This question has been bugging me all day. Please provide your input before my head explodes.

IMO it's google.com. Seriously, you can find anything there. I hope that in a thousand years, people think ot as a wonder of the world.

Mankind's greatest achievement is simply existance. They've adapted the world to suit their needs, which is truly more significant than anything else.

I see it as this - out of all the possible inventions, which of them really matters in the long run? Electricity could be said as more important than the internet, but so could fire. It's this thought that makes me feel their existence is the real greatest achievement, everything over the history of humanity is their greatest achievement.

Fire good.

Electricity, almost all modern inventions followed

Mankind's greatest achievement is simply existance. They've adapted the world to suit their needs, which is truly more significant than anything else.

I see it as this - out of all the possible inventions, which of them really matters in the long run? Electricity could be said as more important than the internet, but so could fire. It's this thought that makes me feel their existence is the real greatest achievement, everything over the history of humanity is their greatest achievement.
Agreed! Quoted for truth.

The Pyramids and the Great Wall are just large-scale construction projects, there are many like them. The Manhattan and Apollo Projects are just large-scale research projects, there are others like them I voted the internet but in retrospect I don't think that is right. Our greatest achievement, and one we sometimes have trouble getting right, is the ability to treat complete strangers, from other groups or bands, as human just like us. Other animals will usually treat competing bands as enemies or at least competitors. We certainly have had problems with this, but on the other hand sometimes we have really been able to show a common humanity.

I don't think we should overlook the importance of antibiotics. How many formerly life threatening diseases are now under control because of them?

Agriculture. All civilisation started there.

Much as i hate to give America credit for it, I gotta go with the moon landing. ;)

A step like going to the moon transcends humanity as a whole and marks an achievement in life on this planet: we are the first residents of earth able to actually leave home (well, besides the odd bacterium....).

I think it is writing. Writing allowed mankind to grow beyond simple peasant villages. It allowed the organization of states and civilizations. Most importantly it allowed one generation to look at all the mistakes and achievements of their predecessors. The discovery of electricity is all fine and good, but if only one person knows about it, it is of little use to anyone.

The can opener. :)

I am rather surprised that most people assume man's greatest work is a physical object. I would be inclined to say mankind's greatest achievement is the concept of "God". Religious faith is certainly one of the most great and terrible things that humans have constructed and daily continue to construct.

Fires good. So is electricity.

How about language? Civilisation itself wouldn't be possible without it

I think, like Evil Tyrant, that writing is the most important step in mankind. Only with books science can make progress and with it civilization. So civilization is based on writing.

Adler

I think, like Evil Tyrant, that writing is the most important step in mankind. Only with books science can make progress and with it civilization. So civilization is based on writing.
Adler
The celts would disagree. :p

The celts would disagree. :p

So would the Inca, who may have been the greatest civilization ever that didn't have some form of writing.

Electricity - without it, we wouldn't have three of the options listed above.

The can opener. :)

Not much use until many, many years later, when we invented the can :p

I'd mostly agree with Evil Tyrant though. The development of a writing system was a pretty major thing. No more learning things from word of mouth, it allowed for people to expand beyond their family lines of work and begin truly helping others in learning and development of civilization.

Electricity - without it, we wouldn't have three of the options listed above.
We wouldn't have any, because we wouldn't have computers and internet :p ;)

I say the internet and computers in general I have been reading about computer science recently especialy artificial life and I have to say its the next great step forward so we have

Fire>>Electricity>>Internet>>The Borg
In other words internet/computers/AI/information technology in general including cell phones is our next great step.

Getting into the space.

Getting into the space. The benefits of which are still a long way off. For now, mankind has gone to the moon, and come home with some rocks. I can find rocks in my back yard; why do I need to spend millions of dollars, and fly to the moon to get them?

FIRE!

Mankind's greatest achievement was fire. when the early peoples of the world needed light and warmth, and something to use for cooking, they sought to find something, fire.

They learnt to harness its power, and then grew an appitite to conquer all other obstacles. And here we are today, still doing the same thing.

The plow.

Without the plow, we have no food, no harvest, no living, no nothing hombre.

The plow started it all.

Domestication of animals. Especially cute doggies like my avatar.

EDIT: My 5000th post :dance:

Electricity.

Farms!
It's something that seperates us from other mammals. We don't need to spend 2/3 our lives the bush to find food just to keep us alive anymore (the remaining third is spent sleeping).

taming of fire

Well forget I said electricity, I meant, Staying Alive.

Social Interaction is the greatest human acheivment.Without interaction with other groups of people we wouldn't have communties.Without communties we wouldn't have cities.Then so on and so on til the future.Without Social Interaction.We wouldn't need anything else listed here.