# Who is the most underrated person in history? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 9, 2009, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449 "2009-07-09T13:48:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/41 "2009-07-11T03:44:19Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Westerners seem to enjoy throwing out Jesus like he invented morality, which simply isn’t true. Human morality was largely consistent before and after Jesus, all through the world. Jesus’ big addition to thought wasn’t “be moral,” and until you, I don’t think I ever heard anybody claim it was. Of course that existed. His big contribution was “love everybody, especially your enemies. If somebody sins against you, forgive them.” I have no idea who the most underrated person in history was. Somebody nobody’s heard of. Inventing writing was important. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/42 "2009-07-11T04:00:58Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Jesus’ big addition to thought wasn’t “be moral,” and until you, I don’t think I ever heard anybody claim it was. Of course that existed. His big contribution was “love everybody, especially your enemies. If somebody sins against you, forgive them.”… Yup, what a crock. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/43 "2009-07-11T04:52:55Z")
> [@bup](#): > > His big contribution was “love everybody, especially your enemies. If somebody sins against you, forgive them.” Whether a religion says to love your enemy or to demolish your enemy totally, it’s really a dice roll. It’s really probably about evenly split between all those that have existed. It was never new to Jesus any more than it was new to any other region on the Earth until you go back to the first humans to establish religion. > **[Nonviolence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-violence#Philosophical)** > > Nonviolence is the practice of working for social change without causing harm to others, under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome, and it may refer to a general philosophy of abstention from violence. It may be based on moral, religious or spiritual principles. The reasons for it may be strategic or pragmatic; failure to distinguish between the two can lead to distortion in the concept's meaning an > N... > **[International Handbook of Violence Research](https://books.google.com/books?id=A4mqsik_VDcC&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=non-violence+in+native+american+religion&source=bl&ots=6qf8sKizzE&sig=unPYDe5sSn9JmIGNto0c5HX6aLQ&hl=en&ei=hBVYSvPyCoP-tQO5weXWBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9)** > > An international manual is like a world cruise: a once-in-a-lifetime experience. All the more reason to consider carefully whether it is necessary. This can hardly be the case if previous research in the selected field has already been the subject of... And of course, it’s not like Europe has been a more peaceful place than China, Africa, etc. between 1AD and now. Teaching something which everyone ignores is ultimately not all that meaningful. I can go out shouting in the streets for everyone to stop killing each other and to establish world peace. It’s when I actually make that happen that I’ve accomplished something. ---
**Author:** ![raindog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@raindog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raindog)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/44 "2009-07-11T12:28:06Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Westerners seem to enjoy throwing out Jesus like he invented morality, which simply isn’t true. Human morality was largely consistent before and after Jesus, all through the world. The way one person treated another person wasn’t significantly different from Europe in Buddhist/Confucianist China for all the time from 1AD to 1800AD, and just the same in Africa or the Americas. > > The influence of Christianity on history is pretty much limited to the Crusades, and the often forced conversions of people to the religion. Since neither of these is viewed as a positive thing to have done, in modern day, you can’t really say that the originator should rank highly. > > This is the site for fighting ignorance. Anyone of another religion than Christianity would say that their religion is the one which produced the best, most moral people. But looking at it from a historical standpoint, there really doesn’t seem to be a large difference from one to the other. Ultimately, every tribe of people on every island is pretty nearly the same and that makes it rather hard to argue that any one religious figure is all that powerful an influence for good. Judas isn’t even that. _“…The influence of Christianity on history is pretty much limited to the Crusades…”_??? See now, if I would have known you were whooshing us the first time around I wouldn’t have posted that. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/45 "2009-07-11T17:16:39Z")
Seriously, the person who first made fire, as opposed to “loaning” it from a natural forest fire, lava stream etc. The use of fire at will is the very basis of everything we’ve accomplished in the past 50 000 years or so. As a portable source of heat and light, it enabled the human species to inhabit huge tracts of land it wouldn’t otherwise have and was a huge boon to survival everywhere. Fire enhanced hunting and fishing success in many ways, made food and drink safe for consumption (a surprising portion of edible wild plants are toxic or undigestable unless cooked), enabled storing food, repelled insects and was an actual tool in working wood, bone, hide and stone. Fire was indispensable in the adoption of (slash and burn) agriculture, the creation of ceramics and the use of metals. It made life so much easier in so many ways it was probably a prerequisite for most anything we call culture. We’re it not for the first firemaker, we’d still be scavenging in small bands under the equatorial sun. Most inventions did not hinge on the success of a single genius. But the creation of fire from scratch is a humongous endeavor. It’s not hard to make two sticks heat up from rubbing them together. It’s not very hard even to get a whiff of smoke emerge. But there’s a giant leap to be made to get from those smoky sticks to an actual workable flame, and the path is anything but obvious until one actually succeeds. So many things have to be just so for the ember to emerge. Even with expert literature and millennia - proven designs at hand, it took me a hellish amount of work to get there the first time (with two sticks, no sissy bowdrills allowed). It must’ve taken an exceptionally single-minded, industrious, observant early genius to pull it off without prior experience and I bet it didn’t happen all that many times in isolation. Once someone made it, the knowledge probably spread like wildfire (heh). The single most useful thing a man can have. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/46 "2009-07-11T22:19:51Z")
