The most important advance in human history

[Knight-Dragon]

Having nothing better to do at work (lunch hour), well here's a poll on the most important advance in the course of human history.
Personally, I think the printing press is the most important advance of all. It led to education for the masses eventually which in turn led to the industrial and scientific revolutions of the past few centuries by enabling the mass circulation of written material. It also helped to preserve and spread human knowledge since books can now be mass-produced cheaply.
So what do you think? Discussion is of course wellcomed.

[mrog]

Writing- the distilation of thought into a solid form. As the late Carl Sagan said (well wrote actually) it is almost a form of magic.

[starlifter]

Printing Press, given the nature of the question.

[Sodapop]

Printing Press... Many of the others couldnt have been discovered without the spreading of knowledge that this invention engendered...

[G-Man]

Breathing... Then the wheel. Without it people would spread across the globe much slower and all technologies were discovered much later.

[Sodak]

You people take too much for granted. The flush toilet has my vote. Really, sewage systems allowed for clean cities, which allow for cleaner, better living conditions - less disease, longer lifespans. And it gave people a place to sit and read things printed on those handy printing presses.

[Sixchan]

Top ten in this order:

Flushing toilet
Writing
Zero
Printing press
Wheel
Telecommunications
Chips
Crisps
Freezer
Civ3 (I hope)

[Magnus]

agriculture - it gave us the free time to invent and play games like Civilization!

[mrog]

According to my brother (an archaeologist) it is possible that the advent of agriculture had adverse effects on people's nutition and amount of free time.

Nutrition is no longer a problem (although dietitions might disaggree) but the curse of increased labour has never been lifted.

Even today people in Hunter gatherer societies have far more free time than we wage-slaves of the the civilised world.

[Magnus]

OK then I change my answer to Money (which, oddly enough, isn't on that list either) now I have something with which to BUY the game Civilization. let those hunter-gatherers top THAT!

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by Magnus
OK then I change my answer to Money (which, oddly enough, isn't on that list either) now I have something with which to BUY the game Civilization. let those hunter-gatherers top THAT!

Money is in the poll. It's called currency. However I have forgotten about agriculture. You see, I am coming to this from a Civ2 frame of mind and in Civ2, irrigation (i.e. agriculture) is a free advance.

[Magnus]

OH YEA...

so it is, so it is. Ok I voted for it.

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by G-Man
Breathing... Then the wheel. Without it people would spread across the globe much slower and all technologies were discovered much later.

Before the wheel, humans (and proto-humans) have already spread across the world. The Amerindian tribes who expanded into the Americas hardly used the wheel anyway. But it's still an important invention, encouraging movement and trade.

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by Sodak
You people take too much for granted. The flush toilet has my vote. Really, sewage systems allowed for clean cities, which allow for cleaner, better living conditions - less disease, longer lifespans. And it gave people a place to sit and read things printed on those handy printing presses.

That's really funny! Now that I think of it, can't really do without it every morning (and afternoon, evening, night).

[Robespierre]

Some of you people actually think that the "printing press" was more important than writing itself?

And what about organized agriculture? Everything about modern civilization revolves around organized agriculture - without it, we'd still be semi-nomadic with all the non-settled-down roving partiers/bandit connotations instead of all the big buildings, bureaucracies, and the DEA.

And what if Al Gore had never invented the Internet? Why, people would still be sociable...

[Knight-Dragon]

"Some of you people actually think that the printing press" was more important than writing itself?"

We have writing for thousands of years prior to the invention of the printing press but it didn't help that much in terms of scientific advancement. Only the privileged few were literate cos it was extremely difficult and expensive to mass educate the people. And whole books were continuosly lost in wars, invasions, upheavals as copies were too fews. We lost a lot of the books written by Classical Romans and Greeks and so on.
Even after paper became common, it's still difficult cos books were being handcopied. It was only with the coming of printing that books became cheap and common and mass education became a possible reality. With large numbers of books, knowledge spread farther and faster and they were not as likely to be lost as in more ancient times cos somewhere, somehow there may be a copy.

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

The wheel has given us the car, which has given us the need for pavement, and henceforth layered the earth in suffocating materials, not to mention all the pollution and junk that cars are responsible for. If we'd never invented the wheel, we could've just skipped straight to hydrogen-cell hover-cars

My vote goes for writing. Or perhaps 'recorded language' would be more precise.

[Knight-Dragon]

"And what about organized agriculture? Everything about modern civilization revolves around organized agriculture - without it, we'd still be semi-nomadic with all the non-settled-down roving partiers/bandit connotations instead of all the big buildings, bureaucracies, and the DEA."

Yes, I apologise for the overslight. Unfortunately I can't edit the poll any longer. As mentioned earlier, I was coming to this while thinking about advances in Civ2. In Civ2, irrigation (agriculture) is a free advance so I have completely overlooked it.

[joespaniel]

If I didn't have that, I would surley go the way of the dinosaur.

[duke o' york]

The major things that set humanity apart from animals are our abilities to (a) grow our own food, and (b) cook our own food. It has been argued that certain other species can maintain a crop of sorts, but this probably just amounts to waiting until it is ripe before eating it, rather than consciously collecting seeds and cultivating them. Homo sapiens are the only species who cook their food though and it is believed that this first set us apart from other intelligent species. It may have been the case that other intelligent primates could have discovered fire by smashing two rocks together, but only humans have been able to harness this great power, rather than just being afraid of it.