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pres2032 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:14 PM
Original message
Poll question: most important event in human history
Edited on Sat Jan-29-05 04:22 PM by pres2032
this is just a start, feel free to add your own thoughts as what you consider the most important event in human history.
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Brucey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:16 PM
Response to Original message
1. Other
Invention of printing press.
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7th_Sephiroth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:16 PM
Response to Original message
2. moon landing
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:17 PM
Response to Reply #2
4. Most impressive yeah, but I doubt life would be much different if we'd...
have said "aw screw it" and been content with satellites
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7th_Sephiroth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:20 PM
Response to Reply #4
11. the invention of da nuke then
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:20 PM
Response to Reply #11
13. fair enough
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Dead_Parrot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:17 PM
Response to Original message
3. Invention of the wheel...
...Fire was a close 2nd.
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HEyHEY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:17 PM
Response to Original message
5. One of those is debatable as even happening
I'd say the discovery of fire, or the wheel.

Or the Europeans discovering North America
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:19 PM
Response to Reply #5
9. Invention of Poutine
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HEyHEY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:20 PM
Response to Reply #9
15. It DID give countless people heart attacks for population control
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:22 PM
Response to Reply #15
18. One could argue that it was devastating enough to the Quebecers to...
Edited on Sat Jan-29-05 04:23 PM by JVS
prevent them from gaining independence.


FLQ!
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RoeBear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:27 PM
Response to Reply #9
22. Poon tang?
Or is that something else you are referring to?
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RoeBear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:27 PM
Response to Reply #9
42. Serioulsy ...
what is Poutine?
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:30 PM
Response to Reply #42
44. link here
Edited on Sat Jan-29-05 05:30 PM by JVS
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DS1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:18 PM
Response to Original message
6. Birth of Mathematics
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:18 PM
Response to Reply #6
8. Closely followed by the Death of Mathematics
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MrScorpio Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:18 PM
Response to Original message
7. The invention of oral sex
We couldn't have had any of that other stuff without it.
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HEIL PRESIDENT GOD Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:30 PM
Response to Reply #7
25. No fair, that's not in human history
We were going down on each other as apes, too, I'm afraid.
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terrya Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:19 PM
Response to Original message
10. The invention of television.
Think of how life has changed since television was invented.
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UrbScotty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:20 PM
Response to Original message
12. The resurrection of Jesus
Of course, that's the Christian in me talking.
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pres2032 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:21 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. yeah, same here
i'm lumping that with the crucifixion
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JohnKleeb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:30 PM
Response to Reply #12
26. I'd say the birth honestly
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HEIL PRESIDENT GOD Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:31 PM
Response to Reply #12
28. Isn't "history" only things that happened?
Oh, that's the atheist in me talking.
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JohnKleeb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:18 PM
Response to Reply #28
39. thats your choice, you can believe that happened or not
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BBradley Donating Member (645 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:38 PM
Response to Reply #39
46. Bah, to the lions with you.
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tjwmason Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:44 PM
Response to Reply #12
49. Whether or not one's a Christian
The ethic of Christianity pervades the basis of western society; and has served to shape the world directly and immensely.

As a Christian I also believe that it has much more far reaching consequences.
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rawtribe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:20 PM
Response to Original message
14. Global warming
:nuke:
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baldguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:21 PM
Response to Original message
17. Agriculture
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Vincardog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:23 PM
Response to Original message
19. The invention of abstract thought
Edited on Sat Jan-29-05 04:23 PM by Vincardog
This event is marked by the ART on the caves and Petroglyph's. Homo Sapient existed several hundred thousand yours before they actually made a habit of thinking.
You know conceiving of something that does not exist and willing it into reality.
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name not needed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:23 PM
Response to Original message
20. Invention of porn
:D
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JohnKleeb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:30 PM
Response to Reply #20
24. Why did I think you would say that
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name not needed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:32 PM
Response to Reply #24
30. Actually, I'm thinking of something even more important
the discovery of marijuana
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JohnKleeb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:18 PM
Response to Reply #30
40. aye sir-
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St. Jarvitude Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:26 PM
Response to Reply #20
41. It's not just us
Monkeys Pay For Monkey Porn

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that's like you or me buying People magazine.

