Who is the most influencial man(or woman) ever?

[SyntaxVorlon]

Why does everyone think that mitochondrial Eve was more influencial than Y chromosome Adam?

and what exactly did they do? They just happened to have lucky offspring of one gender...

Mitochondria are more important than most of the stuff on the Y Chrom.
And because there can actually be more than one Y chrom Adam, but only one Eve.

[Baron Mordo]

Mitochondrial Eve.

Explain.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Mitochondrial Eve.

Explain.

Mitochondrial DNA(RNA?) is passed via your mother to you, and that means that all our mitochondrial DNA came from one person in ancient Tanzania. After a couple 100k years there are many mutations that have moved throughout the human population, but there is the original Eve in Tanzania. No Eve, no human race. Whatever mutation she had that was so important to the survival of her children or herself, meant that we are all her descendants.

[Superman]

How about Guttenberg and his printing press?

In American entertainment culture, I would say Elvis.

[Perinquus]

Johannes Gutenberg is a strong candidate. Think how much it changed the word to have books go from rare and esoteric things, available only to the wealthy few, to being fairly commonplace. More people became literate, as there were now things available for them to read.

Sir Francis Bacon is another strong candidate, since he turned science, or "natural philosophy" as it was then called away from meaningless philosophical maunderings and toward practical applications, helping to pave the way for the scientific method.

[Hobot]

Alexander the Great

Hardly. Just about everything he did was erased by the Arabs and Turks. The Romans didn't depend THAT much on the Greeks not from Greece.

Are you on crack?!

Alexander the Great had a huge and lasting effect on the world. Through conquering just about all of the known world he spread Greek culture and philosophy which is basically the heart of Western Civilization. Everything from our government, religion, economy, morality, philosophy and science have been heavily influenced by Classic Greece.

Erased by the Arabs and Turks my ass...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Mitochondrial Eve.

Explain.

Mitochondrial DNA(RNA?) is passed via your mother to you, and that means that all our mitochondrial DNA came from one person in ancient Tanzania. After a couple 100k years there are many mutations that have moved throughout the human population, but there is the original Eve in Tanzania. No Eve, no human race. Whatever mutation she had that was so important to the survival of her children or herself, meant that we are all her descendants.

Not necessarily. "Mitochondrial Eve" is actually completely unimportant in the overall scheme of things. If it weren't her, then it would've arguably been some other early Homo Sapiens individual.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Alexander the Great

Hardly. Just about everything he did was erased by the Arabs and Turks. The Romans didn't depend THAT much on the Greeks not from Greece.

Are you on crack?!

Alexander the Great had a huge and lasting effect on the world. Through conquering just about all of the known world he spread Greek culture and philosophy which is basically the heart of Western Civilization. Everything from our government, religion, economy, morality, philosophy and science have been heavily influenced by Classic Greece.

Erased by the Arabs and Turks my ass...

Alexander the Great's contribution to history wasn't really all that significant. Honestly, the Romans and later, the Muslums did more to spread and preserve Greek culture than Alexander did. (Rome was heavily influenced by Greek culture even before the Macedonians showed up. When they conquered Macedonia and Greece, they completely absorbed the culture and made it their own. And the early Muslims preserved much of the Greek history and tradition while Europe was foundering through the Dark Ages.)

[Guardsman Bass]

You have to be careful of writing up inventors as the most influential because of their inventions. For example, Gutenburg invented the printing press, but so did the Chinese, and the main effect of Gutenburg's machine was in how available written material changed society.

I would say that the most influential people ever are those who created a truly lasting foundation: a mental or religious basis that became the foundation for a society, nation, or civilization. That is why I consider Newton and Galileo's origination of the clockwork universe to be more valuable to the development of modern society than their actual contributions( laws of gravity, work on heliocentric solar system).

[Perinquus]

You have to be careful of writing up inventors as the most influential because of their inventions. For example, Gutenburg invented the printing press, but so did the Chinese, and the main effect of Gutenburg's machine was in how available written material changed society.

I stand by my assertion of Gutenberg's influence. True the Chinese had block printing for centuries (a printed book dating from AD 868 was discovered there), but that is different from, and less practical than movable type printing. Moreover, the Chinese block printing led to no radical changes in Chinese society, whereas movable type printing very quickly began to have a radical effect on Western civilization. In fact, block printing was also known in Europe prior to Gutenberg, and again, had no outstanding effect on society.

