parlor question: history edition
Aug. 11th, 2017 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaHere’s a fun one: what are the ten most important moments/events in world history?
Don’t click the “read more” if you want to think about it for yourself first; I share some reasonable answers below.
*
*
*
*
*
The boy & I discussed it for a while at a cafe a while back. Our list looked roughly like so:
1. The *results* of WWI (e.g., setting the stage for Germany to get plunged into a debt crisis and eventually go world-a-warring again)
2. Constantinople & its associated Christianity
3. Norman conquest of England
4. The Middle East kicking ass while everyone else was in the dark ages, thus preserving a lot of famous Greek/Roman/etc writing
5. World War II
6. Either American Revolution of French Revolution, whichever one you want to mark as “enlightenment/democracy begins here”
7. Mongolia conquering all that stuff or something??? (We felt like we should have some eastern history in here but, uh, are kind of underinformed on the topic)
8. Renaissance
9. Creation of Israel OR the whole partitioning-up-the-middle-east thing that happened during colonialism etc
10. Discovery (“discovery”) of the New World
Really, I was grasping for an event that would reflect the importance of colonialism, because you really can’t understand a great many centuries of world history without it. Best I could come up with was, idk, “the middle passage” / “triangle trade routes” after the New World was a thing.
Anyway, after we made this list, we looked up some lists randos on the internet had made. Some good ones they had that we overlooked were: the Protestant Reformation, Jesus of Nazareth starting his religion, Muhammad starting his religion, and arguably the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Mainly we kicked ourselves for missing “the printing press.” Holy shit! Widespread literacy and cheap books gogogo! That one’s important!
I texted a friend the question, and she came up with an excellent and rather different list:
1. Partition of India and Pakistan
2. Whoever figured out cooking meat is awesome
3. Alexander the Great defeating Darius
4. Yalta Conference
5. Muhammad’s Hijra
6. Mao’s March
7 Americans beating the British at Yorktown
8. Vatican
9. Constantine converting to Christianity
10. Paris Conference after WWI
Someone else looked at both our lists and asked where the hell “the wheel” and “fire” are. Which, okay, fair.
It’s lots of fun to talk and think about, though :) I would be amused to see y’all share your own list(s) in the comments!
Don’t click the “read more” if you want to think about it for yourself first; I share some reasonable answers below.
*
*
*
*
*
The boy & I discussed it for a while at a cafe a while back. Our list looked roughly like so:
1. The *results* of WWI (e.g., setting the stage for Germany to get plunged into a debt crisis and eventually go world-a-warring again)
2. Constantinople & its associated Christianity
3. Norman conquest of England
4. The Middle East kicking ass while everyone else was in the dark ages, thus preserving a lot of famous Greek/Roman/etc writing
5. World War II
6. Either American Revolution of French Revolution, whichever one you want to mark as “enlightenment/democracy begins here”
7. Mongolia conquering all that stuff or something??? (We felt like we should have some eastern history in here but, uh, are kind of underinformed on the topic)
8. Renaissance
9. Creation of Israel OR the whole partitioning-up-the-middle-east thing that happened during colonialism etc
10. Discovery (“discovery”) of the New World
Really, I was grasping for an event that would reflect the importance of colonialism, because you really can’t understand a great many centuries of world history without it. Best I could come up with was, idk, “the middle passage” / “triangle trade routes” after the New World was a thing.
Anyway, after we made this list, we looked up some lists randos on the internet had made. Some good ones they had that we overlooked were: the Protestant Reformation, Jesus of Nazareth starting his religion, Muhammad starting his religion, and arguably the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Mainly we kicked ourselves for missing “the printing press.” Holy shit! Widespread literacy and cheap books gogogo! That one’s important!
I texted a friend the question, and she came up with an excellent and rather different list:
1. Partition of India and Pakistan
2. Whoever figured out cooking meat is awesome
3. Alexander the Great defeating Darius
4. Yalta Conference
5. Muhammad’s Hijra
6. Mao’s March
7 Americans beating the British at Yorktown
8. Vatican
9. Constantine converting to Christianity
10. Paris Conference after WWI
Someone else looked at both our lists and asked where the hell “the wheel” and “fire” are. Which, okay, fair.
It’s lots of fun to talk and think about, though :) I would be amused to see y’all share your own list(s) in the comments!
no subject
Date: 2023-10-24 05:32 am (UTC)Unordered list:
- invention of spinning
- invention of weaving (whence, ultimately, computers)
- mastery of fire and cooking (this one should actually be first)
- invention of vaccines
- invention of pasteurization
- invasion of the Americas by Europeans; resultant loss of Native peoples, societies, etc
- discovery of antibiotics
- modern use of fossil fuels (starting, say 1900-ish)
- domestication of animals
- birth control (we may recently have rediscovered that one Roman contraceptive plant that we thought they drove to extinction! Paper here: https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/10/1/102)
no subject
Date: 2023-10-24 05:49 am (UTC)- discovery of germ theory
And add your entry
- Constantinople & spread of modern Christianity as my new 10th, although it's a very close race with irrigation of the Tigris and Euphrates valley. If we're disallowing mastery of fire as too non-specific, then I'm adding irrigation.
Book recommendation: Consider the Fork. It was not until we could boil food (in ceramic pots) that people routinely survived past losing all of their teeth.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-29 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-16 12:59 am (UTC)Right? There's so many things we take completely for granted - and without them, we would not have modern life. This was a fun thought experiment, thank you for the prompt!