> [@raindog](#): > > _“…The influence of Christianity on history is pretty much limited to the Crusades…”_??? The Crusades _and the often forced conversions of other peoples_, I said. I suppose there is also the Catholic-Protestant Wars and the Spanish Inquisition. The introduction of paper into Europe was delayed by about 400 years because the Church was afraid that Islamic writings would flourish. But overall, while the Church certainly was an influential player in Europe for thousands of years, it would be hard to argue that the average scuffles and politics between all the kingdoms would have been particularly better or worse without the Papacy there. It would be an apples or oranges sort of comparison. And even with things like the Crusades or the Catholic-Protestant Wars, it’s hard to say for certain that there weren’t principally non-religious issues a the heart of things, religion just made a nice Us vs. Them line. It’s entirely possible that minus Christianity and the Church that you’d still have seen something similar to the Crusades or a German-Italy battle that spread through the land. I doubt you’d see something exactly like how it happened in our world, but overall I’d venture to guess that the number of wars fought and their relative sizes would have been fairly consistent in a side-by-side comparison of a Christian Europe and a Shinto Europe. But again, I’m not ignoring that Christianity was a major force in Europe. It certainly was a defining actor in history. But it would have needed to _achieve something positive_ for any part of it to be underrated. Christianity didn’t create peace and prosperity; it didn’t give people food; it didn’t educate the masses; it didn’t empower the masses. Outside of the need to proselytize, Europe may as well have been Buddhist and you’d see no real impact on the quality of life of humanity over the same time period. Europe ended up becoming Europe because of green growing stuff and having lots of different groups of kingdoms fighting it out constantly. Everyone else on the planet was just as well off with or without gunpowder, but in Europe the newest, bestest thing was something you had to have or the guy in the kingdom on the other hill was going to come over and conquer you. And that, in return, was largely an effect of the Celtic propensity to split up land among your children, making it so that any one kingdom would split and shrink with every new generation until someone new came and took over a whole bunch of them all over again. And again, it was an effect of the amount of flat versus mountainous land in Europe. Just flat enough for decent sized kingdoms, just mountainous enough for there to be some bounds to how far you can easily go. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/47 "2009-07-11T22:51:13Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Westerners seem to enjoy throwing out Jesus like he invented morality, which simply isn’t true. Human morality was largely consistent before and after Jesus, all through the world. The way one person treated another person wasn’t significantly different from Europe in Buddhist/Confucianist China for all the time from 1AD to 1800AD, and just the same in Africa or the Americas. > > The influence of Christianity on history is pretty much limited to the Crusades, and the often forced conversions of people to the religion. Since neither of these is viewed as a positive thing to have done, in modern day, you can’t really say that the originator should rank highly. > > This is the site for fighting ignorance. Anyone of another religion than Christianity would say that their religion is the one which produced the best, most moral people. But looking at it from a historical standpoint, there really doesn’t seem to be a large difference from one to the other. Ultimately, every tribe of people on every island is pretty nearly the same and that makes it rather hard to argue that any one religious figure is all that powerful an influence for good. Judas isn’t even that. I have to agree with raindog here. This sort of pablum is spouted by the sort of person who somehow is literate enough to read about philosophy but still doesn’t know what a ‘traditional institution’ is, or how it contributes to civilization. Christ may not have invented morality, but how many Temples of Plato or Hammurabi exist in YOUR town? Your posts on this topic really have no intellectual merit whatsoever, and insofar as you are able to convince people you are actually increasing ignorance by typing them. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/48 "2009-07-11T23:16:45Z")
That was a great post, **Toxylon**. Do you have any links to videos or instructions on how to do it? I tried to find some but they all used the bow method. ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/49 "2009-07-11T23:50:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Well, except there’s no particular reason to think that Christianity has done anything good for the world. For the most part, the world’s become a better place for every new injunction that’s been ignored (pre-marital sex, homosexuality, charging interest, parental worship, husband worship, selflessness, etc.). I think the only ones that remain that anyone would agree with are No Murder and No Thievery, which are hardly specific to Jesus. Well Christ said that we are all sons of god and thus brothers and sisters, which was a pretty revolutionary concept at the time. This idea has survived 2000 years of progroms, death camps, etc. Besides, without christianity you wouldn’t have [this.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZThARSv69Rg&feature=related) For me the most underrated persons in the world are either one of this: [Flavius Aetius](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavius_Aetius), a general of the late Roman Empire who managed to stop Attila, and thus “saved” the dying empire and the Western Civilization, it’s successor state. A couple of centuries later, a french general [Charles Martel,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel) stopped the muslim invasion with, if succesfull, would probably have ended the western civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/50 "2009-07-11T23:57:00Z")