For that matter, Gutenberg wasn't even the first to invent movable type. Again, the Chinese beat him to the punch, having developed it some time in the mid 11th century. Both the Chinese and Koreans were using movable type prior to Gutenberg, but Europeans did not learn it from the Chinese. For some reason, movable type printing never came into general use in the Orient. Printing by means of movable type never came into general use in China until comparatively recently, when the Chinese learned modern printing methods from the West.

Gutenberg is important because he combined all the elements necessary for modern printing to begin - movable type made of a suitably durable metal alloy, a mold for casting the blocks accurately, and oil-based printing ink that worked, and a press suitable for printing. No other individual had done all these things, and these things together proved to be greater than the sum of their parts. For printing, unlike all prior inventions, is essentially a process of mass production. A single printed book is no different in effect from a single hand-written book. The advantage of printing is mass production. What Gutenberg developed was not a single gadget or device, but a complete manufacturing process.

Some idea of Gutenberg's impact can be gained by comparing subsequent development in China and Europe. At the time Gutenberg was born, the two regions were more or less equally advanced technologically. But after Gutenberg's invention of modern printing, Europe began to progress very rapidly as more and more people became literate, and more and more information was widely disseminated in books. In China, on the other hand, where the use of block printing continued until much later, progress was comparatively slow. It is probably an overstatement to claim that printing was the only factor causing this divergence, but it was certainly a very important factor.

You say that you have to be careful listing inventors. Well, I disagree. Technological innovations have probably done more to change our lives than anything else. Political systems come and go, ideologies do too. Wars and migrations change the landscape, but things settle down after and return to normal. Yet the fact remains that you could take a 1st century BC Roman peasant, and plunk him down in 16th century Italy, and once he learned the language and customs, there is probably very little about daily life that he would find strange. Bring him to the Italy of today, however, modern, industrialized Italy, and he would probably find almost everything around him so strange and fantastic that it would seem like magic. Napoleon Bonaparte probably never galloped any faster than Alexander the Great, but today, thanks to technology, and the inventors who brought us all these marvelous advances we've enjoyed over the past couple of centuries, you can be on the other side of the world within a day. That's a hell of a powerful influence.

[HemlockGrey]

Alexander I just tossed out, but I stand by William. No Norman England means no British Empire, no 100 years war, no United States, no world as we know it.

[StarshipTitanic]

Alexander the Great's contribution to history wasn't really all that significant. Honestly, the Romans and later, the Muslums did more to spread and preserve Greek culture than Alexander did. (Rome was heavily influenced by Greek culture even before the Macedonians showed up. When they conquered Macedonia and Greece, they completely absorbed the culture and made it their own. And the early Muslims preserved much of the Greek history and tradition while Europe was foundering through the Dark Ages.)

What he said.

[SPOOFE]

In the recent era (that is, the past thousand years), I'd say Eli Whitney. Everyone knows that he invented the cotton gin (and summarily got ripped off due to its ease of use... the precursor to file-sharing, ironically), but few people know of his second invention; rather, they know of it, they just don't know he invented it.

Eli Whitney came up with a design philosophy that he called "the American system". It's an engineerring and industrial tactic of making highly precise parts that fit interchangeably... we know of it, today, as "mass production". It's what allowed industry to shift to automation (and, ironically, gave the North the edge in the Civil War that allowed them to easily defeat the South... which had become powerful due to the usefulness of the cotton gin. In short, Eli Whitney both started and ended the Civil War...).

But... without the "American system", we wouldn't have inexpensive cars, bikes, clothes, computers, toasters, TVs, sex toys, or any number of other mass-produced goods. Its industrial tactics like this that have allowed the world to shift so dramatically in just a little more than a century... and Eli Whitney kick-started it.

This has been your historical lesson for today. I am SPOOFE, your Drunken Professor..... Good Night.

[Howedar]

(since Abraham hasn't even been proven to exist)

My understanding is that such stories are usually based on a real person, then made more extravagent as they are passed down the generations verbally. There could very well have been an Abraham; whether or not he was anything like the Torah/OT version is more debatable.

[Perinquus]

(since Abraham hasn't even been proven to exist)

My understanding is that such stories are usually based on a real person, then made more extravagent as they are passed down the generations verbally. There could very well have been an Abraham; whether or not he was anything like the Torah/OT version is more debatable.

We don't even have any solid non-Biblical evidence for Jesus, who is much more recent. Even the evidence for Mohammad is such that the real person is thought by many scholars to have been a very different sort of figure from the pne Muslims today revere.