...

The scientists actually had to pay these guys, in the form of extra juice, to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys.

Curiously, the monkeys in the test hadn't had any direct physical contact with the monkeys in the photos, so they didn't have personal experience with who was hot and who was not.
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bettyellen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 07:45 PM
Response to Reply #41
50. and when the juice ran out........
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iamjoy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:24 PM
Response to Original message
21. Written Language
without which, we would not have "recorded history" and we wouldn't really know about anything else. Of course, maybe that's not really an event since written language evolved over millenia.

Interesting bit of trivia - written history goes back roughly 6,000 years. Fundamentalists believe the earth is roughly 6,000 years old. Coincidence?
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Fridays Child Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:31 PM
Response to Reply #21
29. This is it. And it coincides with the demise of the Goddess/ascendance...
...of patriarchy.
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HEIL PRESIDENT GOD Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:29 PM
Response to Original message
23. I have to go with 1492
Bringing the two worlds together--it had the farthest-reaching effects of anything that ever happened in recorded times.

I don't think prehistory (wheel, fire) counts as part of history.
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norml Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:31 PM
Response to Original message
27. The invention of writing.
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test4materials/Writing2.htm The invention of writing

It is virtually certain that writing developed on the basis of earlier existing pictographs and ideographs. Modern humans seem to have begun drawing pictures 40,000 years ago (San in SW Africa, Australian Aborigines, Cro Magnon in southwest Europe). True writing is thought to have been invented independently at least twice and perhaps three times in different places and times in human history: in ancient Sumeria by 3200BC--where a type of writing called cuneiform developed; and in ancient Mexico by the Olmecs before 400BC--the precursor to the Maya glyphs (used 200--1500AD). Writing may have been invented a third time independently: North China by 1200BC--the precursor of modern Chinese characters; In each of these three instances, it is believed that pictures began to be used to denote syllables of sound, not meaning alone. Today we will discuss these first syllabic systems in some detail. All of them are mixtures of pictograpic word-symbols and symbols for the sound of syllables.

Let's look at the development of writing in Sumeria first. The Sumerians were a people who built a series of city states in the delta of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers after 3500BC. Their language was not IE or Semitic and is not known to be related to any other language. We do know that the Sumerians developed a writing system known today as cuneiform. It flourished between 3100 and 2000BC. Although it fell into disuse after this time, scholars succeeded in deciphering it last century and today we can read all of the many thousands of surviving cuneiform inscriptions.

Writing in Southwest Asia--the earliest anywhere-- seems to have developed out of economic expediency. The earliest uses of pictograms in Mesopotamia--pre-writing-- predated the Sumerians. Beginning with farming some 9000 years ago, tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce. With the rise of cities and urban centers of manufacture 6000 years ago, more complex pictographic tokens were also devised to label manufactured goods. Eventually, the tokens were replaced by impressions made on clay tablets. The simple tokens used to denote farm goods gave rise to the practice of pressing tokens into the clay tablets to produce a raised picture; the complex tokens used to denote manufactured goods were drawn on the clay tablets with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform, wedge-writing.

http://www.ayun.net/nomadik/sites/invention/
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HEIL PRESIDENT GOD Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:46 PM
Response to Reply #27
35. Writing was invented before history began
History began immediately thereafter. So technically it is not a historical event.
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norml Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:18 PM
Response to Reply #35
38. The invention of writing isn't an historical event?
Linguistics 201: The Invention of WritingThe invention of writing. It is virtually certain that writing developed on the basis of earlier existing pictographs and ideographs. ...
pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ ling201/test4materials/Writing2.htm - 13k - Cached - Similar pages


Who wrote first?... Impeachment headlines. These may be compelling reasons to write, but they're nothing like the ones that sparked the invention of writing itself. ...
whyfiles.org/079writing/ - 10k - Cached - Similar pages


