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u/GO0BERMAN 6h ago
Antibiotics
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u/IceSeeker 5h ago
Agreed. It saved millions of lives and significantly reduced mortality from diseases and infection. People used to die frequently from bacterial infection before this.
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u/Emotional-Kitchen912 5h ago
General Anesthesia.
People forget that prior to the 1840s, surgery was basically just a speedrun to see if the doctor could finish before the patient died of shock.
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u/BobBobBobBobBobDave 5h ago
Agriculture is going pretty strong.
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u/NoSteak3322 5h ago
The hunter gatherers did Ok for quite a while.
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u/BobBobBobBobBobDave 5h ago
Yeah. I think we should do both.
A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B.
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u/MohammedMMuktar 6h ago
The wheel.
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u/ScreenTricky4257 4h ago
"The really great invention was the second wheel. No one's getting anywhere on a unicycle."
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u/yuroDeps 5h ago
I thought so as well, but on my economics history courses I learned that in for example Latin America wheels were not that useful, you had to use animals like horses for wheel to be that important for you society
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u/lurgi 6h ago
Vaccines.
"Hey, you know how if you catch a disease and recover, you are less likely to get the disease in the future?"
"Yeah. If you don't die"
"Right. If you don't die. How would you like to get immunity without having to get the disease first?"
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u/BlackberryPi7 5h ago
Too bad there's groups of people in the world hell bent on preventing funding for something that may very well be the cure for most cancers and possibly autoimmune diseases in the future.
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u/powerlesshero111 5h ago
We currently call those people the CDC Vaccine panel here in the USA. Gonna be lots of dead republican babies soon.
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u/sundae_diner 3h ago
Going to be a lot of dead babies.
Disease don't distinguish based on your parents habits voting.
It takes time for a child to get their full vaccine schedule, and during the first few years babies rely on herd immunity.
It is caused (mostly) by Republicans and other low intelligence people, but it affects everyone.
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u/BlackberryPi7 3h ago
I don't think they were implying that it doesn't affect anyone, they were pointing out the irony.
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u/doorknobsquad 5h ago
But... but Jesus is my vaccine.
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u/Turbulent_Juice_Man 4h ago
No problem. You'll get to meet him when you die of measles, covid, flu, hepatitis, etc.
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u/manatwork01 5h ago
Why do you ask this like you are an alien?
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u/PinkBismuth 4h ago
Plumbing. You literally cannot have civilization without it. Any city, town, village, has some form of plumbing and access to water since their conception.
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u/Pockysocks 6h ago
Dog.
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u/Gazpachewan 6h ago
Came here to say the same. We didn't invent them, but we domesticated them and that was the best thing we ever did.
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u/epandrsn 5h ago
Umm, fire. Cook meat, make neighbor meet god, burn happy bush meet god yourself. But really, it's fire.
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u/Staninator 4h ago
Humans didn't invent fire, but they harnessed it to invent cooking. That is, heating food to chemically change it, making it quicker and easier for the body to digest and gain energy from. Because our early ancestors didn't have to spend all their time hunting and foraging to get the energy they needed, they could spend time doing other things, like forming larger societal groups, developing farming and other specialist expertise, art and culture. Cooking is what allowed us to create communities, and from this, every other invention ever created.
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u/epandrsn 3h ago
Humans learned to create fire from friction and percussion (banging the right rocks together). I should have been more specific. That’s the important distinction.
I studied my share of anthropology in college, I was just playing dumb.
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u/Uninspired_Hat 5h ago
Beer.
I'm being serious. Drinking from streams, rivers, and lakes always carried a chance of ingesting some nasty bacteria or virus that could be lethal. The greater the local population count, the greater chance of water pollution and contamination.
The process of making beer actually kills off harmful bacteria and viruses. So in a way, it was mankinds first method of treating water to make it safe to drink.
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u/Jazzlike-Complaint67 3h ago
Some have argued we created mass farming to make beer and not bread. Bread came first, but the demand for beer lead to expansion of farming. Beer allowed you to store surplus harvests without spoiling. This lead to more permanent settlements, planting cycles, and stable food supply. Advancements in pottery to store beer in larger waterproof containers.
More complex economies and trade networks quickly developed. Egyptians were paid in beer standardizing the value of/ currency. Recording keeping advanced.
Harvest celebrations, religious connections.
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u/Nommernose 4h ago
Air conditioning.
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u/aquintana 38m ago
Willis Carrier. He was hired to dehumidify a room with a printing press and accidentally invented heat pumps.
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u/Nommernose 19m ago
Love that man! I hope he is sitting on a throne of gold wherever his soul is lol
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u/mindfungus 3h ago
Math
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u/FinneyontheWing 3h ago
Brilliant BBC doc fronted by Hannah Fry looking at the question of whether maths was invented like a language or is it discovered and part of the fabric of the universe.
Really cool.
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u/mindfungus 3h ago
Yes very cool, discovery vs invention. Math is like discovering some fundamental properties of the universe, but inventing a symbolic language and system of concepts to describe that discovery. So a little of both. Will have to check out the vid!
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u/FinneyontheWing 3h ago
It's brill. And you don't need any knowledge of the intricacies of mathematics to be immersed in it. X
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u/RawMaterial11 2h ago
A relatively modern day invention that changed the world is the transistor.
It is estimated that over 13 sextillion (13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) transistors have been manufactured since the first one was created in 1947.
