Humanity's Greatest Achievement

[pkay]

One could argue that the human race would not be here at all if we hadn't worked out how to create fire.
Also, I have never in my life seen a naturally occurring fire. We don't have too many volcanoes/lightning hitting super dry trees round here.

11.6 million results for "united states wildfire"
http://www.google.com/search?q=united+s ... =firefox-a

you likely don't hear about wildfires much where you're from as you are in a densely populated portion of the world. Back when the world was young and was dominated by wilderness, fires were very common in nature. Hundreds of thousands of acres burned yearly, naturally.

[cityzen]

Yes, i've heard of wild fires. Yes, i've seen them on the telly. No, I haven't seen one with my own eyes. Yes, I have traveled around the world. Im saying, I doubt that they happened a lot in my ends. My country is a bit damp don't you know.
What you seem to be saying is that we could have got along just fine by waiting around to use fire created naturally. I'm saying, I doubt lightning strikes were more frequent back then than they are now, so naturally occurring fires were not a daily thing so not being able to create it ourselves would have stunted our development as a species.

[particle-jim]

I'm just gunna go ahead and say it... Pornography
Porn is humanities greatest achievement, hands down

[pkay]

Yes, i've heard of wild fires. Yes, i've seen them on the telly. No, I haven't seen one with my own eyes. Yes, I have traveled around the world. Im saying, I doubt that they happened a lot in my ends. My country is a bit damp don't you know.
What you seem to be saying is that we could have got along just fine by waiting around to use fire created naturally. I'm saying, I doubt lightning strikes were more frequent back then than they are now, so naturally occurring fires were not a daily thing so not being able to create it ourselves would have stunted our development as a species.

my point is that harnessing fire would lead to the same end results as creating fire.... being able to use fire

Man would have eventually found and understood the advantages of harnessing naturally occurring fire.


The question was humanity's greatest achievement.... not it's most useful.

[cityzen]

OOOOOOOOOOOH SCEEEEEEEEN!

[pkay]

OOOOOOOOOOOH SCEEEEEEEEN!

Romans had commonplace areas for acquisition of flame... and even found ways with sulfur/lime to make flame submergeable in water for periods without being extinguished.

Point being, shortly after fire was created it was learned to be harnessed. Harnessing flame could have still occurred without manual creation of flame.

[cityzen]

Romans had commonplace areas for acquisition of flame... and even found ways with sulfur/lime to make flame submergeable in water for periods without being extinguished.

Point being, shortly after fire was created it was learned to be harnessed. Harnessing flame could have still occurred without manual creation of flame.

Cool, got any links?

[cityzen]

Back on topic - If we could harness nuclear fusion.... that would be quite something.

[pkay]

Romans had commonplace areas for acquisition of flame... and even found ways with sulfur/lime to make flame submergeable in water for periods without being extinguished.

Point being, shortly after fire was created it was learned to be harnessed. Harnessing flame could have still occurred without manual creation of flame.

Cool, got any links?

no, I'm just familiar with how a torch works

It is a great advancement for mankind, but our greatest achievement, no.

[dj0045]

Language. Without that there'd be none of the above

beat me to it. but can it be considered an achievment of humanity or is it just an achievment of evolution?

otherwise it would be this shit:

french?

[dj0045]

It's language Imo...

otherwise asdflkjh sadjhsdf kjhdsf jhdjfheuyewqr nvco oisdne jloiccn sdjheoiryads jhlkjh nalmdsfnlkcxoi ieroiqewr os

[esfandyar]

I'm just gunna go ahead and say it... Pornography
Porn is humanities greatest achievement, hands down

eeeeeeeeeeeeee

Yes.

[esfandyar]

Washing hands was super important. Ignaz Semmelweis popularized it by using it To reduce incidence of childbed fever. Loads of religions used it too.

[pkay]

possibly our greatest feat was not shitting in our drinking water.

[AllNightDayDream]

[Raggles]

I'd say either antibiotics or indoor plumbing

[christophera]

i'm going to go ahead and say that language is the biggest (tiniest?) prison we know.

[ashley]

Time is the greatest discovery.

[Badman Juice]

i'm going to go ahead and say that language is the biggest (tiniest?) prison we know.

is this meant to be some sort of profound statement because ppl have been theorising about this for a long time.

[ahier]

i'm going to go ahead and say that language is the biggest (tiniest?) prison we know.

its a reasonably inescapable one though. like the cave