This presentation goes through a reading comprehension exercise about the most important events / inventions in human history. After each invention description there are comprehension questions.

1. Top 10 Most
Impactful
Events of
Human History
• Event description from:
• https://medium.com/@jnameloc

2. What’s are some examples of important
events in the history of Hong Kong?
Why were they important events?
• The handover of Hong Kong WAS an important event.
(1997)
• The umbrella movement WAS an important event
(2014)

3. What’s are some examples of the most
important events in the history of humans?
Why were they the most important?
• Defeating the Nazis in WW2 was very important.
• The Berlin Wall falling was an important event.

4. The Discovery of Fire
• Homo Sapiens have been on Earth for 200,000 years, but we didn’t
discover fire.
• Campfires in the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa date back 1 million
years. That means another species of Homo was using fire for
800,000 years before Sapiens (We) appeared on Earth.
• One of the most significant uses for fire was cooking.
• Lions, tigers, and bears, have strong jaws and sharp teeth. So did the
first humans. It’s necessary for eating raw meat. Once we started
cooking, our teeth, jaws, and tastes evolved to reflect that. The
discovery of fire didn’t just keep us warm, it changed our physical and
biological makeups.

5. The Discovery of Fire
1. What are homo sapiens?
2. How did we change physically because of fire?
3. When do scientists think fire was first used?
4. What was one of the most important uses of
fire?

6. Domestication of Dogs
• Who domesticated who is a matter of viewpoint.
• The Reality is: Where would we be without our best friend?
• A dog’s loyalty is more loyal than a human’s. It has evolved over several
millennia.
• Dogs were the first animal to be domesticated by humans.
• One day a man and a friendly wolf encountered each other. They didn’t
attack each other, but the wolves ate some leftovers. Then the wolves
evolved to expect leftovers.
• We used them, they used us, and we co-evolved to the point where we
could communicate and empathize with each other very well.
• Archaeologists even found a 12,000-year-old tomb where the skeleton of a
woman was laid next to the skeleton of a puppy.

7. The Domestication of Dogs
1. What does this mean – “Where would we be
without dogs?”
2. What does this mean – “Who domesticated
who is
3. Do you think dogs are loyal? How about cats?
4. When did people and dogs become friends?

8. Invention of the Wheel
• They say the wheel is the greatest invention because it’s purely man-made.
There is no wheel in nature to draw inspiration from. Tree limbs inspired
spears. The sun inspired light. Leaves inspired clothing. The wheel was
the pure imagination of man.
• Who imagined it? We don’t know.
• Most believe the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia, but the world’s
oldest wheel was discovered in Slovenia in 3330 BC.
• Furthermore, the world’s first engraving of a wheeled cart was found in
Poland in 3600 BC.
• The wheel is impressive, but a wheel connected to an axle is way more
impressive.
• Society as we know it flourished because of the invention of the wheel.

9. Invention of the Wheel
1. Why is the wheel such an amazing invention?
2. What is a counterfeit?
3. When did people start using coins?

10. Creation of Currency
• There was a time where you had to make your own footwear. You also needed to find your own
medicine.
• Then we started trading goods.
• Trading goods was inevitable, but a barter economy could only be so complex.
• If I made the best sandals in the area, and you grew the most poppy, we could make a trade. But
if you didn’t need sandals, and I needed poppy seeds, things broke down pretty quickly.
• In 3000 BC, Sumerians started using barley money.
• Around the same time, the Mesopotamians started using silver shekels.
• You could eat barley, but you couldn’t eat silver. It wasn’t even useful for making tools.
• Society was changing.
• Around 600 B.C., King Alyattes of Lydia started printing coins. They were gold and silver alloy and
guaranteed by the King. Anyone caught making counterfeits paid a price.
• Almost every coin today is a descendant of the Lydian coin. The world has never been the same.

11. The Creation of Currency
1. What inspired the creation of currency?
2. What’s a barter system?
3. Why is currency better than a barter system?

12. Invention of the Alphabet
• It would have been impossible to spread knowledge without the written
language.
• Around 3000 B.C., Sumerians and Egyptians created cuneiform and hieroglyphics,
respectively. These were incomprehensible pictograms that represented
concepts. They were like iPhone emojis.
• Around 1200 B.C., Phoenicians created the oldest verifiable alphabet. It was
made up of 22 letters — all consonants.
• Around 800 B.C., the Greeks created the first true alphabet — an alphabet with
both consonants and vowels.
• The Greek alphabet had 24 letters — Alpha to Omega — contained consonants
and vowels, and also differentiated between upper- and lower-case letters. It was
the start of many alphabets of today.
• Intelligence is widely measured by one’s ability to read and write. The alphabet is
the reason for that.

13. The Invention of the Alphabet
1. Who created the first alphabet?
2. What are hieroglyphics?
3. How many letters does English have?
4. When do scientists think fire was first used?
5. What was one of the most important uses of
fire?

14. Creation of Religion
• Ancient Greeks, Aztecs and Egyptians believed in deities, but they never
coined a name for their belief system.
• They say Hinduism is the first religion in the world.
• Sometime between 1700 - 1100 BC, somebody wrote the oldest sacred
texts in history — The Vedas.
• It was the dominant religion in the world until Buddhism, which took off
after Siddharta meditated under a tree for 40 days and reached Nirvana,
became the world’s most popular religion.
• Most money makes reference to God, and most people tell time in terms of
B.C. and A.D., which signifies the time of Christ.
• Whether you’re a believer or not, religion runs the world.
• It’s one of the most significant man-made imaginations ever.

15. The Creation of Religion
1. What do people think was the first religion in
the world?
2. Why does he say “religion runs the world”?

16. Advent of Timekeeping
• Ancient Greeks, Chinese, Sumerians and Egyptians used things like
sundials, hourglasses, water clocks, and obelisks to measure the earth’s
rotation. But Christian monks in the Middle Ages — who followed rigorous
prayer schedules — were the first to slice up the day into hours.
• They wanted to designate certain times of the day for prayer, so they
started ringing bells to signify important times of the day.
• Today time is everything.
• It’s everywhere at all times. It’s all judging and forgiving. It’s the most
powerful thing in the universe. It’s pretty much God.
• Time controls us, and just think, there was a time when nobody cared
about time.

17. The Advent of Timekeeping
1. Who first sliced up days into hours?
2. What is the sundial?
3. How do you think life might have been
different before people started keeping time?

18. Invention of the Printing Press
• The alphabet was cool, but the printing press was social mobility.
• Before the invention of the printing press, everything was written or carved
by hand. Everyone didn’t have access to the written word.
• That all changed when a German goldsmith and blacksmith named
Johannes Gutenberg unveiled his master invention - the printing press.
• No one wasted time carving script into stone unless it was for religious
purposes, but because people could now print fast and accurately,
scientific material started spreading across the world.
• It led to the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and written
language as we know it today.

19. The Invention of the Printing Press
1. How did people write before the printing
press?
2. What were the major consequences of the
printing press?