…except “Technology” is not an invention on its own.
Another vote for agriculture. The before vs. after is quite dramatic. Virtually no change for hundreds of thousands of years* and then smart phones within 10k years.
- Or however far back you want to define “humans”.
I would probably say trade. Without trade there might not even be civilization, and even today at least 95% of consumer goods are fully dependent on trade between regions.
Yes, it does. “Technology” also includes fire, the wheel, the printing press, and nuclear bombs. All of which are also “gadgets”.
This is like saying that your favorite recipe is food.
Trade is a very important one as well, for one thing it is the primary driver in the exchange of information between various groups. For example the bronze age could never have happened in most of the world due to the scarcity of tin. Also the fact that Eurasia was so wide allowed a wide swath of humanity to trade seeds and agricultural techniques since everyone at similar latitudes could use similar crops and techniques.
“technology includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them.”
Not the wheel, per se, but the axle. Rolling logs have been around since the first tree fell. But putting the wheel on an axle made it infinitely more useful. Every moving tool, from carts to cars, uses the axle.
And then, sliced bread.
I think paper rather than whatever writing instruments were used back in the day (pencil, calligraphy brush, etc.). Before paper it was still possible to write on stone, animal skins, and such, but those things were a lot less practical than paper.
Yes, I mentioned that in the post you quoted. The reason I commented on the post I quoted was because that poster made a point of saying his or her list was in a descending order and it stimulated my thoughts which I shared to help stimulate the thoughts of others. I was not trying to challenge the list, I liked the list and wanted to contribute to a continuing discussion of it. (Which I guess I did since you commented on it, but I feel compelled to mention that I did allow for the possibility of written language without an alphabet from the start.)
Let’s not forget the basic forge, which is the very first stepping stone to many of the other greatest inventions listed previously.
I took the suggestions made above of “Money” being a significant advance as a de facto reference to trade. Money is pretty useless without trade (but trade could exist without paper currency or coinage by use of barter). I might argue (only for the sake of advancing discussion) that trade is not an invention, or even perhaps a discovery. Trade might have been an inevitable interaction as the only alternative to war (for say neighboring tribes- not nation states with different cultures) because I assume most trade started with neighbors before it spread to distant merchants. Wasn’t trade first practiced in local marketplaces that were just empty cross roads that folks used to sell their surplus crops? (which were always subsistence crops at that time correct?)
Perhaps cross cultural trade (which is really what you are referring to isn’t it?) required money which IS certainly an invention. I am starting to see a trend in this thread; inventions that make it easier for groups to cooperate rather than battle are the best inventions. It could even be argued that military inventions that made war more unthinkable also contributed to cooperation and (a possibly uneasy) peace.
(I do not want to derail this discussion, or even distract from it—but which do you consider the more significant accomplishment: the D-Day Invasion, or execution of The Marshall Plan?)
Fourthing or fifthing - the ability to start a fire, the foundation of all chemistry.
Clausewitz’ first principle is to make your base secure. With fire, no other predators can attack your camp. You can cook your food, and no longer need large teeth to cut the meat or grinders for tough plants. Without large incisors, your jaws can become smaller and more mobile - and the grunts develop into language, and you can communicate, sitting around the fire, and begin to share ideas.
Fire changes things. I put the food close to the fire, and it changes. I heat up the spear point, and it gets harder. I put clay into the fire, and it gets hard and waterproof. What would happen if I put a hollow clay thing into the fire?
And look what happens when I put these rocks with the sparkling veins into the fire. See what comes out? When the wind blows on the fire, it gets hotter. How could I make the fire hotter when the wind isn’t blowing?
And when I light the fire at night, and the smoke goes up, I follow it with my eyes, and I see those lights up in the sky at night. Are those fire too?
And who made those fires?
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, the one wheeled cart or vehicle that does not use an axle is the wheelbarrow, which I recall reading was in wide use in the new world because they had not developed the axle by the time European’s arrived. (And now late night infomercials are trying to reinvent the wheelbarrow as a two wheeled device that DOES have an axle.) I still claim carts or vehicles of any stripe, having an axle or not, have a very limited usefulness without decent roads or paths of travel. Even well established dirt trails can be completely impassible with a good rain, so paved roads.
We have established the significance of communication from the first uttered words through modern electronic communication, but has anyone suggested the difference that broadcast communication brought about? Sending information down a wire is pretty amazing in itself, but sending communication through the air? How much more efficient has air travel (and air combat) been because of the radio? It is not one of the foundational technologies like controlling fire or written communication, but it sure has impacted modern society greatly. It is the foundation of radar as I understand it which has affected the world in significant ways, and satellite technology would be useless without wireless communication. Not to mention how radio and television broadcasts have given us shared memories even when we were not in the same room when an event happened; from radio reports of Pearl Harbor, to Kennedy’s assassination (the first one), the World Trade Towers, Janet Jackson, etc.
I think it meets a lot of important criteria. It is a very different and separate technology from the telegraph or telephone. It has impacted most humans on the planet (but some only indirectly) since it was invented. It has lead to other discoveries and is fundamental to more advanced technologies. It has increased the quality of life for those who use it.
I would suggest that if the printing press was as significant as many claim it was for its time (and let’s admit it- they are correct), then wireless communication is the printing press of our parent’s time. It could be argued that the twentieth century began with horse drawn carts delivering milk (just as it was done in the Middle Ages) and ended with men on walking on the moon (as it was in only science fiction- until it happened in 1969), then most of those advances can be attributed to broadcast communication (all wireless communication) and the subsequent developments built upon that foundational technology.
Upon reflection, I spoke too quickly here. It occurred to me that there are multi-wheeled vehicles without axles, namely bicycles and motorcycles. But these are only used as personal conveyance and not (by-and-large) for hauling loads of any sort, so they do not meet the criteria you mentioned. Still, I think it is important to point out my error.
(And a bicycle, motorized or not, is sort of like a horse would have been in colonial times. If you can send a courier with critical information on foot, or on horseback/bicycle—it is better to use the faster means of transportation. But you sure wouldn’t want to join a wagon train for your new life in the west with only what you can carry on your bicycle. In fact, with the advent of the peddle cab, the bicycle is even more like a human powered horse - it pulls the wagon that carries the passengers.)
Sliced bread, of course.
In a somewhat more serious vein…regular bread.
I made my kid read the first page of this thread to give him some awareness of how fortunate he is to live in this pampered time of adequate food, proper waste disposal, peace and prosperity, entertainment and the free time to enjoy it — and most of all air conditioning!
He immediately suggested the calendar (which is sort of an extension of the clock in certain way – but certainly a significant invention that is distinct from other time keeping inventions). I thought that was pretty good for someone who was forced to do something he did NOT want to do, and has been bitching about being hungry for almost an hour. I think I have to feed him now, he has earned it.
He did not mention the lunar significance of the month being matched to the solar significance of the year, but I believe he understands that from science class. In any case, I thought it was a pretty good suggestion he made.
Yep, as others have said, I honestly can’t see any contender other than written language. The ability to pass information on in a reliable and recorded format from one generation to another, rather than having to rely on direct teaching, is the reason further inventions are possible.
The bicycle, wheelbarrow, etc all have axles. The axel is the ability to retain the wheel in its position relative to the vehicle. Otherwise, you just have round rolling pins under heavy loads. You can’t turn rollers early, and you have to keep moving them from the back to the front all the time. The axle makes the vehicle take the roller with it.
What am I? [del]sliced bread[/del] Chopped liver?