[Howedar]

I guess what I'm saying is that even if the original Abraham was just an unusually proficient sheep herder, the person he became through legend has had a profound impact.

[InnerBrat]

Mitochondria are more important than most of the stuff on the Y Chrom.
And because there can actually be more than one Y chrom Adam, but only one Eve.

Except most mtDNA doesn't actually code for anything - it's just a throwback to when they were independant organisms.
And why, exactly can there be more than one Y chrom Adam, and only 1 mtEve?

Mitochondrial DNA(RNA?) is passed via your mother to you, and that means that all our mitochondrial DNA came from one person in ancient Tanzania. After a couple 100k years there are many mutations that have moved throughout the human population, but there is the original Eve in Tanzania. No Eve, no human race. Whatever mutation she had that was so important to the survival of her children or herself, meant that we are all her descendants.

Crap. Eve was just one of a number of human women alive at a certain time, who by genetic drift has now become the mother of all living humans. If it wasn't her, it would be someone else. No big deal.
Ditto for Y Adam, who lived a lot earlier, and in a different region of Africa.

Genes aren't that important in constucting today's society - memes would be much more influencial.
So my vote is for Homer or Shakespeare.

[Steven Snyder]

I think that would be Jesus Christ whether we like it or not.

Edit: Maybe not him in person but think about the things his followers have done in his name.

From what I understand, there are no records of his existence.

I really think the person that made the biggest impact was Gutenberg(sic?). His invention of the printing press made it possible for books to be written, knowledge to be spread, and the darkness of ignorance to be washed away.

[SPOOFE]

From what I understand, there are no records of his existence.

Not so. The Roman historian Pliny makes reference to "Jesus of Nazareth" (or "the Nazarene", or something like that).

However, there are no records of his EXPLOITS, which is far more important a thing.

[Steven Snyder]

From what I understand, there are no records of his existence.

Not so. The Roman historian Pliny makes reference to "Jesus of Nazareth" (or "the Nazarene", or something like that).

However, there are no records of his EXPLOITS, which is far more important a thing.

???

Wasn't this guy supposed to have been born in Bethlehem...making him Jesus of Bethelehem?

[Coyote]

Jesus was born in Bethlehem but his family lived in Nazareth,and that was where he grew up. And there is plenty of evidence that Jesus existed, really, it is just his divinity and religious status that is in question. I mean, there is no harm in admitting that the Reverend Sung Yung Moon exists, but I doubt seriously that he is the new Messiah.

As for most influential person.... Innerbrat, bear in mind that any invention, any general, any emperor would have been accomplished by 'anybody' at one time or another but at some point someone had to take that first step....

the most important non-aware contributor to humanity was therefore the genetic Eve...

...but the most intentional and aware contributer would have to be either the guy that made writing or the guy that made gunpowder. They made conscious choices to do something whereas Eve was just an unaware tool of genetics.

Take your pick.

[InnerBrat]

Innerbrat, bear in mind that any invention, any general, any emperor would have been accomplished by 'anybody' at one time or another but at some point someone had to take that first step....

I know that - which is why I went for artists not inventors.
Are you really suggesting that Hamlet was inevitable?

the most important non-aware contributor to humanity was therefore the genetic Eve...

but she didn't contribute anything! Genes influence very little in society, and she almost certainly had very similar chromosomal DNA (y'know, the stuff that actaully matters) to any other female in her population at the time, and many others will have contributed through a male lineage. It's just chance that it's her mtDNA that survived. The same applies to Y Adam.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Mitochondrial DNA(RNA?) is passed via your mother to you, and that means that all our mitochondrial DNA came from one person in ancient Tanzania. After a couple 100k years there are many mutations that have moved throughout the human population, but there is the original Eve in Tanzania. No Eve, no human race. Whatever mutation she had that was so important to the survival of her children or herself, meant that we are all her descendants.

But what influence did she have on history? DNA isn't history.

I'd vote for Sargon the Great, who invented the concept of Empire by unifying the Sumerian city-states under his rule.

[Peregrin Toker]

While Karl Marx probably isn't the single most influental person in history, he's still worth a mention. Without him, the communist movement probably would have died out - resulting in Chiang Kai-Shek instead of Mao ruling and the Soviet Union might never have existed.

[Baron Mordo]

Sir Francis Bacon is another strong candidate, since he turned science, or "natural philosophy" as it was then called away from meaningless philosophical maunderings and toward practical applications, helping to pave the way for the scientific method.

Didn't he die with his head stuck in a chicken?