The Most Important Year in History

[West 36]

I see events like the invention of the printing press and discovery of DNA being universally important and why I chose 1439.

DNA was discovered in 1439?

Several billion years ago the big bang happened. That year, nay, that moment was pretty damn important, IMHO.

 

[Whomp]

DNA was discovered in 1439?

The discovery of DNA was in 1953 but I think the discovery of printing press was more important.

 

[TheLastOne36]

996 - the year poland became christian

jokes aside, the year the mongols had to come back to Mongolia and stopped the invasion of Europe, the year the Serbian guy shot the austrian guy starting a century of conflict and the birth of christ, and perhaps the biggest of all was the invention of the typewriter/printingpress.

 

[innonimatu]

The magazine is British.

Which would you say is most important?

Most important as having the most impact on the future? I guess that it was when the arabs managed to export their modified version of monotheism, leading to a division of much of the world from then on. Perhaps 636 when the byzantines failed their most serious attempt to stop them.

 

[aronnax]

It doesn't follow from that that the war wouldn't have happened if England had been Catholic. Moreover, Henry VIII's reformation was entirely independent of Luther's; if Luther had never happened, then Henry would still have broken the Church of England away from Rome. It would simply have been an independent Catholic Church (as Henry himself envisioned it) and his advisers would not have taken the opportunity to make liturgical and theological reforms along Lutheran lines. So even without Luther, the English church would probably have been in schism anyway, and the Spanish would have had exactly the same casus belli that they in fact did.

But the important point is that neither the Reformation nor the war seems necessary for the emergence of the British empire, which is what aronnax was claiming.

I was just thinking really quickly and typing stuff so I didn't really put much thought into what I was typing. Now that you mentioned it British Empire-1588 link doesnt make sense. Though the essential meaning is still there.

 

[Masada]

1492, easily. The year that led to a decline in world population by 1/5, introduction of Old World crops to the Americas and vice versa (the latter of which set up the Industrial Revolution), the setup for the financing of the Hapsburg Empire... You can argue that it would have happened anyway, but that's stupid; history isn't just about events, it's also about the timing of events.

If I had to go with a single year or act and the repercussions stemming from it, 1492. For those reasons and the 80 years War.

 

[Yeekim]

Several billion years ago the big bang happened. That year, nay, that moment was pretty damn important, IMHO.

Seconded...

 

[RedRalph]

Whatever year the Mongols turned back form Europe, maybe?

 

[Panopticon]

If you have to choose a date for influence on the modern era, 1776 is quite a good choice. The argument about politics and the creation of the USA, to battle born, is made above. It also marks the formalisation of economic theory by Adam Smith. As well as the actual effects of economic theory, TWON eventually leads to the Marxian response to classical economics, and from there to the political cleavages that prevail in most free countries nowadays. It also defines the role of the modern state as a means of making collective economic allocations.

It is also a very important year for secularism, with Paine and Gibbon leading an anti-Christian tendency in their fields.

The combination of these factors means that the modern ideological mainstream in free countries, consisting of free market economics, liberalism and secularism, is a direct result of events in 1776. Perhaps this would have happened otherwise. Perhaps.

 

[Plotinus]

I don't think you can say that modern secularism was "a direct result" of the work of either Paine or Gibbon, let alone of merely those works that they published in 1776, although no doubt they were influential upon it, at least in the English-speaking world. In fact I would say that secularism as we know it today is a product of the twentieth century, not of the eighteenth.

 

[Agent327]

That may be so, but it seems fair to say that the roots of secularism go back at least to 19th century liberlaims, if not further. Also, I'd like to point out that in non-western eyes, the Western world is still very much Christian, secularism or no secularism.

 

[Panopticon]

The problem is that the twentieth century was marked by 1. diffusion of ideas across many different years and 2. not a lot of advance in the resolution of ideological debate over the nineteenth century - we still live in a world of nations, mixed economies and the battle of modernity vs tradition (most saliently outside the West). These concepts and debates, of course, are based on eighteenth and nineteenth century ideas (nationalism, socialism, romanticism and securarism). The development of avant garde ideas in the 20th century has yet to make its mark in the same way. In that context I don't think there is any one year as important within the 1900s as 1776 was on the century itself.

