Fire or electricity? Which was a more important discovery for people?

Question

I suppose fire would seem the likely answer if you go back to caveman days. But, it would seem that we would be back to living like cavemen if we lost electricity. All our currency, communications, transportation and creature comforts are driven electonically. Which would you say is the most important discovery?

Answer 1

People can live without fire and electricity in a warm climate but without the wheel and ships, you can't have vast trade and you're back to primitive farming. An early form of the wheel was the potter's wheel which allowed greater production of pottery.

Answer 2

fire. we can leave without electricity but never without fire

Answer 3

Electricity because like you said everything these days is based on electronics. I mean every time there is a blackout, i am so incredibly bored cause everything i do requires at least a little power.

Answer 4

Fire because without fire the cavemen wouldn't have survived therefore destroying the human race so without fire Benjamin Franklin wouldn't have existed to discover electricity.

Answer 5

Fire, some areas of the world still make a living without electricity.

Answer 6

Fire.......... eletricity comes from the BURNING of fossil fuels......

Answer 7

I love how you seem to assume that without plug in heaters and computers we'd be living like "cavemen."  Electricity wasn't really used widely for our "creature comforts" until about 1831.  (see link)

Fire was a way for us to not only heat our homes, but cook food, forge metal, shape our landscape, (fire was, and is still, used as a tool to control the underbrush of forest areas surrounding settled areas, and can actually help prevent larger scale forest fires) and even cauterizing wounds.  (see link)

Fire is a vastly more important discovery for people than electricity.  You can live a good life without ever turning on a light bulb, but you'd have a tough go at it without ever having fire.

Answer 8

well....you can always make fire with electricity ;)

Answer 9

Essentially it is the same fundamental forces at work just the manifestations are vastly different.

The underlying chemical reactions that result in fire are the same forces that result in electromagnetism.

It just took us a long to time to realize this.