What do you consider the most important invention of all time?

[MyWarmOchreHare]

Have been pondering this and wondered what others thought. I know many stand on the shoulders of others, but what do people think?

The internet? Radio or TV? Cars, planes, steam engines? The flushing toilet? Clocks or watches? Wheels? Washing machines? Ships? Paper? Mobile phones? I keep coming back to the wrist watch.

Spectacles.

How about the Maasai? They are semi-nomadic, even today, and are jolly tall.

Has anyone mentioned anaesthetic?

Sounds like your vote for the most important invention of all time is money, then ?

Money, like (legal) laws and religion are entirely man made. They don't exist in nature.

Printing press

The wheel

Sewing! If our ancestors couldn't stitch furs together , they wouldn't have survived the winter and the human race, as was then, may have been lost.

That's an interesting one. I can't recall ever hearing of a human society that didn't wear clothes and that applies even when they live in very warm places and have a lot of melanin in the skin so don't need to cover up to avoid sunburn. I suppose it provides some protection for delicate parts of the body (genitals mostly) but you have to wonder if there are cultural reasons too. I am not an anthropologist but assume this has been studied.

Clothes are a part of the human ability to reach beyond our grasp, so to speak. Part of the spread of characteristics that go to make us tool-makers. And tool makers supreme.

It's hard to remember sometimes, but our ancestors were just as clever as we are. They just knew different stuff.

If you were sitting around having finished off a nice auroch, and saw the leftover hide you would have the same thought our forebears had of "I wonder if that could protect me from those scratchy thorns when I forage ?". And because some of us have imaginations we could start to plan, picture, refine, bring to market, advertise, go public and take over the tribe.

It's all there. All in the dawn of time.

I thought it was pretty well known that agriculture was a worse way of life than hunter gathering. There has long been questions about what drive humans into it: the role of religion has long been suspected, as otherwise how would you force people into accepting a harder less healthy life? Or possibly just growth of population and the establishment of stable centres like Catal Huyuk who had managed to strip their local areas in times of climate change. Retreat of the ice was good for Europe but less so for the ancient near east.
Certainly hunter gathering is far more healthy, gives you access to a larger range of fruit/ veg, and actually takes a much shorter time to find enough food with lower populations than to grow and process it. Bear in mind how low the productivity of undomesticated or early strains of wheat was as well. How many know anything about wild plants in Britain out of interest? Which wild plant here would you class as the most useful and why?

Modern life after the industrial Revolution was even harder and longer thanks to our elites forcing enclosure and factory time. We claimed back rights slowly and now computers are undoing them all. We’re in a new enclosure period where most have to pay rent to live. Every new economic shift is worse to begin. Especially for women.

Which brings me to my favourite inventions. Shoes, sewing, basketry and in modern times, the fridge and washing machine. All mostly associated with, and the early possibly invented by, women.

Antibiotics

If you accept that the role of the gene is to propagate itself as far and wide as possible (which to my mind seems a of the rather obvious ... in fact you could almost make that the singular characteristic that separates "life" from "not life") then "useful" human inventions are those that fulfil that agenda.

With the stage being set for us to fling our DNA across the universe (and who knows, maybe that's where it came from to start with ?) it seems fair to suggest that is all that matters.

Which wild plant here would you class as the most useful and why?

There are quite a few, including:

Willow - it contains salicylic acid, - otherwise known as aspirin. You can weave baskets and mats out of it, and use the branches to make enclosures to keep in livestock, it holds river banks together and helps to prevent erosion, and the wood is used for making cricket bats.

Dog rose - rosehips contain huge quantities of vitamin C. Also makes a good hedge to keep in livestock as it is so thorny.

Reeds - used for thatching and weaving into floor coverings.

Erigeron (fleabane) - dry it out and stuff your mattress with it to repel fleas.

Yew - the wood is very good for making longbows. As well as shooting your enemies, you could also use yew to poison them.

Flax - used for making textiles.

Those plants didn't stay wild for long, as we learned to grow them at will.

Most grains are grasses that have been genetically modified, much like the animals we domesticated. You really wouldn't want to be farming an auroch if you had the choice.

The Vibrator

And we have a winner! 🤣

I agree! And who actually sat there and thought 'you know what.... I think I'll make a vibrator'. Keep your stupid wheels.

Chocolate.😍

Starting to watch "Human" on BBC, and I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the bow and arrow. Which is a paradigm shift from throwing a stick to get a machine to do it for you.

The idea that technology began with the bow and ended with the vibrator has yet to feature in current science. Which means there is scope for a PhD there for someone. (You can cite my pseudonym in the credits 😀)

Yes thats quite a piece of technology there. Like the trebuchet and such like (probably spelt that wrong)

Trebuchet (ballista) - is more a weapon of war. Although war probably started as a process of nicking food from other humans. Which is a damn sight easier than hunter-gathering it yourself. (Preppers take note ....)

I know its a weapon of war but I mean the fact that you can throw something or propel something much further by way of tension. Massive invention.

The washing machine. It meant women of the past could have more free time and start a revolution 😂

Not sure if FB reads my tabs, but this popped up in my feed ....

There are quite a few, including:
Willow

Good choice there. Hazel’s our other building materiał but doesn’t have the medicinal properties.

I was also thinking, drumroll please, of the humble stinging nettle. Food, tea, mild medicinal (compared to willow), a dye plant and even a fibre plant. And we can’t get rid of it!