Who is/was the most important person ever?

[waltzingparrot]

Just listened to an interview and a 'name' was suggested as being the most important person ever in our planet's history.

If you had to name one person as being the most important, who would it be?

Presumably without what they invented/did/said, our life today would be unrecognisable.

I immediately have a list of a dozen or so really important people throughout history, but I don't know how to rank them and come up with a no 1.

@waltzingparrot who was named in the programme?

Jesus, Alexander the Great, Stanislav Petrov (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov)

Your mum.

Or maybe Saul of tarsus, without whom Jesus would probably have remained one of the many apocalyptic preachers around at the time who are now consigned to obscurity. Foisted the divisive idea of monotheism on far too much of the world; it's doubtful Islam would have arisen without Christianity as a precursor.

The fantasy author who invented Jesus Christ.

I'll see your Stanislav Petrov and raise you USSR Commodore Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/the-man-who-refused-to-launch-nuclear-missiles-during-the-cuban-missile-crisis-saving-the-world.html

My understanding is that Islam came about from Abraham throwing his concubine Hagar and his (first born) son Ishmael out once god had granted his wife Sarah (previous barren) a pregnancy at age 60, Ishmael went on to found Islam, and as Abraham is old testament, Islam predates Christianity.....or have I got that mixed up?

Buddha
King Arthur

Yes I agree with maybe St Paul

It depends how you define 'importance'. If defining it as the most significant, or the most profoundly influence on the evolution of humans:

The first human who made a tool.

The human who first worked out how to create fire.

Or the one who first used a wheel type tool.

The first who germinated and cultivated a seed.

One of those perhaps. We'll probably never know their names.

Oppenheimer or Henrietta Lacks

I think i agree with Jesus and Muhammed.

I was going to say Thomas Midgley Jr.
Single handedly responsible for irreversibly poisoning the entire planet, twice!

He invented both leaded petrol and CFCs.
Leaded petrol damaged the brain development of millions of children globally and is still effecting us today. CFCs tore the hole in the ozone layer and infected every water source on the planet, irreversibly.

Thankfully his third and final invention was fatal only to himself. He had contracted polio, and invented a system of pulleys to help him get out of bed. It malfunctioned and he became entangled in it. He died of asphyxiation.

Oh dearie me.

You thought Jesus was fictional?

There is zero evidence. Writings are not evidence.

That's history fucked then.

The man who invited antibiotics Dr Alexander Fleming. Thank goodness for him. He should be at number 1.

Jesus Christ

second - Ghengis khan

Huh

I sometimes think maybe it was whichever human first invented the bag, so they had something other than stomach or hands to bring food back to the group in. Just imagine gathering nutritious shellfish without a container.

I can't think of a suggestion.

I've got completely distracted by working who they said, OP.

Was it Charlemagne? Genghis Khan?

No evidence that Jesus existed

I think cups and flasks were more important than bags

and projectile weapons brought the first possibilities of stable government, not to mention stable food supplies

Elizabeth 1

You don't have to accept the evidence, but it exists- eg the reference in Tacitus is convincing to me. I'm an atheist BTW.

Well yes there is. Why are so many people determined to think he didn't? You don't have to believe he was the Son of God (which I don't either) just because you acknowledge he was real.

There's evidence someone we transliterate as Jesus existed but not much evidence which passes historicity tests of him being what was later claimed.

Now then... has anyone mentioned Confucius yet, massively influential on one of the biggest and longest lived civilizations in human history.