Question: What is the most important invention in human history?

Answer: Lots of answers here highlighting lots of important inventions. Good informed

Quora worthy answers. I’ve upvoted a lot. But I think they are ALL wrong.
Big statement. Can you back that up? Let me try.
Why Not Fire and Cooking?
First, please note that while fire and cooking are undoubtedly important inventions (OK
handling and using fire is an invention, making fire - may be considered to be a discovery) -
they are not human inventions. That is to say they are not inventions of homo sapien
sapiens (us - humans). Earlier hominids were using fire for cooking at least half a million
years before homo sapien sapiens ever arrived on Earth.
So we were given fire and cooking as a kind of birthright.
BUT
the question didn’t say it had to be a human invention, just that it was the most important in
human history.
So - what could be more important than fire?
Speech / Language
A few answers have correctly included this.
I doubt that there would even be a human consciousness without speech. And there would
be very little human cooperation. And it is as a group cooperative species that we have
survived and made our mark.
Languages can be sign based and written, but I’d bet my last dollar that the early human
languages were all vocal speech based languages. Note that ALL Australian Aboriginal
languages were still speech based until European settlers arrived. There were no written
languages in Australia until then.
OK - but weren’t earlier hominids also using speech? Surely even monkeys use speech?
Well - yes. But there are degrees of complexity in language which make important
differences.
Homo sapien sapiens (Humans) arrived in Africa perhaps 200,000 years ago. There were at
least six other species of homo / hominids already spread around the Old World by then. So
- what was special about humans?
Not so much it seems. For about 130,000 years it seems we pretty much hung around
Africa as just another homo species.
And then …
Homo sapien sapiens seems to have gotten a very special gene. Call it evolution if you like.
It tied together parts of the brain in a somewhat new way.
Homo sapien sapiens are the ONLY species which has rhythm. We can move to a beat. We
can drum, chant, march, dance, pull together, and do poetry. We know of no other species
that can do this, including (so far as we know) the other homo species such as homo sapien
neanderthalensis. Rhythm is half of music, and we seem to be the only species that can
make music. To us, moving to music seems natural. No other species does it.
Music ties together more areas of the brain than any other known activity.
And it permits a whole new development in speech. I’ve mentioned poetry already.
We don’t know the details of exactly what and why happened. We do know that 70,000
years ago light bulbs went off in the homo sapien sapiens (human) mind. It’s called the
Cognitive Revolution. In less than 30,000 years homo sapien sapiens were out of Africa and
over most of the world, including Australia. You need some over the horizon boats to get to
Australia. No other hominids had done it.
Pretty soon homo sapien sapiens had displaced all other homo species, killed off pretty
much all large fauna everywhere except Africa, and made it to the New World too.
So what happened? What caused the Cognitive Revolution?
We may never know because there’s no known way of knowing what we were talking about
round camp fires 70,000 years ago.
But here’s my bet.
When our brain got tweaked to handle music it got the ability to develop some advanced
speech and language skills too. It gave us whole new ways of thinking, being aware,
cooperating, communicating, and …
telling stories.
Yes - we appear to be the only species that tells stories.
They have been astonishingly important in our myths, legends, religions, cultures,
civilisations, and history.
So - my best guess as to the most important invention ever made by humans:
Inventing the language for telling stories.
And without that, NOTHING else would have happened, from boats to agriculture, from
metals to space.
Just an accidental fluke of evolution?
Maybe.
Was that when God(s) took an interest in us?
Or when we began inventing God(s) in our own image?
Australian Aborigines arrived in Australia as part of the Cognitive Revolution expansion.
They killed off all the large Australian fauna. And they have interesting creation myths and
legends (from the Dream Times).
Advanced speech and storytelling - that was our REALLY BIG invention.
That’s what not only separates us from the other animals, but also gave us the all important
advantage against all other homo species. That’s what made us HUMAN.
Which is why it is THE most important invention.
And why every other one of the four hundred and ninety odd answers here is wrong.
Thought provoking at the very least.