25 Most Significant Inventions In Human History

As you sit there, reading this article, does it ever occur to you just how much humanity has advanced as a species? Ten thousand years ago, many of our hairy ancestors lived in caves, hunted now-extinct animals with sharpened sticks, and spoke a dialect composed of grunts and shouts. Today, we can exchange information in the blink of an eye, create highly complex machines that weren’t even considered possible a century ago, and can even go into outer space.

How did we get here? How has it been possible for humanity to accomplish so many things in the relatively short amount of time that our species has lived on this planet? It’s because humans possess a thirst for knowledge and a creativity that has yet to be demonstrated by any other creature, living or extinct.

Through creativity, challenge, and curiosity, humans have created a plethora of inventions and thought processes that transformed this once-nomadic species into a civilization whereby technological advances now happen on a yearly basis. However, out of all of the inventions and new ideas that humanity has created over the millennia, there are twenty five that stand out as the most important out of all of them.  These are the things that led to the birth of the most advanced species on the entire planet (though whether we’re the most advanced beyond that remains another great mystery…)

Humans have a lot to be thankful for, but nothing more so than the following twenty five ideas and inventions…

One of the main things that separates humans from lesser beings is our ability to express ourselves in many different ways. Not content to use our language for only one purpose, our ancestors devised ways to communicate more creatively and for more esoteric purposes. Thus, the concepts of theatre and drama were created.

Aside from the earliest of paintings, these were some of the first examples of human creativity. From the early forefathers like Aristotle and the early theatres of Ancient Greece, to renaissance artists like Chaucer, Shakespeare and Voltaire, the concept of drama and its affiliation with creative expression has become a timeless component of human inventiveness.

Throughout history, theatre was used as a form of social commentary, using subtle imagery, symbolism and allegory to tell a second story beneath the main one. Elsewhere, different civilizations used theatre to tell a myriad of different stories, from tributes to deities, to expressions of love or anger, to teaching viewers lessons about life and the world around them. In the 21st century, traditional drama and theatre still exists, but it has been overtaken by the film industry in terms of popularity.

Though modern cinema has its own elements, the central storytelling elements and tributes to the original drama still remain. This is what makes humanity such an impressive species: we can create countless different stories that demonstrate the limitless creativity that exists as part of our species.