The Invention of WritingThe Invention of Writing. It's impossible to designate a clear winner in the race to invent writing, because writing wasn't invented in a day. ...
www.erasmatazz.com/library/History%20of%20Thinking/ Ancient%20Civilization/Writing.html - 8k - Cached - Similar pages


Invention of Writing and the AlphabetWelcome. This website covers a brief history of the Invention of Writing and the Alphabet. I hope you will find this to be informative as well as interesting. ...
www.ayun.net/nomadik/sites/invention/ - 3k - Cached - Similar pages


Phoenician Alphabet... 1998. The universal history of numbers: from prehistory to the invention of the computer. London: Harvill Press. ... The story of writing. London: Thames & Hudson. ...
phoenicia.org/alphabet.html - 51k - Cached - Similar pages


Inventional Confessional Goes Professional: Re: invention as ...Re: invention as writing. Beth W. Baldwin, PhD (bobaldwi@HAMLET. UNCG.EDU) Tue, 23 Jul 1996 13:48:21 -0400: ...
www.missouri.edu/~rhetnet/processes/0041.html - 3k - Cached - Similar pages


Mosaic Unit 1: The Invention of WritingThe Invention of Writing. From "Cuneiform Tablet from 1900 BC." Clay Tablet. 3200 BC. As the societies of the Sumerian city-states ...
college.hmco.com/history/ west/mosaic/chapter1/image47.html - 4k - Cached - Similar pages


The New Invention of WritingThe New Invention of Writing. During the first half of the 19th century, native cultures without writing came into contact with European ...
www.geocities.com/ctesibos/new-inv/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages


AncientScripts.com: Origins of Writing... In ancient Egypt, for example, the invention of writing is attributed to the god Thoth (Dhwty in Egyptian), who was not only the scribe and historian of the ...
www.ancientscripts.com/ws_origins.html - 13k - Cached - Similar pages


The Invention of WritingThe Invention of Writing “Writing is the Visual Counterpart of Speech”. ART2110:Typography, RC.Tafoya, Instructor. Northwest College Wyoming. ...
www.northwestcollege.edu/area/ Art/On-LineCourses/History%20webpages/ - 21k - Cached - Similar pages



I wonder if the people who put together these web sites know about that?
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Allenberg Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:34 PM
Response to Original message
31. The North winning the Civil War.
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:34 PM
Response to Original message
32. The printing of the Gutenberg Bible
and the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment.

One could also argue for Luther and the nailing of the 95 theses to the church door. We are still feeling the echo of the pounding of his nail.
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jus_the_facts Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:36 PM
Response to Original message
33. The implementation of The New Deal.....
Edited on Sat Jan-29-05 04:44 PM by jus_the_facts
....s'the only time in *modern* human history there was ever a semblance of a *true democracy* :nopity:
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pres2032 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:37 PM
Response to Reply #33
34. i thought the ancient greeks came pretty close to achieving that
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greendog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 04:58 PM
Response to Original message
36.  the multi-shareholder limited liability corporation...
...organized irresponsibility.
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nevergiveup Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:15 PM
Response to Original message
37. Continental Drift
I guess maybe since this took 200 million years it wouldn't be considered an event.......how about the "Black Plague"....one out of every three folks in Europe died or maybe.......the invention of the first condom or whatever the first birth control was......sorry, I can't seem to make up my mind.
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Nikia Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:29 PM
Response to Original message
43. Most, if not all of the others, would not have happened without the first
Before humans used fire, we as a species were much more limited. Fire helped us gain control over our environment in many ways and allowed us to spread throughout the world.
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Gemini Cat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:37 PM
Response to Original message
45. Besides my birth? The wheel.
Followed by fire and mathematics.
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KittyWampus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:41 PM
Response to Original message
47. Language, Writing & Numbers... Followed By Agriculture
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CanuckAmok Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-29-05 05:41 PM
Response to Original message
48. The pull-tab.
Before then, primitive man had to smash cans of cling peaches against rocks to extract the nutrients, and many starved to death in the process.
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