacturing: taking a found object and removing or reshaping some of it so what’s left is more useful for the task. Fastening is the watershed change to additive manufacturing; connecting two or more disparate parts. So I’ll argue that that’s a darn good candidate for a fundamental _invention_ separating us from mere animals. Unlike language that’s at least arguably not an “invention”. I’ll say right here though that “different from animals” is a very different idea than “supports civilization at its very roots”. ---
**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 28, 2025, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/69 "2025-08-28T15:44:44Z")
Personally, I feel that fastening things together is too broad a concept to call it an invention. The invention of buttons doesn’t mean you have zippers, much less glue, scotch tape, nails, or welding. These are all different inventions on different development trees.. ---
**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 28, 2025, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/70 "2025-08-28T17:46:10Z")
Fastening, and needles particularly, are subsets of toolmaking. Being able to use hands for fine motion is a requires the availability of the opposable thumb and of being upright so that the hands are free. Where to draw the lines? ---
**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 28, 2025, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/71 "2025-08-28T17:49:32Z")
Is a bird nest or a beaver dam not also an example of “fastening things together?” ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/72 "2025-08-28T17:56:49Z")
That is a really good one, Stoid. And it’s generally overlooked. However — birds and spiders fasten things together all the time. ( And I think I’ve read of at least one other mammal making compound tools — but I can’t find it now and it’s possible I was thinking of the New Calendonian Crow, which does make compound tools but apparently not with the use of fasteners.) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/73 "2025-08-28T17:58:49Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > If you removed all of civilizations fasteners in the blink of a magical eye, we would all be naked standing on a giant pile of trash. You remind me of the _[Illustrated Guide to Law](https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=10476)_[’s description of the Greek Dark Age](https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=10476): After the fall of Mycenean civilization, Greeks forgot how to sew, and their only garment was “a plain woolen blanket pinned at the shoulders.” Here the pins (fibulae) were everything. Time-traveling Myceneans are flabbergasted at how all their arts of civilization were lost. Time-traveling Neolithic people say Dark Age Greek life is familiar enough, but “Still… they forgot how to sew? Seriously?” ---
**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 28, 2025, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/74 "2025-08-28T18:31:52Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Is a tribe of hunter-gatherers not a society? I would argue not. It is usually just one extended family with no fixed location or habitation. There may be a head of the family who is considered the chief, but once you have agriculture with fixed habitation, you start seeing rulers and an administrative class. It is the fixed location that–IMHO–makes the difference. You are free to disagree of course, but this is my HO. ---
**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 28, 2025, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/75 "2025-08-28T18:34:34Z")
The earliest needles include a point from a suspected bone needle 61,000 years old and a full Denisovan one from about 50,000 years old. Way too late to separate Homo from animals. Needles came after clothing and that was an important difference itself. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/76 "2025-08-28T18:59:49Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I would argue not. It is usually just one extended family with no fixed location or habitation. There may be a head of the family who is considered the chief, but once you have agriculture with fixed habitation, you start seeing rulers and an administrative class. It is the fixed location that–IMHO–makes the difference. You are free to disagree of course, but this is my HO. IMO, that would point then to fire first, I remember reading that some caves, where prehistoric tribes kept the fires going in the same location, so much so that eventually some had to be abandoned as the ash accumulated on the bottom of those after hundreds of thousands of years! > **[Wonderwerk Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderwerk_Cave)** > > Wonderwerk Cave is an archaeological site, formed originally as an ancient solution cavity in dolomite rocks of the Kuruman Hills, situated between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is a National Heritage Site, managed as a satellite of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Geologically, hillside erosion exposed the northern end of the cavity, which extends horizontally for about 140 m (460 ft) into the base of a hill. Accumulated deposits inside the cave, up... Now, Fire being an item that hominids had some control millions of years ago points to then to be a factor of not only the start of civilization, but that we essentially domesticated ourselves thanks to the control of it. > **[The domestication of fire as a social-ecological regime shift | PAGES](https://pastglobalchanges.org/publications/pages-magazines/pages-magazine/7107)** ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/77 "2025-08-29T05:14:36Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I’ll say right here though that “different from animals” is a very different idea than “supports civilization at its very roots”. I think that’s a debate/discussion of what is civilization? By saying the world we live in is the civilized world I mean that the human race has collectively radically altered materials (that we got from the natural world because there’s no place else to get them!) in ways that no other animal can even imagine. The human-created world is a world of _ **stuff** _. The lives that the vast majority of us lead, virtually all of us, would not be livable without that stuff, because that stuff does everything that we want and need to be done: it educates us. It protects us. It feeds us. It entertains us. It moves us, heals us, carries us… and because of that stuff, and all the things it does for us, we are free to pursue art, literature, philosophy… also important parts of civilization, but they had to come after the stuff. And all that stuff could never have come into existence had we not invented ways to fasten, attach, join, connect, affix, tie, bolt, bind and otherwise unite things. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2025, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/78 "2025-08-29T06:36:27Z")
I think it’s futile to try to come up with a single answer as opposed to a list, and in this spirit I’ll make a very broad generalization. In the list of items mission-critical to human civilization, among the most important is, in the broadest sense, the means to record and widely disseminate **knowledge**. This affects everything from news about current events that shape our system of government to the dissemination of scientific knowledge that shape the quality of our lives through technological and medical advances. There’s a lot of stuff in this category, and it includes the printing press, books, newspapers, and eventually, radio and television. And then came the internet, which at first was wonderful, but then came social media, which, by turning the knowledge paradigm upside down, is doing its best to return us to the stone age. ---
**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 29, 2025, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/79 "2025-08-29T09:03:57Z")
Needles need thread. Cordage FTW. ---
**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 29, 2025, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521/80 "2025-08-29T09:19:59Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > After the fall of Mycenean civilization, Greeks forgot how to sew, and their only garment was “a plain woolen blanket pinned at the shoulders.” I’m afraid that’s rubbish. Sure, the culture changed and in some ways degraded radically post-Bronze Age Collapse, but they never “forgot how to sew”. Plenty of finds of hemmed and pieced garments even though they favoured pinned rectangles, bone and metal sewing needles, possible evidence of embroidery even. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-mission-critical-human-invention-the-mission-being-civilization/1022521.md?page=5)