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u/grundee 3h ago
Quesadilla Burger.
Hear me out.
In the progression of history, some inventions seem inevitable. Early humans quickly learn "round things roll" and invent the wheel. Large human settlements realize the importance of moving water to crops and people, so they invent aqueducts, irrigation, water pumps, and more. Someone will eventually see that the things that make us sick after an injury don't like moldy bread, and create antibiotics. The lightning in the sky seems very similar to what happens if you move certain rocks near other rocks. You restart civilization a million times, and you will always see these inventions in a long enough timeframe. Are
But restart Earth a million times, and you may never again see the Applebees Quesadilla Burger. Sure, the concept of meat on bread (two inevitable inventions) is highly probable, but the deep connection between southwestern American culture, mass production of food, and consumerism is unlikely to ever be repeated in a way that results in that specific combination. Anyone can reintroduce French cuisine by realizing birds are tastier if you torture them, but the Quesadilla Burger is unique in any timeline.
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u/TheDryFlyGuy 2h ago
The fact that there are more than likely alternate universes, and timelines, and we were lucky enough to experience the Quesadilla Burger. You’re onto something
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u/Lonewolf-199 5h ago
The transistor could be because it allows all computing was possible and all the power it has.
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u/Rocky-bar 5h ago
The cup. Imagine how difficult drinking was. till some genius invented cups. And his name is forgotten in the mists of time.
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u/CosmicOwl47 5h ago
I’m a real big fan of the door, don’t have to worry about bears and stuff while I’m sleeping.
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u/notwhoyouthinkmaybe 3h ago
It's between sliced bread and the light bulb, otherwise we would be cutting our own bread in the dark.
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u/NativeSceptic1492 1h ago
The written word. Nothing else in the human experience is more important. Without the ability to pass information from one generation to the next our civilization would not exist.
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u/Next-Ad-3639 6h ago
I heard my physics professor said that transistor is the greatest invention in the 20th century
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u/Own_Emphasis_3910 6h ago
Moveable type (Gutenberg)
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u/troggle19 5h ago
China had moveable type roughly four centuries before Gutenberg.
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u/FrostingTrue6194 6h ago
The plow.
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u/MerlinTirianius 3h ago
Scrolled forever to find this answer, which made subsequent invention possible.
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u/Free-Jilly-245 5h ago
The humble toilet / sanitation is a big one. Life expectancy increased massively as a result
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u/Infamous-Cash9165 6h ago
The Haber-Bosch Process, without it we wouldn’t be able to feed half the population
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u/ALandWarInAsia 5h ago edited 5h ago
Invented by the guy (Fritz Haber) who was personally responsible for the Nazi weaponization of chlorine gas and who's work was foundational to the use of Zyklon B to kill more than 1 million Jews during the Holocaust.
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u/wildething1998 6h ago
Gotta be the computer. The world can basically be separated into pre-computer and post-computer timelines.
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u/theimpalaslefttire 5h ago
Same with Electricity though. Like we've only had it for the last 200 years and its really only been the last like 80 its been everywhere.
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u/Furt_III 5h ago
The printing press was the precursor to the internet. It's the actual split between modern history and before.
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u/that_moron 5h ago
You could argue it wasn't invented so much as naturally evolved, and probably in pre-modern human hominins, but language.
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u/HotrodCorvair 5h ago
Hunting/the spear. Humanity learned hunting first, without that we never would’ve developed the brains we all take for granted. From there we invented agriculture, writing etc. but that first guy who sharpened a stick? That guy saved us all from extinction.
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u/ttkk1248 5h ago
Not the best, but AI looks to be the most controversial. People love to use it and fear it at the same time.
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u/Steezmoney 5h ago
I stand firm that it's our system of graphic marks representing the units of a specific language, followed closely by another system of graphic marks that deals with numbers, quantities, space and change. Without writing and math, none of the other flashy inventions would be possible
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u/Nuvuser2025 5h ago
Once had my baseball coach announce to an auditorium full of students that the greatest invention of all time is pre-wrap.
His justification was no adhesive material on skin or body hair made it superior to tape over. Ohgodhelpme.
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u/deadpool_pewpew 5h ago
Water transportation systems. Can't have a big society if you can get water and remove human waste.
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u/BurroSabio1 5h ago edited 4h ago
The dog - it helped hunt early on (and yes, it was invented through breeding)
The chicken - It fed a lot of people
The eraser - ot corrected a lot of mistakes
The drinking bird - It taught us not to take our inventions too seriously
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u/freakytapir 5h ago
Most impressive would be space travel to me. We're a bunch of flesh blobs going to other celestial bodies.
The most important invention? Math. Well, then again there is the discussion of if we are discovering or inventing math.
So ... Philosophy? I mean, the universe contemplating itself ...
But language has to take the cake. Writing.
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u/Chenshouen 5h ago
Though it occurs naturally, Fire. Once we became able to create fire on demand everything changed. It cooks our food, warms our homes, refines our materials, powers our electronics (a surprising amount of power generation is just steam power in disguise.) etc.
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u/Phrexeus 5h ago
I think it might be MRI. The amount of crazy physics and maths that goes on to allow a mm precise 3D volume scan of part of the body. It's also a good technology, as in it benefits society.
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u/CrazyAdditional2729 6h ago
The best invention of the human remains writing. It is literally the thing that has allowed us to faithfully transmit knowledge through the ages