In your opinion....what is the single most important thing that has happened to cause us as the Human Race?

Question

to evolve....and what will probably be the next......
(This is NOT A Religious question.....so please no religious answers)

Answer 1

It has to be... the need to socialize... to start interacting with each other in order to survive and fight the environmental changes and threats....
It actually happened to one of our ancestors because we were the prey, we ate vegetables, and we were way more smaller than now... more like hobbits...
There... we were in need of some mutation that actually took place to made our ancestors' brain evolve in a way in which shows our ways of interacting, working together, fighting together, hunting together... everything... and then from there on we started to become a predator, which we are now....

What still probably happens now... is already happening.. we are always improving that part of our brain that makes us improve our society, our ways of grouping, and living together... for the common good rather than our own good... We have come a long way from being common beasts to somewhat civilized people... and we keep improving... better governments, better laws, regulations... just making rules and ways of life, all of it for the common good...

Our morals and ethics are evolving... and rapidly...

Our environment isn't doing much, now that we can build things and solve environmental problems without the need of evolving and natural selection....

What is making us change is then again... our need to improve our ways of interaction... we get more creative always in that field now that the environment has little to none effect on us.... from radio to Internet... see the improvement?

Hope that helps....

Chris

Answer 2

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I would think our ability to objectively know that we exist and are separate from other people and animals around us defines us as human. It goes beyond sentience, which almost all animal life has, into a recognition of the self as a separate entity. That and our knowledge of our own mortality, knowing that our own lives are finite and that we will someday die.