Human Achievement

[Chillum]

What do you think is/are the greatest achievement/s of mankind?

[Chillum]

or invention?

[blueeyedlass]

the wheel apparantly!!!

[sunflower68]

The flipping washing machine.

[Chillum]

not sliced bread then?

[tartanwiz]

Avoiding a nuclear holocaust despite possessing the nuclear bomb for 60 years and despite incidents such as the Cold War.

[smudge]

Apart from all the obvious wonderful inventions like the Aeroplane, Helicopters, Cars, etc., it has to be 'The Electric Lawn Mower'. I couldn't quite manage it with scissors!

[greenday]

Without a doubt it's landing on the moon, and the rest of the space exploration stuff.

[Quizmonster]

The English language specifically for its richness - but any language in general - is humanity's greatest 'invention'. No other invention would have been conceivable without the advances made possible by the ability to communicate. ('Inventions' don't have to consist of wheels and switches!)

[bernardo]

The vast accumulation of millions of ancestors, and the random chance selection of the correct combinations of sperm and eggs, which resulted in me.

[smudge]

And what would we do without you bernardo?

[smudge]

Oh & of course: The World Wide Web!

[jakesi]

The invention of Time.

[theren]

Jakesi - so specifically, who invented time? anyway anyone who's anyone knows that the greatest inventionS (yes there are 2) are Marmite and Fosters!!!

[landie]

Language(s)

The first person to sail over the horizon (the edge of the world, as it was thought).

Sex.

[MargeB]

Penicillin, Tarmacadam, and the Television. The cornerstones of any good civilization.

[MargeB]

Working out that we evolved from lower species.
And sending out a signal to space to say 'we're here'.
And random acts of spontaneous kindness. Which probably shields us from alien destruction.

[jake-the-peg]

Printing with movable type.

Without it I can scarcely imagine the reformation, the renaissance, development of scientific and Enlightenment thought. Suddenly Kings could no longer isolate their subjects.

We're seeing similar today as a number of dictatorships struggle to keep a lid on the internet.

As Victor Hugo said "Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come". Movable type printing gave us that.

Fire is for wusses! let them eat salad! 

[ll_billym]

Putting a sharpened rock at the end of a stick to be able to kill things better.  We might not be here today if it wasn't for that one.

[MargeB]

We would not have anything like the brains we have today unless we had developed tool use, the prime candidate for explaining why we ended up with the largest relative brain size of any animal.

[MargeB]

Sorry, but it's been staring us in the face all this time.
THe greatest achievement of mankind is.....the Answerbank.