TWO IMPORTANT INVENTIONS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

I. THE PLOUGH

No one knows who invented the plough, or exactly when. It probably developed independently in several regions, and there is evidence of its use in prehistoric eras. Before the plough, humans were farmers or hunter/gatherers. Their lives were devoted only to finding enough food to survive from one season to the next. Growing food added some stability to life, but doing it by hand was very hard work and took a long time. The plough changed all that. Improvements in the plough's design made farming so efficient that people could harvest far more food than they needed to survive. They could trade the surplus for goods or services. As populations gathered to engage in trading activities, cities grew. People needed to live together to trade more efficiently. It's not a stretch to say that the plough is responsible for the creation of human civilization.

II. THE PRINTING PRESS

Like many inventions, the man who improved the printing press (Johann Gutenberg in the 1430s) worked on preexisting technologies and made them useful and efficient enough to become popular. The world already had paper and block printing - the Chinese had them as early as the 11th century - but the complexity of their language limited its popularity. Gutenberg developed metal printing blocks that were far more durable and easier to make than the hand-carved wooden letters in use previously. The printing press allowed enormous quantities of information to be recorded and spread throughout the world. Books had previously been items only the extremely rich could afford, but mass production brought the price down. The printing press is probably responsible for many other inventions. The knowledge it created gave billions of humans the education they needed to create their inventions in the centuries since.