How on earth does anyone expect @cynicaloldgit to make any sense of this!
I think we have to set aside ideas from inventions, else this will get too labyrinthine. Simply because with ideas there is usually a debate as to whether they were ‘found or made’.
Can we vote on that please?
I’m waiting for @cynicaloldgit to do up a poll first
Just to be clear, I am from Liverpool and I live in Japan. I don’t think there was a Legalalien in Japan. That was just me.
I suggested knives and forks because without them us European barbarians would still be eating at the table with our bare hands.
What about spoons… :0)
Cheap breakfast is ok but the beer is shit
I don’t need to convince you. Your mind is too closed off for that.
Democracy hasn’t anything to do with free speech btw. It might give you a voice but always sets ‘conditions’ most common is being a citizen often being a man not a woman and tends to be binary (yes, no). Democracy is also fragile (as are other ‘systems’) and the binary appraoch means it’s destructive and eliminates societies that are percieved as ‘different’. Democracy and Freedom of speech don’t go hand in hand as history has witnessed.
Anarchy is the ultimate in ‘Free speech’ you can think and say what you like and even decide to participate or not. However I’m sure you can not see this.
Anyway I’m not going to debate in this thread it’s not it’s purpose. So I’m not going to continue with this discussion. I know your ‘frame’ of mind and how closed it is so in your case it’s futile anyway!
Huh? All I’ve done is ask a question. Asking the question suggests a desire for knowledge, the very opposite of a closed off mind.
I’m going to put that with the earlier suggestion of the knife and fork under “cutlery”.
Update: we currently have 44 nominations, so I will allow people to add up to two more each in the hope that we reach 64. If we don’t, I will whittle down to 32.
All nominations must be in by 17:00 on Sunday. Thanks.
Have we had the internet? Debt (although the invention of that is pretty intertwined with the written language), printing press is another classic. I still the Haber-Bosch should win as the pre cursor for the biggest population expansion in history.
Yes.
Alcohol and drugs
The difference machine (a mechanical machine predating ‘computing’ but doing the same thing, invented in 1820 by Charles Babbage, amazing invention)
Along the same lines Enigma (code cracking machine).
Hope noone will object to these, thay are on a completely different line to my other 2. 
Have we had; the alphabet/writing, money, cooking, condoms, democracy, cooperation, shoes, bow and arrow, steam engine, sailing, central heating, toilets/sewage systems, spectacles (glasses) yet?
Cement + X-ray machine
Great name for a band.
Compass
Anesthesia if that hasn’t been said
Gunpowder.
Probably too broad but, the scientific method.
Cheese
alcohol