Of course, you can say that it's a pointless exercise to identify a single year or set of works, but why not play within the rules of the game?

 

[cardgame]

1776 or 1945

 

[Huayna Capac357]

I'm saying either 200,000 BC (first homo sapiens) 50,000 BC (Diamond's "Great Leap Forward" described in GGS (1st art, specialization, other stuffs)) or 8500 BC (agriculture).

In history, not prehistory, I'd say 3500 BC (civilization), 1000 BC (birth of Zarathushtra), 1439 (Gutenberg) or 1789 (French Revolution)

EDIT: Also 1492.

 

[frekk]

1492, hands down, far and away more important than any of the other years mentioned. The discovery of the Americas utterly and totally changed the course of human history in a way no other event even comes close to having done.

Of course, it's a bit silly in another way though. If you go back in time far enough, even the slightest thing has an exponential effect on all further events, such that some guy deciding whether to pick his nose or not, in 200 000 BC, is probably more influential than the discovery of the Americas, or the atomic bomb.

 

[Dachs]

1000 BC (birth of Zarathushtra)

Since when do we know Zartosht's birth year?

 

[BananaLee]

1492, hands down, far and away more important than any of the other years mentioned. The discovery of the Americas utterly and totally changed the course of human history in a way no other event even comes close to having done.

Not as far as Australian Abrogines and the Maori were concerned.
Oh wait, they weren't humans, were they?

Alternatively, what about in 8xx when Leif Ericsson or whoever it was landed on Newfoundland?

Or why wouldn't the discovery of the sea route to India by Henry the Navigator qualify? That changed the whole economic picture of the world as Europe had access to spices without the dirty middlemen.

It's just plain stupid to try to choose a year which was pivotal in human history simply because what is important to some cultures really didn't matter to others.

Otherwise, I can say the unification of China in 223 BC utterly and totally changed the course of human history in a way no other event even comes close to having done. Why? Because instead of being fragmented like Europe and developing under ridiculous competition, China turned out to be a centralised state which strengthened and weakened according to whatever was in power. Thus leading to potentially different socio-politics when Europeans arrived in force in the 19th century.

Obviously, this argument is easy to shoot down - but it's exactly the same as the 1492 argument.

This topic is seriously Gavin Menzies territory. Which is why 1421 should be the most important year in the world.

Or 1500 when Zheng He discovered the South Pole.

 

[Plotinus]

The problem is that the twentieth century was marked by 1. diffusion of ideas across many different years and 2. not a lot of advance in the resolution of ideological debate over the nineteenth century - we still live in a world of nations, mixed economies and the battle of modernity vs tradition (most saliently outside the West). These concepts and debates, of course, are based on eighteenth and nineteenth century ideas (nationalism, socialism, romanticism and securarism).

I think you could say exactly the same for any other century (replacing the salient ideologies and preceding centuries for the leading ones of the time, of course). But I do wonder whether the fact that most westerners stopped going to church in the generation after WWII really had much to do with anything that Voltaire and his friends said. I'd be inclined to think that whatever ideological secularism may have developed in our day has been a result of the sociological trend, not vice versa.

I must point out that "the 1900s" means the first decade of the twentieth century, not the whole century.

 

[Masada]

Or why wouldn't the discovery of the sea route to India by Henry the Navigator qualify? That changed the whole economic picture of the world as Europe had access to spices without the dirty middlemen.

bout' you but the implications of discovering the New World in the long run absolutely trounce the Spice Route.

 

[BananaLee]

Well, if you want to take that tack, in the long run the discovery that wood happened to float trounced the hell out of the discovering the New World.

My point is, the attempt to find "the most important year" is a rather silly and ultimately futile pursuit.