Somehow I doubt that the wheel was invented, per se. I imagine it was just discovered. I can see it now. Some caveman saw a round rock rolling down a hill and thought: “Holy smokes! Look at thing go. I bet if I got four of them and tricked them out I could over-compensate for my tiny crotch-club.”2) The creation of written language
How difficult education must have been before we learned to read and write. All you could go on is life experiences (“Big toothed cat, bad! Unga Munga!”) and what others told you (“Look at this scar I got from the big toothed cat. It’s bad.”) and that was it. Then somebody had the brilliant idea of drawing images that could mean different words: “These little circles with lines coming out of them are people. The ones with boobs are girls. And this big circle with squiggly lines coming out from all over it? That’s means “sun”. And this magical upright walking cat-god means “Magical upright walking cat-god.”
3) Plumbing
Oh dear, what was the world like before plumbing? This thought crossed my mind this morning when I had a little bit of a toilet backing up mishap. Just imagine that this wasn’t an occasional mishap, but rather an everyday occurrence. Thank you, Toileticus, Roman inventor of indoor plumbing.4) Electricity
Thanks to something of a scheduling snafu, when I first moved to Wilmington I spent the first five days without electricity (also, keep in mind that the movers would not arrive for a week, so I was basically without everything) and my arrival just so happened to correspond with a cold front blowing through town. So there I was without lights, without heat and without hot water. I thought I might lose my mind. And although my house is quite nice, it is not equipped with a fireplace. So I spent my nights curled up on the floor (wearing sweatpants, a toboggan cap and a hooded sweatshirt) using a towel and a curtain for a blanket.
5) Cashews
