But to say that if 1492 never happened, then none of these things would've happened is utter hogwash.
But that's silly. What's inevitability got to do with its relative impact? Who's saying anything about "if"? It
did happen, and thus the dependant events
did occur, and that's all that matters.
If a comet, detected at the last minute (too late to do anything about) is going to hit earth and wipe out all human life, 100% chance and totally inevitable, is it a relatively minor event? Is it more important, if there was only a 10% chance that the comet would hit, and then it does? I can't even begin to fathom why you would think inevitability would reduce the signifigance of an event. Or why lack of inevitability would render it more signifigant.
Besides that, nothing in the past is an "if"; all of it, every last bit, is deterministic because it's already happened and is already determined. Indeterminism and chance are things that only apply to events that haven't happened yet. Probability collapses completely in the past. This is something you curse when you put your foot in just the wrong place and painfully twist your ankle; "Oh, if only I hadn't stepped there! Why did I have to step there? What are the chances that I would step right there? I could've stepped in any of these other places, walked any of these other routes, and I'd be fine!"
But probability and chance has no meaning, except in terms of future events. Thus, every past event is equally probable: exactly 100% probable (given accurate knowledge of what occurred). Past events are absolute. So, even if inevitability did somehow affect signifigance, it wouldn't matter for past events.
I think what you're really looking for here isn't inevitability, but the level of human agency involved. Still, agency doesn't really affect signifigance.
It's not as if things were one thing in 1491 and completely different in 1493. It took a LONG GRADUAL change. Thus, Columbus bumping into some Caribbean islands is merely a symbolic period.
Well, true enough. But anytime you try to pinpoint things to a single event, you're talking about something purely symbolic. Because any event is a product of all the events leading up to it. But we communicate in symbols, and I think here, the meat of the matter is not really years or singular events, but the historic phenomena they represent to us. Those phenomena are certainly more complex than the particular symbols we use for them. But that's just how we communicate.
Which brings us back to, why not 8xx? As a symbolic gesture, certainly Ericsson should deserve credit for discovering the continent.
It's symbolic of something that had no particular impact or signifigance. In terms of historical events, what does this symbol represent? Not much, other than itself. And perhaps demonstrates something about Norse culture and technology in that period, but in this particular instance, it's a demonstration that didn't have any real impact.
The Western hemisphere was known to certain Eurasians, long before Leif showed up; it doesn't even represent the first Eurasians in the AD period re-discovering the hemisphere. It's basically just ... some guys went to Newfoundland and built a few huts, then left.
People didn't stop crossing the Bering Strait in the distant past. The most recent group to make the crossing was the Thule culture, or proto-Inuit; they did so about 500 AD, centuries before Leif (but recently enough to have occurred within the timeframe of recorded history - around the same time the Frankish Kingdom was taking shape). And even at the time they crossed, there were maritime cultures straddling the Bering Strait, existing in both Siberia and Alaska; the Yupik. They still do.
The Inuit crossing was far more important than Leif's crossing; their crossing actually had a concrete impact on history, since they settled the new lands, displacing an earlier group (the Dorset).
But the European discovery, as we all know, had enormous impact; it's difficult to describe it in any way that isn't an understatement. Not because they made a discovery and had a eureka moment (like Leif) but because they united the histories of two whole hemispheres of cultures, brought cultures into contact with one another with all the momentous implications of that. Leif didn't do it; the proto-Inuit didn't do it; but the early modern Europeans did, and it was almost certainly the single most signifigant phenomena in recorded history.
I can say 12 out of 12 people in your bus, city or school are products of agriculture.
I'll agree with that. There are things in prehistory that, in terms of signifigance and impact, far outweigh anything in recorded history. It's an exception I already noted; check my first post in this thread (#35).
I can even argue, were it not for Bazzelgette and his London sewers and the development which followed, 6 out of 12 people would've been dead of cholera.
Well, no. I won't agree with that. The ability of the population to reproduce itself is, in the long run, limited only by its access to food. Without modern sanitation, the population would just be younger.
