Makings of a human
When you stop to think about it, humans are pretty amazing animals. Not only have we managed to stick around in various forms for millions of years, but we’ve also grown into a population of more than seven billion, scattered virtually all over the planet. And we’ve done it despite being fairly fragile creatures.
So what has enabled us to thrive to the point where, for the most part, we don’t spend every waking moment worrying about whether we'll live to see another day? There are a multitude of inventions that modern humans depend on to sustain their existence, but here are a few...
The blade
New research has shown that stone tools like a blade didn’t just allow humans to eat better, wear better protective clothing and make for a good fight scene in West Side Story. It appears that 1.7 million years ago when tools began to be formed by human ancestors, they actually contributed to the evolution of how our hands work.
The wheel
The wheel was probably the most important mechanical invention of all time. Just about all modern mechanical devices use the wheel in some way — cars, buses, bicycles, factory machines, toys, wristwatches, movie reels and more. Not to mention the wheel’s continued use for pottery-making and transporting goods by cart — both of which ancient peoples must have appreciated.
Sewage disposal
When the British Medical Journal asked a group of experts and readers what the greatest scientific advancement in the last 150 years was, the answer wasn’t open-heart surgery or the find-my-phone app on smartphones. Beating out antibiotics and anesthesia, the majority chose advancements in sanitation. Of course, proper sewage disposal is still not present globally, and with great consequences: One billion people — 15 per cent of the world’s population — still practice open defecation, and 2.4 billion will use unimproved sanitation facilities by the year 2015.
Clothes
Researchers propose that early humans were at risk of overheating their brain if they couldn’t cool their skin by sweating, a trick that’s a lot easier when you’re not dealing with tangled, dense fur. Once we lost our body sweaters, however, we faced a greater risk of exposure to the elements, so we had to put on some clothes. It’s hard to determine exactly when humans started wearing coverings; animal pelts don’t make good artifacts because they decompose.
Shelter
As long as 2.6 million years ago, there were signs that early human groups began collecting food and tools to bring them back to certain favorite watering holes or sleeping spots. About 800,000 years ago, we start seeing fire and hearths added to the mix. But our earliest evidence of a man-made shelter comes from 400,000 year-old postholes and other archaeological evidence in Terra Amata, France. By building shelters, humans were not as vulnerable to their environment and could survive harsher conditions.
Water purification
As the World Health Organisation reported in 2005, water borne diseases are the world’s leading cause of death, claiming 3.4 million lives annually — more than war, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction combined.
During a cholera outbreak in 1854, British scientist John Snow determined that the disease was caused by microorganisms in sewage that contaminated the water supply. Among other pioneering public health ideas, he came up with the suggestion to apply chlorine to the water to kill the microorganisms, and the illness rate plummeted.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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