Humanity's greatest invention

The wheel is usually cited as humanity's greatest invention buti have serious objections to that idea. As we know that although the Americans did knew the wheel but it never found any large scale application because of a few reasons yet they had pretty advanced societies. I think that the importance of wheel to human society may be a bit overstated. Paper is another invention which is mentioned in that regard and it is correct that paper's contribution to society is unmistakable because paper allowed much larger amount of text to be stored in the same space that what was possible before. However i think that the one human invention which beats them all is the invetion of metal. Just imagine that what it was like before metals. Human had to fashion his tools from stone rather in a cumbersome manner by taking a stone and smashing it against another stone in the hope that the other stone would breakoff in the manner in which tools couldbe fashioned from it while with the invention of metal objects could be shaped according to precise specification. It also meant that now wood could be extracted from trees something which was not possible before and that led to another revolution including the invention of paper (which is made from wood) and wheel (which is usually made from wood as well as metal sometime). Thinking about it i have to say that i think that it is the one barometer of a high materialy evolved society rather than the wheel (who americans didn't used) and paper (who before 700 A.D much of the world did not have). Thoughts??

All technology, every tree cut down to build a house, to hunt with, to cut up an animal to make clothing with, for 1.5 million years was made from flint. A lot of people reguard flint technology as the most important invention ever.

There needs to be more recognition for those sponges with the scourers on one side, they really do save alot of time and effort when cleaning the dishes.

Originally posted by JanusRook

Wet wipes > toilet paper.

But the flushing toilet is way up there, much better than those drafty bum-out-the-window jobs.

The early American colonists used corn cobs for the toilet! 

The early American colonists used corn cobs for the toilet!

Corn Husk, not the cob. The cob was eatten, the husk was left, so they used'em!

penicilin?

Perhaps underwear?

Originally posted by elenos Perhaps underwear?