He is famous, but he contributions to the history of ideas are not nearly celebrated enough: [René Descartes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes), a triumphant genius who is the Father of Modern Philosophy, Mathematics, and Science. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/51 "2009-07-12T00:48:06Z")
> [@Estilicon](#): > > For me the most underrated persons in the world are either one of this: > [Flavius Aetius](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavius_Aetius), a general of the late Roman Empire who managed to stop Attila, and thus “saved” the dying empire and the Western Civilization, it’s successor state. > > A couple of centuries later, a french general [Charles Martel,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel) stopped the muslim invasion with, if succesfull, would probably have ended the western civilization. I disagree strongly with both of these :). Attila was not Genghis Khan. The Huns were far more a threat in the mode of one of their succcessors, the Magyars. Wide-ranging raiders not really capable of making truly widespread permenent conquests in settled areas - they never beat a single real army in the field. The Huns were never a threat to engulf the Western empire, let alone the far more stable and prosperous Eastern end. Even if the Huns had somehow annexed Italy, they scarcely could have done more damage than what occurred anyway during Justinian’s long war of attrition on the Italian penninsula against the Ostrogoths. Charles Martel is a lot more contentious, but I’m in the camp that says that Tours was more minor skirmish, than nation-saving victory. The Muslim campaign was more on the scale of a large punitive raid against a former client/ally of convenience ( the Duke of Aquitaine ). A loss might have meant the temporary annexation of Aquitaine at worst ( maybe not even that ), but that would hardly diminish Carolingian power, which was centered in Austrasia and Neustria - Aquitaine was their biggest competitor in the old Merovingian system. Meanwhile the Umayyad state and Spain in particular was about to be convulsed by decades of internal upheaval as the Abbasid revolution began to get underway and a Berber-Arab conflict unfolded on the penninsula. Not only do I doubt the ability of the Spanish Umayyads to take and hold much of France in the first place, I sincerely doubt under the strain they were about to undergo that they could have held it for long against incessant Carolingian ( or some successor group’s ) counter-attacks. I think Tours was far more important for the Carolingians as a dynasty ( and as that was quite significant ), than it was to Europe as a whole. But I freely admit the latter argument above is much disputed ( however I think more historians would agree with me about Flavius ). ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2009, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/52 "2009-07-12T00:53:42Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > I also thought of him immediately. There’s clearly some sort of meme of “Norman Borlaug is the most underrated person in history” going round (I believe I’ve seen precisely this statement on both The West Wing and Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!) which should therefore disqualify him. I could swear I’d posted a follow-up to this, but I guess it got lost in some board freeze-up. Anyway, I had clarified: Well, I guess he should not be automatically disqualified on those grounds; after all, despite such recognition, it is possible that his general appreciation is still far less than merited, to a degree greater than for any other person in history. But we do have reason to pause and give some thought to the question of just how obscure and unappreciated he actually is. ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2009, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/53 "2009-07-12T02:58:29Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I disagree strongly with both of these :). > > Attila was not Genghis Khan. The Huns were far more a threat in the mode of one of their succcessors, the Magyars. Wide-ranging raiders not really capable of making truly widespread permenent conquests in settled areas - they never beat a single real army in the field. The Huns were never a threat to engulf the Western empire, let alone the far more stable and prosperous Eastern end. > > Even if the Huns had somehow annexed Italy, they scarcely could have done more damage than what occurred anyway during Justinian’s long war of attrition on the Italian penninsula against the Ostrogoths. I don’t agree. True, the Huns weren’t civilizations builders but they most certainly were capable of destroying one. And at the time we had two: the dying classical world and it’s succesor, the western civilization. Both were threatened by Attila. Justinian’s war caused widespread destruction in Italy but it never threatened our civilization. Of course, you could be right. After all we know that the only opinion that matters in this kind of issues are the ones of Mr. Harry Turtledove 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/54 "2009-07-15T00:54:17Z")
[Douglas Engelbart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart), for the name that the average person doesn’t know. [John Rockefeller](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rockefeller), for a name that’s more recognizable. Both of these people are undervalued by today’s general public. They’re not the “most underrated in history”, not by any shot, but their accomplishments are not well known or foolishly derided. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449/55 "2009-07-15T16:25:24Z")
> [@otorophile](#): > > Who do you think made some kickass contributions to mankind, but doesn’t get the public recognition they deserve? My vote: [Norman Borlaug](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug), the father of the green revolution. He allowed for the massive population growth and food increases in recent years, but I had to google his name. > > Also, while Alexander Hamilton is certainly well known, I don’t think he and his exploits are placed on the same level as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, as they should be. Agreed, also James K. Polk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-most-underrated-person-in-history/502449.md?page=2)