Guest Writer: Zackary Carpenter (@zackmacg)
Zackary Carpenter currently studies magazine journalism at the University of Missouri. He is from Blanchard, Okla. just south of Oklahoma City. Carpenter likes video games, science fiction, beat poetry and various forms of music. Opinions are his own.
To say on the Internet that the Internet is the greatest invention in human history is just an example of a network-based circle jerk. In a May 2012 post on livescience.com, Natalie Wolchover wrote that, “the global system of interconnected computer networks known as the Internet is used by billions of people worldwide.”
While this is true, and while the Internet has surged human innovation forward, it simply would not have been possible without these five inventions. They are the groundwork for the rest of human innovation, and in my personal opinion, they are the most important.
They are also the most universal.
5. Hitting rocks repeatedly until they break, then moving them elsewhere and stacking them
Photo by Brocken Inaglory
Otherwise known as masonry, the act of building with stone might go back to when humans were living in caves. They might have wanted to add a second bedroom onto their already spacious four-person hovel, so they would extend the mouth of their cave outward. The human need to increase a home’s resale value drove innovation forward.
In the 3rd millennium BCE, the ancient Pharos took real estate development to unprecedented heights. They erected massive stone temples to their pantheon of gods, and, like most wealthy individuals in human history, to themselves.
But the Egyptians weren’t the sole creators of masonry. It turns out that across Central America, South America, and Asia, a simultaneous technological leap was taking place. The Romans later added concrete to the mix, and before all of this was taking place, Ancient Sumerians were cooking clay bricks.
4. Taking shiny materials, and then hammering or burning them until they look kind of like what we want them to look like
Photo by alchemist-np.
This one is special. Without metalworking, the modern world simply wouldn’t be possible. It’s also special because, unlike masonry, a lot of metalworking’s early history is based around chemistry.
The likely first metal to have been worked was gold. It has the lowest oxidation level of the seven metals known to the ancients, which means that gold can be found in nature as (almost) pure nuggets. It is easy to bend, and you really only need stone tools to work with it.
After gold, copper and tin were each extracted from the earth. As early as 7000 BCE, metalworking was being carried out in South Asia. Iraq, though, wins the award for having the oldest archeological evidence of copper mining and working. A copper pendant was discovered there.
3. Making roads go in a straight line, putting all the smiths in one place and rich people in another, prettier place, and putting important buildings in the middle
City planning today is perhaps one of the most under appreciated professions there is. How often do you hear someone say,
Photo by Paulo Barcellos Jr.
“Here’s my daughter, the urban designer?” If you answered often, then you run in a very exclusive circle of people.
The first examples of city planning can be found everywhere, literally everywhere: China, India, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Mediterranean world, and North and South America. Once governments became powerful enough to impose order on urban chaos, they did.
Without city planning, intricate transportation networks simply wouldn’t be possible. Every city would look like Washington D.C., except even less intuitively planned. The economies of ancient states would never have taken off. Empires would’ve never been born.
2. Drawing shapes on stone, papyrus, or paper, and then telling everyone what those shapes mean
Photo by Biblio De Tours.
Writing allows humans to pass information along to one another effectively. It also allows us to communicate, in a rudimentary sense, to people we will never see. The spread of knowledge around the world and generations down the line has given our species a rich understanding of the world and our place in it.
Writing is believed to have been invented in Sumer around 3200 BCE and in Mesoamerica around 600 BCE. It is debated that writing could have also been independently invented in Egypt around 3200 BCE and in China around 1200 BCE. It is clear that writing something down is an inevitable result of increasing technological advancement. At a point, it just becomes necessary to write down how to mine copper.
Also Harry Potter.
1. Putting seeds in a hole, covering them with dirt and dung, and then eating whatever grows
Agriculture is the basis for human civilization. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, the argument is quite clearly made that without agriculture, humanity would still be roaming about the world. Our tribes would never expand past around 100 people.
Photo by Luc Viatour
The most stunning result of agriculture, though, is that it led to domestication of animals. It led to mining metals out of the earth to better plow the land and level forests. It led to the wheel (in most areas of the world) to better transport larger quantities of food. It led to cities, which in turn led to a pressure cooker of human ideas. The numbers one and zero wouldn’t have come into existence without agriculture. Governments wouldn’t have power, and money would have no basis. Most importantly, we wouldn’t have french-fries.
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